Despite his offensive words, I flash him my first real smile of the evening. “I was too busy killing your men to bother with love.”

Now he looks mad. It’s nice to know that the king might actually care about the death of his soldiers. “Watch your words,” he snaps.

I decide to back off. If I anger King Lazuli too much, my father and I could easily find ourselves on the wrong end of a gun.

He watches me, and I can practically see the anger flow away from his face, replaced with that predatory look I saw when I first locked eyes with him. “You were a soldier?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“But not anymore?”

“I will always be a soldier,” I say, “but right now I fight with my tongue rather than my fists.”

He gives me a slow smile. “Perhaps we can put that tongue to other uses.”

“Then perhaps I will resort to fighting with my fists.”

“I welcome the challenge.” In his eyes is a promise that he’ll make good on.

Tonight I’m sleeping with my gun.

I rip my dress off and run my tongue over my teeth as soon as I enter my bedroom. The representatives knew. They knew there would be a chance that dolled up I might catch the king’s attention. Of course. All other tactics hadn’t worked with him. Everyone else came back in a body bag. Why not give it a shot and tempt the king with flesh? It was the oldest trick in the fucking book. And it worked.

I tear the rest of the clothes off of my body and change into a pair of pajamas.

“Serenity?” my father calls from the sitting room.

“What?” I ask as I untuck my hair from my shirt. My voice is angry.

He fills up the doorway to my room and takes me in. Neither of us needs to say anything—and we wouldn’t dare anyway, the room had to be bugged. But he doesn’t need to. His anguished expression tells me how he feels about our current situation.

“I’m sorry.” He shakes his head.

“Why did no one tell me?” Even as I say this, I wonder if that’s what had my father tense around the general when we left. He might’ve known then what I’d only just figured out.

I can’t bring myself to be mad at him. We were all just pawns at this point.

My father pinches the bridge of his nose. “It was never official. You’re a soldier and a future emissary. We wanted you to do what you do best—represent the WUN.”

I read into what he can’t say under the king’s roof: acting was never my strength. I can barely hold my tongue; pretending to like the vilest man I know is beyond my abilities.

“We should check in with General Kline right now,” he says.