Page 37 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
And now here we are, in a tragedy of our own. Except we probably do deserve it.
I finish my cigarette and flick it onto the low patio where I’m standing. Behind me are bifold doors and rows of heat lamps and the silent bustle of the rehearsal dinner contained by glass. My rehearsal dinner, because I’m the groom, because tomorrow I’m getting married to the woman who sexually assaulted me and arranged for Greer’s abduction.
I pull the silver cigarette case out of my suit jacket and light up another one. I’m not ready to go back inside just yet.
“You don’t have to do this,” comes a voice at my elbow. I turn to see my stepsister standing next to me in a sleek strapless gown, as if she’s incapable of feeling the cold. Which she might be. I always suspected she was part reptile.
But she’s a loyal reptile, even as she’s reaching for my case and pulling out a cigarette for herself. I offer her the lighter and she lights the cigarette and snaps the lighter shut with an efficient, elegant click.
“You don’t have to do this,” she repeats again, gazing steadily at me over the glow of the cigarette. “It’s not too late.”
“Morgan, she holds all of our futures in her hands right now. If I do this, I can protect you and Lyr and Ash. Not to mention that I can keep my image for the campaign clean.”
Morgan sighs, giving the ash on her cigarette a delicate flick. “I don’t know if we can campaign with her at all, not with how dangerous she is. Maybe we should take our chances with her going public.”
She blows a pretty stream of smoke over her shoulder, using it as an excuse to glance behind her. Seeing that we are mostly alone, she says, “What she did to you was unforgivable, and how do you know it won’t happen again? Are you planning only on drinking from sealed bottles inside your own house?”
“I can protect myself, Morgan—”
Her eyes flare a bright green, so like Ash’s that I have to look away. “Is this a male ego thing?” she demands quietly. “Because what she did to you does not make you weak, and it’s not weakness to try to protect yourself in the future.”
“I know that—”
“I don’t think you do,” she insists. “Look, the statute of limitations in D.C. is fifteen years, there’s plenty of time to—”
“Absolutely not.”
“If we can get Dr. Ninian to testify,” she continues over me, “or even just bring evidence against her, then we can get Abilene convicted.”
“And then what happens to my image? What happens to my child if she’s in prison?”
“Is it definitely your child?”
I study my cigarette for a moment before I take a long drag. God, how I had hoped, how I had prayed when I hadn’t bent my head to heaven for years—please don’t let the child be mine, I’d begged. Let it be anyone’s, fucking Melwas’s even, just please not mine. But I couldn’t ignore the one thing Abilene truly wanted, which was to feel close to Ash. I’m the closest she can get, the truest imitation, and it was stupid of me to have hoped for anything different. Of course it’s my child. Nothing else would have satisfied her, save for conceiving a child of Ash’s, and thank God that’s out of her reach. For now.
“Two different doctors of my choosing have independently run the tests. I’m as certain as I can humanly be.” And then I soften for a minute. “It’s a boy.”
Morgan examines me. “You’d get him, you know, if she was in prison. He’d still be yours.”
“Yes. But I’m not going to win an election with the mother of my child in prison. It’s just not how it works.”
“Do you want him? The baby, I mean?”
I suppose she’s asking because she more than anyone knows how easy it is to cover up a child’s parentage, but it’s all far too late for that. And besides, “I do want him, Morgan. None of this is his fault, and I’ve always wanted children. And maybe this is as close as I’ll ever come to having a child with Greer, having one with her cousin.”
Morgan shakes her head as she puts her cigarette to her lips. “I hope for your sake that he takes after you.”
“I’ll love him no matter whom he takes after,” I say, and then add, surprised to find that it’s true, “I think I already love him.”
“Then you’ll have to protect him from his mother after he’s born,” my stepsister says. “Abilene will use him as a tool, especially if she realizes that you love him. How are you going to live like that, Embry? Cut off from the people you actually love and trying to protect your son from his own mother?”
I look down at my hand, my jaw working as I have to admit, “I don’t know. I just know that this is the best move I’ve got with the pieces I have.”
“Abilene frightens me,” Morgan says after a minute. “More than I can say.”
“Me too.”
“What happens next?”
