I’ve spent all this time pouring money into destroying healthy bodies and perfecting a body that isn’t broken. Scant few of my efforts have focused on fixing sick ones.

“Hasn’t it gotten to that point?” Marco asks. “She’s dying. This could halt the damage.”

Something thick lodges itself in my throat. It comes down to the Sleeper or death, and either option still takes her away from me. It’s been hard enough waiting out her recovery during the last few weeks.

“Since when do you care?” I give Marco a sharp look.

“Since you started to.”

Just like that, his words deflate my rising anger. I rub a hand over my mouth. “She might spend years asleep in it before we have the technology to remove the cancer forever.” My voice comes out strong and smooth; I can’t let even Marco, my oldest, closest friend, see how vulnerable I feel.

“Your Majesty,” Marco pauses, picking his words carefully, “if you want her to live for as long as you will, this might be the only way. ”

Serenity

I watch the door for several minutes after the king leaves, making sure that he’s not going to double back to my room. When nothing happens, I fling the hospital sheets off of me, more than a little surprised that my body doesn’t scream at the movement. In fact, I feel fine—not at all like I’ve just woken from an operation.

I’m right in the middle of an Eastern Empire hospital, one of the most coveted and secretive places under the king’s control. It’s where cutting edge medical research takes place.

Now is my chance to find out what exactly that research is.

Before I leave my bed to go explore, I gather up my gown to take a look at the extent of my surgery. I don’t want to accidently reopen the wound and find myself a patient here for longer than absolutely necessary.

I lift the thin cotton fabric and reveal inch after inch of skin. I unveil my stomach, and a strange sort of disbelief twists inside my core. Just to be sure I’m seeing correctly, I run a hand over the smooth skin.

There are no surgical marks, no scars. Nothing. The only indication that something’s happened to me is that a dark freckle that should’ve lingered near my bellybutton has now vanished as though it never existed in the first place.

So what did they do?

I peer out the door of my room.

“What are you doing, my queen?”

I yelp at the sound of the voice. A guard stands off to the side of the door. Of course the king left a guard outside my room. Now I’m going to have to figure out how to shake him.