Page 2 of The Only King to Claim Her

“Not my responsibility.”

“Eh,” she said. “Then what is?”

“Just as I said. I receive orders from military intelligence. I gather a team, or simply myself, depending on the situation. I carry out orders. I leave. I assume that the government sends a crew in after to handle the rest.”

“Ha! Lip service at best,” she said. “Three months of transitional assistance and then what? Gone. I am left with few resources, and little path to rule a country that still scarcely believes I am mentally well enough to rule. Though I believe I have been perfectly wonderful in the year since I have begun to rule.”

“You claim to have few resources, and yet here you are.”

“I am very sneaky,” she said. “And that comes from many years of imprisonment and secret plotting for how I might make amends when I was released.”

“Were you not complicit in the regime?”

“I was certainly not. As I said, I was primarily ensconced in the lower dungeon. I was trotted out as a figurehead on rare occasions. Proof of life and all. And I confess, if I have one weakness it is that I do care a bit for my life. I did not wish to be dead.”

“A common wish,” he said.

“Quite.”

“So what is it you want, Annick? Other than to not be dead.”

She looked up at him, and for a moment, he thought he saw her falter. For a moment, he saw vulnerability. “I would like for you to come back to Aillette with me.”

“No.”

“You have not even heard my proposition.”

“I don’t need to.”

“You should hear my proposition, I think.”

“You are perhaps overrating your proposition. I have so much here,” he said, indicating the mansion that he did not care about at all. He was dead inside. And when you were dead inside, you did not fear death, not overmuch. But Annick did not need to know that. Annick only needed to know what the rest of the world knew about him. Though she did know a few things, which he found disturbing. She knew that he was responsible for the death of the dictator of Aillette.

Annick had joined his two lives together.

A problem.

But he was not in the business of dispatching small women.

It was only ever those who deserved it. Only ever those who had committed great and terrible atrocities. He did not consider himself to be a good man, but he was a man looking for a way to balance the scales in the world.

To try and fix what he had not managed to fix all those many years ago.

And nothing would bring Stella back.

He remained, she was gone and it did not fix itself, no matter how many deserving people he took out of the world. But he considered it his payment.

A way to try and at least put some sort of balance out into the universe.

Annick looked at him and lifted a shoulder. “I require a small thing. I need you to return to my country with me. To act as my guard.”

* * *

She had successfully silenced the brute.

She had done a decent amount of research into Maximus King before stealing away to San Diego to confront him. He was a fascinating character. She found she was not frightened of him, though she perhaps should be. But she was not easily frightened.

For her entire family had been lost to her as a child, and she had been trotted in and out of the dungeon ever since. Educated, made to appear somewhat civilized.

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