Death and health were the stick and carrot the king regularly used to gain control of a new land on the eastern hemisphere. He still doesn’t seem to understand that repairing that which he broke doesn’t make it new again. It makes it scarred.
I try the other doors in the basement. All are locked, and none will open with the key card in my hand. It makes me think that I never entered the room where the real research is occurring. A simple nurse might not have that kind of clearance.
I’d like to explore the rest of the hospital, but I’ve already been gone too long. So I walk back to the closet, change into my hospital gown, and place the scrubs where I found them.
“Last time I checked, the bathroom was across the hall.”
I spin, only to come face-to-face with my guard. Despite his soft-spoken words, he’s angry.
My first instinct is to become defensive. So I do the opposite. “What does it matter to you? I’m the queen.”
He grabs my upper arm. “You need to get back to your room, now.” He begins leading me down the hall.
“I’m going to tell the king that you’re manhandling me,” I say, as I yank futilely against his grip. “He’s not going to like that.”
My guard chooses to ignore me. He opens the door to my room and pushes me inside.
“Hey—!” The door slams shut behind me.
What an ass.
I lean against the wall, not ready to get back in bed, and let my eyes drift around the room. They land on a calendar that hangs across from me.
I still. It says it is May, but it should still be April. I’m about to shrug it off when my hand goes to the smooth skin of my stomach.
What if some new technology was used on me—the same one that removed all traces of the king’s bullet wounds from his body?
Perhaps I’m being paranoid, reading into things that aren’t there, but that thought doesn’t stop me from reaching for the door handle next to me and slipping back out into the hall.
“Your Majesty,” the guard growls, blocking my exit. I feint to the right and duck under his arm, hurrying to the main desk.
“Can you tell me what day it is?” I ask, breathlessly to the nurse behind the desk, the same nurse who helped me earlier.
A moment later my guard comes to stand beside me, but he doesn’t drag me off like I worried he might. I guess threatening to narc on him was effective after all.
The nurse across from me looks baffled by my request—or maybe just the fact that I’m out here again. “Of course, my queen,” she says. She turns to the screen in front of her. “It’s May tenth.”
I do the math in my head. That would mean that it’s been almost three weeks since I married the king and over two weeks since I came here for the operation.
“Is something the matter, Your Majesty?” the nurse asks.
I shake my head, my mind still far away. The surgery should’ve taken hours, not days, and definitely not weeks. I’m not being paranoid after all. Something did happen to me.
“You’re sure that’s today’s date?” I ask.
The nurse glances from me to her screen again, looking uncomfortable. “Yep. May tenth.” She smiles warmly at me, but it falters a bit when she takes in my expression. “Would you like me to escort you back to your room?” The nurse eyes me and the guard at my side, missing nothing.
“I’m fine.” I back away from the main desk.
“I’ll have someone check in on you in five minutes,” the nurse says. She says it to comfort me, but I know her true motives are to make sure I’m okay before the king returns.
I walk back in a daze. Why would Montes not mention that I’d been out for weeks? And, more importantly, why was I out for that long?
Thirty minutes later, I hear the click of expensive shoes on the hospital linoleum. The king is coming back to my room, and I’m ready for him.
As soon as the king takes up the doorway, his eyebrows raise. I’m sitting on top of my bed in my hospital gown, my forearms slung over my knees. In one of my hands I’m playing with a scalpel that I lifted from the nurse that checked on me.
“Where’d you get that?”
I narrow my eyes at the king. “You don’t seriously expect me to answer that question, do you?”
He smirks, totally at ease with the fact that I’m playing with a scalpel in his presence.
Behind him I see Marco and some of the king’s bodyguards flank the doorway. “He,” I jut my chin at Marco, “better make himself scarce, or else this scalpel is going to find itself lodged into his chest.”
King Lazuli saunters into the room. “There is no need for threats, my queen.”
My eyes shoot daggers at Marco.
“Marco and his guards are going to wait outside while I spend time with my recovering wife.” The king’s mouth curves up at the last word.
Marco opens his mouth to speak. As soon as he does so, my hand tightens around the knife, and I rearrange my grip for throwing it. Marco’s eyes flick to my hand, and his mouth closes. Without a further word, he slips out of the room.
“You need to stop threatening my men,” the king says.
“Or else what?” I ask insolently. “You’ll divorce me?”
He sighs. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Make me regret my decision to marry you?”
“Absolutely.” Gone for the moment are my blossoming feelings for the king. Instead I can’t help but feel deeply disturbed once more by the king and his science.
The king leans in close—close enough for me to stab him if I desire it. He knows this too. I can see him daring me with his eyes.
“If I wanted to punish you for threatening my men, I’d find something infinitely more creative than divorce.”
I flip the scalpel around in my hand several times, a small smile forming on my lips. “You’re right. Divorce would hardly be punishment.”
Montes’s fingers touch my jaw, angling it to better face him. “Why are you so angry?”
“What have you done to me?”
The king’s brows lift. “This is about your surgery?”