My hand tightens around my father’s arm as I stare out at the crowd spread out before me.

And then someone steps up to the base of the staircase. Someone who’s haunted my nightmares since I was little. The face I saw when I killed.

King Montes Lazuli.

The King

Just when I thought the evening was going to be another dull meet and greet, the WUN emissary walks in, and on his arm I see her.

The emissary’s daughter. Serenity Freeman.

The world doesn’t stop moving, the room doesn’t go quiet, but I swear something inside me just broke and reformed the moment she turned her devlish eyes on me—and that’s the only way to describe those eyes of hers. Devilish. She’s a wicked soul, through and through.

Just like me.

She’s unlike the women I’m used to. Her arms are sculpted, and her body is lean beneath her dress. It’s an almost laughable contrast to the soft women that fill the rest of the room. I’m dying to lift her skirt, run my hands up those legs, and get to know just how toned the rest of her is.

As pretty as her body might be, it’s not what’s captivated me. I can’t look away from her face. In another life it might’ve been sweet. But not in this one. A wicked scar slices down the side of it. It’s the most obvious warning that she’s a dangerous creature.

I wish I got off on fear and hate, because both are burning in her eyes the closer she gets to me. I’ve killed others for less than the expression I see in them, but this woman, she is someone who knows violence intimately. I’m almost positive that death doesn’t scare her. But apparently I do.

And the strangest thought yet pops into my mind: I don’t want this intriguing woman to fear me.

I know she’s a trap. I know the WUN sent her here with her father because they’re desperate, and they’re hoping to bait me with a woman. Those clever fools probably never thought that what would attract me to her was everything that lay beneath that pretty skin of hers—the viscous, hardened soul that looks so similar to my own. She’s the best challenge I’ve seen yet.

I need to get to know her. She might’ve just changed everything.

Chapter 5

Serenity

Six years ago Washington D.C. was leveled. It was sheer dumb luck that on that particular day, at that particular time, my father and I had driven to a shooting range on the outskirts of the city.

We stood outside, taking turns firing from one of the stalls. I steadied my stance and focused my aim when my peripherals caught sight of something they shouldn’t have.

The blast rose into the sky, unfurling like some fiery flower. The sight was incomprehensible—too bright, too big, too breathtaking.

Too dreadful.

I tore my eyes away, and looked to my father. He was already yelling commands at me, but we both wore earmuffs, so they fell onto deaf ears. When he jerked his head towards the building that housed the indoor shooting range, however, I understood.

Flicking on my gun’s safety, I shoved my weapon back into its holster just as my father grabbed my arm. Together we sprinted for the building; the few other people outside followed our lead.

I chanced a glance back. The explosion had expanded, and a thin white cloud haloed it. I knew in the pit of my stomach that we had until that cloud reached us to find safety.

My father and I ducked inside. He whipped off his headpiece and began shouting orders to the people loitering on the first floor. I didn’t hear his words, but judging from the way men and women made for the stairs down to the basement, he’d said enough for them to seek shelter belowground.

He hadn’t let go of me since we’d entered, and now he steered us to the same destination.

In the muffled silence I noticed all the little things that made the moment real: The way one man’s jowls shook as he pushed his way past us. The coolness of the earth as we descended further into it. The controlled panic in my father’s eyes, like fear sharpened his logical reasoning skills. It had. It’s one of the many traits we share.

When we reached the basement, the stairway opened into a hallway. Tugging my arm, my father led me away from the crowd to the end of the corridor. We hooked a right, and my father pulled us into an empty office that had been left open.

He locked the door and overturned a nearby filing cabinet, further blockading it. Next, he flipped the desk. I began to tremble as my father directed me to a corner of the room, dragging the now sideways desk towards us until we were barricaded in.

Atomic bomb.

That was the first time I’d really put a name to what I saw. And it was all because of that damn desk, which looked so similar to the overturned coffee table I’d once read under all those years ago.

My father fit his earmuffs back on his head then wrapped his arms around me, and it was exactly the physical comfort I needed.

It didn’t take much longer for the blast to hit us, though hit is the wrong word. It passed over us, tore through us. I threw my hands over my head as the blast slammed us into the desk. The explosion roared so loud that I heard it over my earmuffs. It was a monstrous symphony to the end of the world.

And then it was over—if you could say such a thing. The land we returned to hours later was not the same one we’d fled from. Gone was D.C., gone was the White House and every great monument I’d gazed upon with wondrous eyes. Gone was our home. Gone was my former life.

Later we discovered that all big cities across the western hemisphere had been hit. That day the nations that once were lay decimated.

No, the blast wasn’t over. Far from it. If anything, it was just the beginning.