His thumb strokes my shoulder. “Is this another one of your ‘facts’?” Now his eyes do travel to mine.

I give him a shove, even as my lips curve up. He has me there. One doesn’t make love with one’s fears. Not willingly. Then again … perhaps I am the poster child for immersion therapy.

“Aside from me, is there anything you fear?”

My brows furrow.

When I don’t respond, Montes says, “You can’t answer my question.”

I can’t. Death doesn’t scare me. Nor does pain. I might’ve said I feared losing the things that I love … but I’ve already lost them all.

“What do you fear?” I ask.

He’s silent. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

“You do,” I accuse.

He sits up, the action causing the blanket to draw down and expose my breasts. I push myself up as well, dragging the sheet back over my chest.

“They kept blood and oxygen flowing to my brain,” Montes says, rubbing his jaw. “That’s how they did it—how they kept me alive even after I’d been shot. You can replace everything but the brain. If that goes, a person is well and truly dead.”

My hands tighten on the cloth. I don’t know why he’s decided to confide in me now, but I don’t stop him. People have killed and died to learn what he’s telling me. And he’s telling me, the woman who’s threatened to kill him to his face.

He knows things have changed between us.

“The origins of this war began decades ago, when I was just a successful businessman trying my hand at politics. I’d caught wind of a company developing an Alzheimer’s drug with unusual side effects. It could turn back the clock—it could return a patient to their brain’s peak performance, reverse baldness and bone loss, increase skin’s elasticity, repair torn tissue.

“I took a chance and bought the majority shareholding of the company, and gave it the capital needed to continue testing. The drug was further tweaked, and we found a way to prevent aging completely.”

Will had been right; Montes had stumbled upon the fountain of youth.

“The company’s shares skyrocketed, and for a while, there was real concern in the medical field that the drug had just made tens of thousands of health related jobs obsolete.” The king gives a dry laugh. “It probably would’ve too.”

That sounded ominous.

“A super-virus swept through the Eastern Hemisphere. It spread rapidly, killing seventy to eighty percent of its victims. People panicked. The world hadn’t seen something like this in centuries.”

Apprehension skitters through my veins.

“Then one of my researchers discovered that my drug could cure the illness—if taken in the right dosage for the right amount of time. ”