“You want proof?” he says. His eyes are calculating, and the smile dancing on his lips is sly. He’s no longer the man I talked to yesterday; he’s the man who’s been taking over the world for the last three decades.

I take a step back. I shouldn’t have spoken just now; my words were careless, and around the king, careless words could mean the difference between life and death.

I shake my head and close my eyes. “No, I don’t want proof. I just want this to end.” I open my eyes. “I don’t want to see any more crossed out faces on those maps of yours.” I jut my chin to the wall behind him. “I don’t want to be hungry all the time. I don’t want to see the hollow-eyed looks of the people I live alongside.”

“I can give you that,” he says, slowly walking towards me, not stopping until the two of us are dangerously close.

“Of course you can—but you won’t.”

“That’s because no one’s offered me the correct price yet.” He says it like this is a simple matter of haggling.

I throw my arms up. “You can’t expect the WUN to willingly cripple our future economy for you.”

The king eliminates the last bit of space between us and fingers a lock of my hair. “That’s not the price I was referring to.” Almost lackadaisically, his eyes move from my hair and land on my face.

And now I get it. I take a step back, then another. I furrow my eyebrows; I think I’m going to be sick. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Even if I believed that was a legitimate trade—which we both know it isn’t—no.”

“You could end this all now, and you refuse to agree to it?”

“You’re asking me to make a deal with the devil.”

“You and I both know you already signed your soul away a long time ago, Serenity.”

“Because of you and your stupid war. I already told you last night, you don’t get to have me.”

The king prowls towards me, closing the distance between us once more. “I’m not just talking about sex,” he says.

But sex would be included in the arrangement. “I’d rather die than do anything with you.”

“If it’s death you wish, we can arrange that.”

The king reaches out to touch my arm, and I slap his hand away. “Don’t. Touch. Me.” I’m shaking; this was never supposed to happen. I’m getting played by the king, and I don’t know how to get myself out of this situation.

King Lazuli sticks his hands in his pockets and leans in conspiratorially. “You know the thing about strategy? It takes knowing when to act and when to be patient.”