Page 99 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Jesus help me.
“The last debate,” Merlin adds. “A Carpathian terrorist is going to infiltrate the venue.”
I force my mind to catch up, to absorb—I’ve always been good at reading things on my feet, at assessing a combat field within an instant—but this is different, it’s so different, because it’s insane. It’s madness to think Merlin can somehow see the future, that he and I and Greer and Embry are all some kind of annual plant that springs up periodically with new flowers but the same roots.
But the moment he said Embry’s name, something opened up inside me. Because am I willing to risk being wrong? No matter how foolish, how slight the chances are that Embry could die, am I willing to refuse to listen? No. I’m not. I’ll be all kinds of foolish for my little prince.
“I can’t see the details,” Merlin says apologetically. “I couldn’t last time either. I don’t think I’m supposed to. It’s like there’s a veil between it and my sight, and no matter how I try to part it, it’s not meant to open for me.” He sighs, looking up at the sky. “It’s quite bedeviling, actually.”
“Merlin.”
“Yes?”
“I need you to start over, and explain to me exactly what you know.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He looks down to the railing, his gloved hands gesturing across the wood. “You’ve succeeded into containing the Carpathian threat and Melwas—almost entirely. The outliers are the extremists, and in a normal course of events, they would be no more dangerous than your average political dissident, but after Melwas’s deposal, they are angry. Embry is the obvious target because he’s been so publicly inflammatory about Carpathia. Kill him, and they might finally get another war, which is what they want more than anything. A war would put Carpathia back in the hands of men like Melwas, stop what the extremists see as a corrupted spiral of European integration.”
“We’re not going back to war with Carpathia,” I say, my jaw tight. Good God, if I’ve done anything in my painful, flawed life, please let it be that. Please let it be that I brought peace, for however short a time.
Merlin raises an eyebrow. “Even if they killed Embry? Even if you cradled him as he died and his blood soaked through your shirt, and the last thing he whispered to you was your little Greek pet name and—”
I hold up a hand to make him stop, my eyes closing tight. He can’t know, he can’t, how much that image terrifies me, how it used to terrify me, how I spent every day in that fucking Carpathian hellhole terrified that Embry would die and die on my watch.
I take a breath. Listen to the water.
“Not even then,” I finally say. “It would kill me, but not even then.”
“I thought so,” Merlin says, sounding gentle…and a little relieved? As if he hadn’t been sure what my answer would be.
“But obviously,” I state, “I’m not letting anything happen to that man.”
“I know. And you will do your best to stop it—you did last time as well, although last time it wasn’t Embry at the end.”
“Then who?” But the moment I say it, I see it. A green field under a sky heavy with unspilled rain. Lyr’s face as our eyes meet, his jaw set in trembling determination. “Fuck,” I mumble, rubbing my thumb across my forehead as if I can rub away the unbidden image.
“You did everything you could. You parlayed, you sued for peace, offered half your kingdom. The lengths you’ll go to avoid war are commendable. But you failed, Arthur.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say absent-mindedly, because my mind is already racing ahead to any and all practical measures to keep Embry safe. I still don’t know if I believe any of what Merlin is telling me, but I refuse to dwell in any uncertainty when it comes to my prince’s life. “We’ll move the debate. Or we’ll do it remotely, each of us in a secure location, no audience.”
“If he agrees,” Merlin reminds me.
“Of course, he’ll agree,” I growl. “If I—”
“If you what? Command him? Force him?”
I glare at Merlin. “If I prove there’s a credible threat.”
“You won’t, beca
use there won’t be any evidence for it. And you can try to move venues, try to arrange for something more secure, add an army of Secret Service agents, but even if he agrees, it won’t be enough.”
“You’re telling me,” I say, my anger growing, “that there’s nothing I can do or say to stop this? That I’m supposed to be resigned to the possibility that the man I love will die?”
“I’m not saying that,” Merlin says, “but I am saying that you will be given a choice when the time comes.”
I look at him. Study those dark eyes, that face still vibrant and handsome even with the faint lines around his eyes and mouth. “This is really it, isn’t it?” I ask. “What you’re about to say? It’s the real thing that I need to know.”
Merlin gives me a look full of compassion. “The choice in the moment will be your life or his, Maxen. I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you exactly how it will unfold and why and when, and how we could stop it, but I can’t see any of that. The only thing I can see with any certainty is the moment itself, the choice. Embry’s life or yours.”
