The Queen of All that Lives
Page 95

The gunshot echoes down the cellblock.
I grunt and stagger back as the bullet hits my upper arm. I feel it enter, feel it rip through sinew, then exit out the other side. My gun arm.
My other hand goes to it just as the blood begins to pour out of the wound. I hiss out a breath at the pain.
“You should worry about your own life, my queen.” He says my title like an endearment. Considering he just shot me, he’s doing himself no favors.
Styx heads down the cellblock, towards me. “Ever since I was little, I heard about the great Serenity Freeman, a child of the West, sacrificed for the lusts of the East.” His eyes are far too bright as he speaks. There’s more than just a touch of madness in them. “I saw the footage of you bathed in blood. I saw your horror and your violence. I saw your sacrifice. It made me want to be a soldier.
“And that scar.” He lifts his gun and drags the barrel of it down his cheek, tracing the phantom path of my scar as he stares at mine.
I’m beginning to sweat from the pain, and the cold subterranean air is only getting colder with the blood loss. It drips between my fingers and down my wrist onto the dank ground.
“It was inspiring,” he continues. “The strong carry scars.”
I had imagined Garcia dangerous before, when I first saw his mutilated face. But now there’s the extra knowledge that his scars might’ve been inspired by mine.
I begin to lift my injured arm again, the handle of my gun slick with blood.
“You aim that weapon and I will shoot you again.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
He closes the last of the space between us. “I won’t kill you,” he says softly, confirming my earlier thoughts. He studies me for a moment, and then his gaze drops to my injury.
He presses his gun into my wound. “But you might wish I had by the end of it all.”
I stagger back, but now he grabs me with his other hand, keeping me rooted in place.
I try to jerk away from him as the barrel of his gun digs into the ragged flesh. My jaw clenches through the pain, and my nostrils flare.
“The representatives are gone, aren’t they? All but me. That makes me the sole ruler of the West.”
He presses harder, watching me the entire time. He’s so busy keeping eye contact that he doesn’t notice me lifting my gun. This evil, crazed man. He’s so lost in my pain that he’s not paying attention to things he should.
“How would you like to be my queen?”
The edges of my vision darken.
Aiming for his groin, I pull the trigger.
Click.
Fuck. Whatever ammunition I had, it’s now gone.
The sound breaks Styx from his trance. He glances down at my gun, aimed at him. His grip tightens as he realizes I meant to kill him.
I pull my head back, then jerk it forward, head-butting him.
He releases his hold on me and staggers back, placing a hand to his forehead.
I follow him, reaching for my father’s gun. This ends now.
My fingers barely skim the handle when Styx lifts his gun and shoots at my holster.
I jerk back in surprise as the bullet whizzes past my hand, only just missing it.
Styx storms forward, gun now trained on my chest, his expression murderous. “And I thought we were finally coming to an understanding, my queen.”
He yanks my father’s gun from its holster and tosses it aside.
I know he’s about to hit me. I can see how badly he wants to pull his hand back and pistol whip me. My muscles tense.
But he doesn’t hit me, and I get a glimpse of how he’s managed to gain this much power. For a psycho, he has a good measure of control.
Instead, he presses the barrel against my temple. “Where were we?”
I stare unflinchingly back at him. I think he wants me to be scared, but he’s picked the wrong girl to try to frighten. I don’t fear men like him.
I hunt men like him.
“Ah, yes, I remember,” he says. “You could be my queen, but only—if—you—behave.” He punctuates the last words by tapping the barrel his gun against my temple.
I glare at him as the blood that still coats the end of his weapon now smears against my skin.
He drags the barrel down, further smearing my blood across my face. He draws it over my cheekbone and across my mouth.
Then he pauses.
He taps my teeth with his weapon. “Are you going to behave?”
“Fuck. You.”
He smiles. “Dear, sweet Serenity, let me rephrase: you will behave, or I’ll start giving you more scars.” He leans in close. “And I will make them very, very distincti—”
The gunshot takes us both by surprise.
Styx and I stare at each other, and I have no idea how I look, but the thirteenth representative appears shocked. He glances down between the two of us.
There’s nothing. No bullet holes. No blood. No pain.
But then Styx staggers forward, his body slumping against mine. And I realize, there is blood, it’s just not mine.
I disarm Styx easily enough, and then I’m holding both his upper body and his gun with my good arm. Behind him I see a man, who’s nothing more than a shadow against the light spilling down into the prison from the stairwell.
But I know who it is. I would recognize that silhouette anywhere.
Montes prowls forward slowly.
“No one threatens my queen.”
The king’s voice is poison-laced wine. It’s the same voice that asked me to dance in a gilded ballroom over a hundred years ago. It’s the same voice that broke the world.