Page 36 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“I thought that might comfort you,” Abilene says magnanimously, as if she’s granted me a great gift and hasn’t just admitted to rape. And then she leaves, not bothering to close the door behind her.
I don’t know how long I stand by my desk, how long it takes to reel in these dark fishes of thought, how long it takes for this to forge into action, into a plan. But it’s close to dark when I have the answers I need.
I have to call Embry.
I have to stop Abilene.
ELEVEN
Now
SIX WEEKS Later
ELIOT SAID April is the cruelest month, but I can think of many crueler ones. January, when the holidays are over and the cold is hard enough to break your teeth on. November, when the skies go gray like they’ve forgotten how to be blue. March, with its muddy thaw and tree branches stark and skeletal.
But no month is crueler than October. Because October is the month I marry someone I don’t love for reasons I’m not sure I entirely believe in. October is the month when I take more steps that can’t be unstepped, weave more webs that can’t be unwoven. But what choice do I have? What choice have I ever had? There’s only ever been the choice between doing nothing and doing something, and goddammit, I’d rather choose something than nothing. I’ve chosen to do nothing long enough.
It’s a cold night tonight, and so quiet that I can hear the ash burning on my cigarette. So still that even the smoke refuses to move, hanging around me like a toxic fog.
I shouldn’t smoke, I know. It was a habit I kicked after the war. It’s just that I’m at war again, and this time with the man I love, and the first casualty is going to be my integrity. Twelve hours from now I’ll stand in a church and make vows I don’t intend to honor, make prom
ises I could never keep, paint myself another face with lies and hollow words, just like Hamlet accuses Ophelia of doing.
Those that are married already, all but one shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
I remember reading Hamlet aloud to Ash in Berlin, during some vacation we stole together during the war. My head in his lap, my bare feet hanging off the bed, acting out the voices and making him laugh at Polonius and sigh at poor Ophelia. Hamlet himself Ash could never understand, could never grasp why someone wouldn’t do what needed to be done right away.
“That’s why they don’t write tragedies about people like you,” I’d said, twisting up to look at him. “It’s too boring when the hero isn’t morally complicated.”
Ash looked amused. “Define morally complicated.”
“You know. Fatal flaw and all that. Hamlet’s passivity. Macbeth’s ambition. Oedipus’s pride.”
“Oedipus was trying to do the right thing by leaving Corinth,” Ash said. “Doesn’t that count?”
I glared at him. “Don’t be an idiot. His leaving Corinth set the entire prophecy in motion. He thought he could defy the gods! You don’t think that deserves a tragic end?”
He laughed then, the bare muscles of his stomach jerking against my face. I turned and kissed them, one by one, until I reached his navel, which I licked until he growled. And predictably enough, I ended up with his cock in my mouth and his hands heavy on my head, and after he came deep down my throat, he permitted me to lie on top of him and find release by sliding my cock against his muscular thighs. Even with that pathetic amount of friction, I still spent my load in a matter of seconds. Which then I had to clean up in the most humiliating way possible, of course.
I loved it.
But after all of that, and a quick shower and room service on top of it, it was clear Ash’s mind was still on the earlier topic, and when my head was back in his lap and his fingers were running through my hair, he asked, “So are there tragedies about people who don’t deserve it?”
“I said morally complicated, not evil. Most of the tragic heroes don’t really deserve the magnitude of what happens to them.”
“But if you try to do everything right,” Ash said slowly, “and try your hardest to be honorable always? Do those people get to avoid the tragic ends?”
I thought for a moment, mentally flipping through college textbooks and deciding. “No, I think it’s usually destined, no matter how good or brave the person is. Beowulf didn’t have a fatal flaw and he got bitten by a dragon. King Arthur for the most part is a just and fair king, but a single sin committed in his youth ends up being his undoing.”
“What was his sin?” Ash asked, fingers still running through my hair.
I closed my eyes, the sensation so pleasant and soothing that I worried I might drift off to sleep. “He slept with his sister.”
“It’s a good thing I only slept with your sister then.”
“Fuck you,” I mumbled.
He laughed again, and somehow ended up crawling over top of me, kissing my face and throat and chest, and that was the last we talked about fatal flaws and King Arthur.
