Page 117 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
THIRTY
GREER
now
Three months later
“I, Embry Lance Moore, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The cold wind whips around my ears as I look up at the dais where Embry stands with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, looking sober and painfully handsome in his long wool coat and leather gloves, his hand resting on a Bible that’s all too familiar.
It’s Ash’s Bible.
I don’t realize I’m crying until the wind gusts again, freezing the tears right off my face. Ash kept that Bible on his end table always; it wasn’t unusual for me to crawl into bed and find him already there, shirtless and absorbed, the heavy book propped against one pajama-clad knee. Many nights I fell asleep to the sound of those onion-skin pages turning carefully, to his steady breathing as he shut the Bible around his finger and closed his eyes to pray about what he’d just read.
My faithful king.
Merlin wraps his arm around me, handing me a handkerchief to try to minimize the danger of tear-induced frostbite. I lean into him, his body strong and slender under his own wool coat, and I remember a time as a little girl when I was terrified of him. Now, after the last three months, I count him as one of my dearest friends. Nimue too, his new wife, who is on the other side me of me. And on the other side of her, her adopted son and heartbreaking reminder of all that I’ve lost, Lyr.
I steal a glance at him, and even at seventeen, he has so much of Ash in his face, in his bearing, all black hair and serious features and green eyes that already promise honor and dignity.
I turn back into Merlin and try to stop crying.
Up on the dais, the ceremony concludes, with Embry waving at the people and then giving Galahad—snuggled tight in Vivienne’s arms—a kiss on the forehead. A ripple of adoration goes through the crowd.
I cry some more, and this time Lyr himself reaches across Nimue to hand me a fresh handkerchief.
I DON’T REMEMBER much from the night my husband died. I don’t even know if I want to—what I do remember is horrible enough.
Being pulled away from Ash after I kissed him goodbye.
The paramedic saying, “Shit, he’s fading—he’s going—” as he struggled to get an IV.
The smell of blood like salt and metal and the white knife sticking out of his body like a bone.
The Secret Service agents yanking me away as I screamed, and they had to wrestle Embry back too—I saw him swinging at the agent trying to move him away, eventually he was carried, he was kicking, he was screaming too, both of us screaming and fighting to get back to Ash’s side.
It was protocol, see. To get us all to different secure locations in case the attack wasn’t finished, in case there was more…
Neither Embry or I were there when Ash died. It was Merlin.
Fitting, I guess. Merlin was there when Ash’s life began…and then he was there as it ended.
By the time the protocol had been satisfied and the Secret Service pronounced us all safe, Ash was dead, his body en route to the funeral home, and the nation was in shock. A president had just been killed on live television. And not just any president, but Maxen Colchester—the hero, the handsome king who had won a nation with his honesty and goodness and bravery. He’d died to save his own opponent, who was also his best friend, and it more than humbled everyone to witness. It shook the country, rattled the country right down to its bones. Here was a man who not only said good and brave things, but acted on them even until the very last, who carved a new definition of honor and courage into the dictionary with a white knife and red blood.
I should have listened, Embry said over and over again. I should have listened. It’s my fault.
His guilt filled him like water, like blood.
And I—I was nothing. A ghost. A vacancy of grieving air. I sleepwalked through the funeral, through the interment of the ashes. Merlin asked if I wanted to keep the cremated remains or scatter them, but my mother-in-law wanted her son in the family cemetery in Kansas City where she could visit him, and no one had the heart to refuse her.
My heart had been burned up alongside my husband’s anyway.
Kay was sworn in the night Ash died, and also became the lead name on the ticket, naming Trieste as her Vice Presidential candidate. It was a close race, with Ash’s death casting a huge confusing pall over everything. Did the sympathy vote go to his sister? Or his best friend and fellow soldier?
It went to Embry in the end, but only by the skin of his teeth. When he got the call, I was standing in his hotel room; the watch party was in the ballroom down below.
“I have to go down and give the speech,” he said, swallowing. His hands were shaking. “Will you come?”
