Page 87 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
“The Carpathian motto.”
“Yes.”
The fear is acid in my mouth, my blood. “Ash.”
His voice is charred gravel when he speaks. “Don’t.”
We look at each other, and something shifts. I can’t explain it, can’t even really grab hold of it with my mind as it’s happening, but I feel it like a rope sliding through my hands, like a crack in the floor opening up between our feet.
“You said you trusted me,” says my king.
“I said I’d try.”
We stare again, the crack between our feet widening and widening. “Melwas won’t stop,” I say, “not until you stop him.”
“There are ways to stop him other than war, Embry. Other than sending in black ops for assassination.”
“I just don’t understand,” I say with real heat now, running my hand through my hair. “Don’t you care? Don’t you love her? Didn’t you swear to protect her? And yet over and over again—”
“I will do what I think is right,” he interrupts. “And you are my Vice President, and therefore you will do as I say.”
I stare at him like I’m seeing him for the first time. The strong nose and sharp cheeks, the square jaw and green eyes. The stubbornness, the resolute set of his shoulders. He won’t be moved. Despite the abduction, the video, Leo’s death, this attack—he won’t be moved.
“For fuck’s sake, Ash, if this isn’t going to convince you to act, what will?”
“Do you think so little of me that you think I’m choosing to be passive out of cowardice? Or complacency? You can’t trust that I’m trying to work for a safer solution?”
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have even thought before I answered. And now…
“I don’t fucking know anymore. Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of your term? Your next term? We just sit back and wait for Carpathia to come for us? What if it’s not just Greer next time? What if it’s a real terror attack? What if it’s an invasion of one of our allies? What then?”
His eyes narrow. “What are you implying, Embry?”
I say it. I say it because I’m scared for Greer, because I’m angry for Greer, because Ash is too fucking stubborn to listen for even just a second to what I’m trying to say. To the growing sense I have that Melwas won’t be satisfied by only coming after Greer, that he will be coming after all of us soon.
“I think you’re weak.”
It feels good and awful to say it,
a weight off my chest but crushed glass in my mouth.
His jaw goes tight, his eyes flare, and the crack between us widens and deepens, on and on and on. And then we’re at the cemetery, the door being opened for us, cutting the moment short.
“I should find Greer,” he says finally, and if I thought his voice was burned gravel before, it’s nothing like now. “Goodbye, Embry.”
“Goodbye, Ash.”
And when I watch him go, something raw and determined chews its way through my thoughts, an idea so hurtful and vindictive that I would never allow it to nest in my right mind. But nevertheless, it sinks its teeth into my thoughts, bites deep into the part of me that loves Greer so fiercely I can’t breathe, bites into the part of me that once thought war was a grand adventure.
When I find Abilene and stand by her side during the service, I know I appear serene on the outside, a politician playing nice at a funeral for the sake of his friend’s wife. But on the inside, I am bullets and teeth and harm. I am scorched earth. I am a knight who will do anything on his quest to save his queen.
I text my sister in the car on the way home from the cemetery.
Call me. It’s important.
26
Embry
