The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) by Laura Thalassa

kill me, even now, even though I deserve it—and I do deserve it.”
    I pull back enough to get a good look at him.
    The king I knew took, and took, and took because he felt it was his right. And now, what he is essentially saying is that what he did wasn’t his right.
    I narrow my eyes at him. “Have you grown a conscience?” It’s an almost preposterous thing to consider.
    “Age gives you wisdom, not a conscience,” he says as we wind our way through his halls.
    “And where was that wisdom when it came to me?” I ask.
    His eyes look anguished when he says, “It was wisdom that kept me from waking you, nire bihotza , not the other way around.”
    Montes leads us outside, where a small table overlooking the sea waits for us. Oil lamps hang from poles around us, already giving the area a warm glow as the sun finishes setting.
    I glance over at the king. This Montes … he isn’t exactly the same man I knew. And the change has me confused.
    Confused and intrigued.
    He pulls my chair out. I ignore the proffered seat and take the one across from it.
    He smiles at the sight, though I swear his eyes carry a touch of sadness.
    Someone’s already set out a bottle of wine.
    The setting, the table, the wine—it all harkens back to those instances when the king tried to seduce me and I was unwilling. Or maybe this is just how the king eats, beholding the sea and the sky and everything that he hasn’t managed to ruin yet.
    “Re-creating our previous dates will not win me back.”
    He grabs the wine bottle and begins to open it, appraising me as he does so. “So you admit that I can win you back?” The cork pops.
    “That’s not what I said.”
    He begins filling my glass with wine, his eyes pinched at the corners like he finds is whole thing very humorous. “It’s what you don’t say that interests me most.”
    I pick up my glass. “I’d prefer it if nothing about me interested you.” God, it’s such a lie.
    Montes meets my eyes. “Serenity, the sun would sooner fall from the sky. Even when you slept, I couldn’t stay away from you.”
    The ocean breeze stirs his hair, and I have to look away.
    Montes has had a hundred years to perfect not only being the very thing I hate, but also the very thing I love.
    I breathe in the briny air and take in the horizon. The sky is the very palest shades of orange and pink. Beneath it, the ocean looks almost metallic blue. It’s beautiful. Peaceful. Paradisiacal.
    “Is this the same island where we married?” I don’t know why I ask. Why I feel nostalgic over a memory I never wanted.
    When I face Montes again, I catch him studying me.
    “It is,” he says.
    All those people I met, they’re long dead by now. I should be too.
    I take a long drink of wine. “Is this where you kept me when I slept?”
    “It is.”
    “Did you ever regret what you did?” I ask, setting my glass down.
    He settles into his seat, his frame dwarfing the chair. Even his build hasn’t changed. I find myself looking at his deeply tanned forearms. It feels like only days ago I touched that skin like it was mine. I ache to do so again. Even though I can’t, the urge won’t disappear.
    “Every day,” he says.
    My eyes move from his arms to his face. It’s so unlike him to admit this—to feel this. I thought hearing that would make me feel better; it doesn’t.
    I let out a breath. “And yet you never changed your mind.”
    “I am over a hundred and fifty years old, Serenity. Much about me has changed, my mind most of all.” He says this all slowly, each word weighed down by his long, long existence.
    I swallow. My anger still simmers, but it has nothing on the terrible loneliness that crushes me. I am the relic of the forgotten past.
    And I’m beginning to understand that I’m not the only one carrying a heavy burden. If the king’s demons don’t eat him up at night the way mine do, then they at least fall on those great shoulders of his throughout the day.
    The waiters come then,