“We have no relationship,” I whisper back to him. Luckily, there’s too much going on around us for our conversation to gather unwanted attention.

His eyes linger on my face, moving to my scar, then my lips. “You won’t be saying that by the time you leave.”

I hold his gaze and suppress a shiver. As much as I want to fight his words, I fear they’re true.

My father takes a seat across from me. His eyes move between the two of us, but other than that, there’s no indication that the seating arrangement bothers him. I’m not deceived. He hates the king more than even I do.

Someone places a document in front of me. It takes me a minute to realize this is a peace treaty, a tentative contract drawn up listing the conditions that need to be met in order for the war to end.

King Lazuli’s arm brushes mine from where he sits to my right. My eyes flick to him, but he’s not paying attention to me. “Ambassador Freeman, Serenity,” the king says, nodding to each of us, “in front of you is a draft of the terms of your surrender.”

I see flashes of light go off as each media outlet allowed in here captures the beginning of the negotiations. Each one distracts me from the matter at hand.

My father pulls out the document the WUN crafted up that catalogues our terms of surrender. After reading it on the flight over, I can rattle off the essentials: Our people must be provided with medical relief, first and foremost. Then steps must be taken to clean the environment—too much radiation has seeped into the earth and the running water. It’s in our food, and until we can expel it, people are going to keep getting cancer.

Once those two requirements are met, then our secondary measures are to boost the economy and reestablish the social order that existed before the war.

The king takes the document from my father and flips through it. Suddenly he laughs. “You think I’m going to let your country revert back to the materialistic, wasteful state it was in before the war?” he says, his eyes moving over the page before lifting to meet my father’s gaze. The irony of his statement isn’t lost on me, here in this opulent palace of his.

Across the table, my father relaxes into his seat, looking at ease when I’m sure that’s the last thing he feels. “The WUN is not suggesting that. We merely wish to get our economy back on its feet.”

The king’s eyes flash. “Your hemisphere will never be where it once was.”