Page 116 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
As I was meant to be.
It comes together in something faster and neater than an instant, every single piece of our story, every moment that the three of us have ever lived, and if this is least of what I can give, then I’ll give it gladly.
It’s not fear I feel in this final second, but love. All along it was me who had the whole world in his eyes.
There’s barely time to catch the white glint of a ceramic knife before I’ve taken the two steps necessary to shove my way between the attacker and Embry, and the arcing blade is aimed right for Embry’s ribs.
I’m there, I’m there just in time, and I manage to knock the blade aside with an elbow and the side of my arm. There’s a bright slash of pain along my triceps, a shove to my shoulder that staggers me back, and then we’re wrestling for control of the knife.
All of this happens in a split second, and I feel Embry turning in shock behind me, I can sense the rush of Secret Service agents towards us, and I land a knee in the attacker’s groin right as he kicks at my foot, and our tangled legs send us both falling to the floor, me on top of him.
I land with my forearm on his throat and my hand groping for the wrist of his knife hand, grunting as his knee or elbow or something digs into my stomach.
“It’s over,” I say.
“Strength in the Mountains,” he wheezes underneath me in Ukrainian. “Strength until Death.”
The Carpathian motto.
“There’s strength here too,” I tell him. “You’re done.”
I finally find his knife hand as Embry drops to my side to help me wrestle the would-be assassin and the Secret Service agents surround us, shouting and grabbing for the attacker. And as I’m gently pulled back to my knees and the attacker is pinned down, there’s one thing I’m very, very aware of.
The attacker no longer has the knife in his hand.
I look down.
“Ash,” Embry says, his face going pale. His eyes are on my stomach, and it’s not the pain I register first, but the hot spill of my own blood.
Somewhere someone screams.
And then I’m so dizzy I can’t breathe, can’t think properly, and I feel myself slumping—against Embry, it’s my little prince’s chest I’m against, and it’s so solid and so warm, and all those years I spent holding him, I should have made him hold me too, because it’s so nice, so very nice. He’s so strong. So good.
“The ambulance outside is ready, the paramedics are coming now,” someone says nearby. Belvedere.
Then a cloud of soft gold. “You stay here,” Greer says fiercely, her hands tight around mine, her lips near my ear. “You can’t leave me, you can’t leave us, Ash, please—”
She’s crying, and Embry’s chest is heaving behind me, and his hands are everywhere, trying to staunch the blood and cradle my face, and when I force my eyes open, I see the two of them. And I see Morgan, her face pale with horror and her hands pressed to her mouth, and Vivienne Moore barking orders at anyone who will listen, and for a minute the three women—Greer and Morgan and Vivienne—are different, dressed in gowns and crowns, and there’s a fourth woman, a woman I’ve never seen before, but I know her name.
Imogen.
My birth mother.
Behind her, the lake beckons, still and clear as glass. The four of them will go with me, but I know only my mother will take me to whatever waits after the lake.
And then I blink again and I’m back in this life, back among Greer’s desperate pleas and Embry’s broken sobs and so many hands are lifting me—a backboard or a gurney maybe—and there are so many screams and so much shouting, and at the last, before my vision dims completely, I murmur hazily up to Greer and Embry, “You have to kiss me goodbye before you go.”
And then there are frantic kisses and tears, and hands warm with my own blood.
There’s a boat waiting for me.
There’s a better place, over the water.
PART THREE
THE PLACE OVER THE WATE
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