Page 114 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“Say, yes, Sir, I promise.”
She pulls her lips into her mouth, then lets out a long, worried breath. “Yes, Sir, I promise.”
I kiss her forehead and walk away. If those are to be her last words to me on this earth, then I can’t imagine any better ones.
Yes, Sir, I promise.
Thank God. If I go through the trouble of dying tonight only so that Greer and Embry spend their lives apart out of some misguided sense of honor, I’m going to be one furious Sir. A dead Sir, yes, but still a furious one.
And then it’s time to go backstage and wait for our cue to enter.
Embry comes to stand next to me. “Brought enough Secret Service agents?” he asks quietly, so Harrison Fasse and the producer’s assistant can’t hear him.
“To keep you safe.”
Embry lets out a huff, half-annoyed, half-amused. “You saw the metal detectors and pat-downs happening to the audience right? The agents in here sweeping the place? The background checks for the television staff?”
“There are ways of getting around metal detectors, Embry, and backgrounds can be forged well enough to pass a check.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“Maybe.” I move past the producer’s assistant—a man about my age who looks distinctly irritated with my jostling and talking—so that I can angle my body against Embry’s. So that no one can see me take his right hand and check for the ring I put on his finger last night.
It’s not there.
My stomach twists in hurt even as I recognize I’m being ridiculous. What, did I expect he’d wear it on national television? The day after his wife’s funeral no less?
But then he says quietly, “Wrong hand.” And when he lifts his left hand, I see that he’s replaced his other wedding band with mine.
My throat closes and I can’t speak.
“It belongs there. It always belonged there, Ash. It should have been your ring from the beginning.”
“Little prince.”
“I know it’s hard to believe that I love you, that I need you still, even as I’m fighting you, but can you? For me? Can you believe it? Because I do love you, and even if I still want to finish this race, I’ll always kneel to you. Even if I win, I’ll still kneel to you. We’ve always loved each other like this—alongside the struggle and the fighting. We can keep doing it…I want to keep doing it.”
But this is the end, little prince. For me at least.
After tonight, I’ll have to let you and Greer go.
I don’t say that. Instead, as the moderator’s voice comes over the sound system and the audience begins their wave of polite applause, I say quickly, “Promise me you’ll love Greer as I do, that you’ll take care of her.”
For a minute, I think he doesn’t hear me over the applause and the churlish hustle of the assistant towards the stage, and then he is looking at me with a genuinely confused expression, his eyebrows pinched together and his mouth pulled into an elegant frown. “Ash? What are you talking about?”
“Just say it,” I beg, only a step away from the stage. “Just let me hear it. Please.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “I’ll take care of her. But Ash—”
It’s too late—the assistant is pushing me onto the stage and into the bright lights and there’s no time to explain. There’s only time to smile and to wave and to hope that Merlin is wrong about tonight, about everything.
Please, God, let him be wrong.
I think of this afternoon as I take my podium, as I smile, as I search the room for danger and as I make all the subtle adjustments you’re trained to make—straightening your suit and finding the cameras and making sure your notes are in order. I think of how my hands shook earlier as I fixed my cufflinks and slid my tie bar into place, how it took me three tries to put that damn flag pin on my lapel. I spent years getting shot at, waking up on muddy hills thinking that day might be my last, and yet I’d never felt fear like I felt it this afternoon getting ready to meet my end.
Maybe because, despite everything, I believe Merlin. Maybe because if I don’t get this right, Embry could die.
Maybe because it means letting go of all that I’ve worked for—all the peace and prosperity I’ve tried to build—and having to trust it to the people I leave behind. I have to trust that they will hoist the banner for me after I’m gone, that they’ll keep doing the work, that the world will be and stay a better place in their care.
