Page 59 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Just. I want her with me is all.
“Are you sure that you’re okay?” I ask so that only she can hear. “This happened too fast for—”
“I’m fine,” she says firmly. “I love you and I’m fine, and after tonight we will have plenty of time to talk. Or work through it in other ways.” The mischievous emphasis she puts on other ways almost distracts me from how her hand drops to press against her belly, which is flat, taut, and empty, and has been for two years, despite much effort on our part.
I put my hand over hers, press both into her belly.
“Whose pain is it?” I ask quietly.
She lets out a long breath, her body relaxing ever so slightly. “Yours, Mr. President.”
“Good girl,” I say. “I’ll be back, and then you will give me your pain as you’re supposed to.”
Her eyes flare with heat, and I hope for the moment her ache will be less. I hope it won’t scratch at her to think of me in a room with my son…my son who is not her son.
Morgan opens the door to the library, and together we walk inside, and even with my nerves, I notice the subdued wealth of the room. Two-storied and lined with books and fireplaces and massive, hulking chairs, and I can so easily see my Embry here as a boy, as a spoiled teenager. Reading with his legs slung carelessly over the arms of the chairs, sneaking in boys and girls to fool around with by the fire. Staring out the yawning windows and out onto the lake, cocooned in whatever rippling, dark thoughts make up Embry’s mind.
But then of course, Embry wasn’t the only little boy to have grown up wandering these halls. There was Lyr, all the while thinking Nimue was his mother and Vivienne his aunt and Morgan his cousin. And his father a ghost somewhere, a deadbeat, a spineless waste of air.
It’s hard to feel like he would have been wrong about that, as I walk to meet him for the first time in sixteen years, as I walk to meet him after my silence has destroyed his life.
It isn’t difficult to find him in the room, even as full of dancing fire-shadows and nooks as it is. It’s as if my heart is magnetized to him now, on alert, and once I catch sight of him sitting in a window seat, his head bent over a book and his profile etched by the contrast between his pale skin and the charcoal night outside, I wonder how I never saw it. All the times I saw pictures of him in passing, that massive Moore family portrait that Embry had in his Vice President’s office, random social media posts from Embry at the lake house, lounging with his family. Lyr had just been one of Embry’s tribe, just another wealthy scion that would eventually attend an expensive college, wear expensive clothes, and go on to rule the world.
But how could I not have seen it then? The black hair? The high cheeks? The nose with its slightly Roman bridge, the full mouth, the dark slashes of eyebrows over bright green eyes? He’s made so much like me he’s uncanny to look at, uncomfortable even, a reflection with the shadows and angles just different enough to make you think you’ve imagined any difference at all. Morgan is in him too: in his features, which are slightly more refined and elegant than mine—clear and angel-like—and in his hands, which are slender and delicate as he closes his book and looks up at us.
His eyes meet my own, slide over to Morgan’s. He doesn’t speak, although I can almost hear all the words pressing against the inside of his lips, all the questions he’s swallowing back down into his throat. But his expression isn’t hostile, and when he speaks, his voice is as calm as it is guarded. “Hello.”
“Hello,” I say back. Morgan just nods her greeting.
Nimue stands up from a sofa nearby, willow-thin and as tall as me. She’s only a few years older than I am, but she looks much younger, her eyes bright and her skin clear and her hair dark and tumbling over her shoulders. A crystal glints at her neck, and when she walks, she moves like a dancer—limber, lean, musical even in silence. I understand now why Merlin loves her.
“I’m going to give you privacy,” she says. She gives Lyr a small smile, one he doesn’t return, and I realize that this has been hard on Nimue too. Lyr must feel like everyone has been lying to him, everyone he’s ever cared about, and he’s not wrong.
He has been lied to.
Morgan and I take the chairs clustered around the window seat, and for a moment I think Lyr is going to stay up there, and I wouldn’t blame him. The window seat probably feels like the safest space in the room, and he’s sixteen—I can’t fault a teenage desire for seclusion. For a position that would feel strong and familiar.
But he climbs gracefully out of the window seat and finds a chair next to me, with a stoic and reserved bravery that I respect very much. It makes me proud to see how handsome he is, how strong and healthy, how sober and composed he appears. It makes me proud to see him face this like a man, even as I wish he didn’t have to.
Morgan speaks first, her voice faltering. “I suppose you might have some questions for us.”
Lyr nods, his face still careful. “I do.”
I look at Morgan at the same moment she looks at me, as if we’re deciding who should speak first, and the moment is almost laughable in its parody of a real family. Two parents sitting down with their teenage son, having a family meeting. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking sordid
and terrible.
I go first. “I didn’t know my biological parents,” I say, still trying to find the right place to start. “I know now that Penley Luther had an affair with Imogen Leffey, and that she died giving birth to me. I know now that Penley Luther was too embarrassed or selfish to try to find me. But growing up, I only knew that I hadn’t been wanted, that I’d been cast off. It made me too bitter to ever try learning anything about my past.”
“And I knew that there had been a baby boy, a half-brother,” Morgan adds. “But I never knew his name, and I thought if I ever found him, it would be through years and years of searching. I didn’t think—I couldn’t have expected that I’d meet him like I met Maxen.”
Lyr listens, his face betraying nothing. “And then after I was conceived?” he asks.
“I failed your mother,” I say, to spare Morgan having to tell the story herself. “At a place called Glein. There was a battle, and she almost died. You almost died with her that day.”
“I didn’t tell your father about you,” Morgan says, lifting her head to face Lyr. “And you can hate me for that if you’d like. I was angry because I felt like…oh I don’t even know anymore. Like it would be fair if I kept him from you because he almost let the two of us burn alive. I thought I hated him for that.” She glances at me. “I lied to myself about it for a very long time. But I guess I’m old enough to understand now there are things outside any one person’s control, and a battle is almost certainly one of those things.”
I don’t know why, but I reach out to squeeze her hand. My sister and ex-lover and current political enemy…and our son. Jesus Christ. I’m surprised lightning hasn’t struck us all down.
