American King (New Camelot #3)

by Sierra Simone

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says, pulling my hotel keycard from his pocket and flicking it onto the bed. “It’s dealt with now. And check your email. I’ve had Agent Gareth compile a folder on all of your Carpathian threats, and she will send you a new briefing every morning until further notice. If Melwas is deposed, those threats directed at you might become real faster than you think.”

  I sigh. “I’m not worried about it, Ash.”

  “Well, I am,” he snaps. “You may not care about what happens to you, but I fucking do. You’re mine, no matter how far you run, and I’ll do everything under heaven to keep you safe.”

  I stare at him, furious all over again, and he stares back, equally angry. Neither of us says a word, and then he’s walking to the door. He leaves with the quiet close of the hotel door and its lock—no door slams for Maxen Colchester. He has too much control for that. And despite the fight, despite the sex beforehand, I fall asleep fixated on one thing.

  He didn’t kiss me goodbye before he left.

  Twenty-Two

  Abilene

  now

  I hear that unhappiness is gray. A non-color, an in between thing, the feeling of flat clouds for weeks in the winter, the smell of tired water. It’s a damp, cold street under a damp, cold sky—not wet enough to shine or cold enough to ice over—nothing that real or beautiful. Just crumbling pavement and tire-smeared curbs with weeds pushing through the cracks. Just darkness half-heartedly lit by the blear of buzzing streetlights. Just the ruined jut of an aqueduct pressing up into sky.

  Why am I here?

  I forget.

  A bicyclist whisks by, all primary colors and determination, the kind of person who makes a point to exercise in the cold darkness because he’s desperate for the routine or for the self-discipline or for the smugness, and I stare at him as he disappears down the trail. Everything else around me feels still and flat, even the Key Bridge, which at four in the morning is mostly empty of cars.

  I climb up on the aqueduct and walk to the edge. Virginia stares back over the Potomac, still sleepy and studded with twinkling night lights, the kind that used to be in my room as a girl. Little dollhouse shore with its little dollhouse buildings and medium-rises, little dollhouse people who are happy happy happy.

  Why am I here?

  I sit down, not minding the bite of the cold stone through my dress. It’s a very pretty dress, white and gold with a black belt, long and a little flouncy. I wore it to Greer and Maxen’s engagement party, and Maxen had told me that I looked nice. He had said it in a perfunctory way, maybe, and while his eyes were glued to Greer across the room, but it was easy to tell he really meant it, Maybe if we’d been alone, maybe if Greer hadn’t been there, maybe if I would have tried just a little harder to make him see…

  Unhappiness is the color of Greer’s eyes. Because it’s the color Maxen loves.

  I put on this dress before I came here. I remember that now. I remembered the earrings but forgot the shoes. I’m still holding my car keys in my hand. Where is Galahad?

  Enid. I left him sleeping with Enid. That’s right, because even now I can feel the plush sink of the carpet under my feet, hear my dress rustling as I bent over his crib and brushed his hair away from his face. Can hear Enid’s snores in the adjoining room.

  How I wish I could have loved you more, I thought. How I wish you were Maxen’s. If only he’d had black hair instead of brown, green eyes instead of blue. Morgan doesn’t deserve Lyr, she doesn’t deserve to have a son of Maxen’s, but I would have. I would have deserved it.

  I left the little Embry-baby to his baby dreams and went driving alone.

  Below me, the Potomac is a cold swish and drift, boring to watch, boring to hear, not dirty enough to be interesting, not clean enough to be pretty.

  I watch my bare toes silhouetted against the dark water. Now that is interesting. Romantic maybe. I could see someone in a movie like this—beautiful dress, naked feet, dark river. But the movies are better; it’s too chilly to stare for long and the wind won’t ruffle my hair like I want. Instead it whips up in weird, sudden bursts, yanking tangles into my hair and blowing it across my eyes into my mouth.

  I hate it suddenly. I hate it for ruining my unhappiness—my unhappiness is supposed to be pretty, it’s supposed to be tragic, it’s supposed to be the flower-scented Ophelia and the regal Cleopatra and the noble Lucretia. How fucking dare it be a shitty kind of cold, a shitty kind of windy?

  I can’t remember why I’m here still. It’s like a half-forgotten word, pulled out with snapping fingers and exclamations, or a song that you can remember loving but the melody has vanished somewhere in your mind and all that’s left is a single, broken bar.

  I stand up and walk back the way I came, off the aqueduct and down to the path on the river, thinking of the dress and how much Maxen liked it. I knew he would, I picked it for him, I’ve done everything for him ever since the first moment I saw his face on the television. Done everything for him since I’d discovered we’d been at the same London party mere weeks before he became a hero.

  What if I’d ended up kissing him instead of the diplomat that night? What if he’d seen me first, my shape so tempting in that electric blue dress, what if he’d seen me and kissed me? Slipped me his hotel key? Said nothing, but dreamt about me for years and years like I did with him?

  Of course he did. It’s what happened, I’m sure of it. He saw me and he was captivated, but he knew I was too young and so he waited for me like I was waiting for him, and Greer was only ever a way to get close to me—just as all the politicians and lobbyists I dated were a way to get close to him.

  How can I ever tell him how much I loved him? How that love grew and grew when I was still a student at Cadbury and then later in college, as if it grew bigger the longer I lived without meeting him? As if his perfection doubled itself over and over again all those years I went without even knowing what he looked like in person? He was so bright, so perfect, all mine, and every other boy around me seemed like a cheap facsimile, a pointless fake when I had Maxen in my mind.

  He had me in his mind too, I know he did.

  Maxen.

  Can’t you see it? I can see it. Can’t you feel it? I can. I’d fit you better than any woman, you’d love me like I love you if you only knew me.

  Maybe you already love me.

  The edge of the river is awful up close, and I watch the orange bob of an empty prescription bottle float by.

  A memory floats by with it.

  Pill bottles in a bathtub. A wineglass shattering on the floor and my father’s voice, so angry, so angry, followed by the splash of water and a hard slap across my mother’s face. He’d never hit her before or since, but she’d found the one thing that could break him.

  I’d forgotten about the bathtub, the bottles. The times my mother stared at the ceiling with an empty face and an even emptier mind, when I’d crawl up next to her and try to hug her and it would be like hugging a corpse. The jags of crying that would last for days and days and days. It was easy to forget those, because who would want to remember? She’s not well today, was the delicate way we talked about my mother.

  Not well.

  Not well meant days in bed, or flashes of anger so hot they burned everyone around her, or strange, brittle laughter echoing through the halls. Not well meant it wouldn’t be long before I was sent away again, because I upset her in mysterious ways that were never properly explained to me, because I was the opposite of the rest and quiet everyone said she needed to become well.

  Am I well?

  I pick my way closer to the shore and dip a toe in. It’s so cold I feel it seeping through my skin and into every bone in my foot. Doubt follows, even colder than the water. I don’t want to remember why I’m here now; I know why, but I can’t look at it directly, if I look at it, I will go mad. I will go not well.

  Unhappiness was the color of Greer’s eyes as she said Dr. Ninian’s name tonight. As she sat in my living room with her Secre
t Service agent hovering by the door, as she told me that she was going to cut me down at the knees with my own sword.

  My hate became such a gentle, floating thing then, enlightened even, because I was proud of her even inside of my hatred. Who else but me remembers that pale shadow of a girl who could barely bring herself to speak above a whisper—and now she is a queen. Now she has learned to be strong and cruel. I suppose she has me to thank for that.

  I could have borne Greer. I could have borne Dr. Ninian and any legal battle, any shame; I have fought and conquered much worse.

  But then Greer stood up, smoothing her skirt and nodding at the Secret Service agent, who opened the door, and in walked Maxen. In walked Maxen, tall and cold and stern, in all the ways I’ve ever wanted, because I craved his coldness and his sternness, because I knew they would make his warmth and affection all the more special when he gave them to me…and maybe he was there to give them to me?

  Maxen didn’t sit. He didn’t come close, careful to keep space between us, careful not to touch me. “I understand that you were the one to reveal the truth about my son to the world,” he said. His voice made it clear it wasn’t a question, and I shivered at the chilled rasp of it. He was angry underneath all that calm, and suddenly I felt a flash of victory. I had made him feel; I had made him feel something about me.

  “Yes,” I said. “I did it.”

  “Why, Abilene?”

  He said my name. And oh, it had tasted just as good on the shared air between us as I thought it would. That cool, rough stoic’s voice. Abilene, Abilene, Abilene.

  “Because,” I said, being very brave, “I love you. And Greer doesn’t—not like I do, and you’ll see that now.”

  And then his brow pinched in an expression I didn’t recognize…until the horrible, nauseous moment I did recognize it.

  Pity.

  He pitied me.

  I felt the sickening split of my gut from my heart, my heart from my head, like the three of them were separate pinballs of shame, all spinning away from each other. How dare he pity me? After how strong I’d proved myself? After how far I’d come?

  “You must know that I will never choose you.” He paused, his beautiful mouth sharp, and I saw the face of a man who could hurt people effortlessly. “And you should know that you failed. Nothing you’ve done has even nicked the love I bear for Greer and Embry.”

  Something about his words itched me. “Embry?”

  Neither Maxen or Greer answered, but suddenly I knew. I knew and it sent me spinning in even more directions, bumping aimlessly off the walls and ceilings and floors.

  He loved Embry too.

  It explained so fucking much. The sordid triangle of the three of them—of course I couldn’t compete with that, I couldn’t compete with two people, and how had I not seen it before? That all the angst between the three of them was something different, something…tawdry?

  “It’s finished, Abi,” Greer said, stepping into her husband. “You’ve failed to force Maxen to love you, and whether or not Embry wins the White House, I’m using Dr. Ninian to finish your career and influence—if not your freedom. The games are over.”

  I looked at Maxen, all the parts of me gathering again in a fever. He was everything, without him there was no reason to any of this, and I knew if he left right now, I wouldn’t be able to breathe any longer. “I love you,” I said in a wavering voice. “Maxen, I’d let you do anything to me, please. Just don’t leave.”

  “Stay away from my family,” he said quietly.

  And then they left and I spun apart into clacking chaos.

  And then I came here. Here where the water is cold and where the current tugs on the hem of my dress. I slip my toes under the water again, stepping all the way down. Rocks and cold mud, just as cold as the water. Then the other foot, until I’m ankle-deep in the Potomac.

  Why am I here?

  Perhaps you’ve guessed by now. It was Maxen’s pity perhaps, or the shame it caused, or those mean, flinty words: I will never choose you. He doesn’t see all I’ve done for him, how much I’ve loved him, and it’s no different than my parents, or my grandfather, or all the people who were supposed to love me and let me love them and instead sent me away.

  I’ll send myself away this time, I think shakily. Half anger, half freedom. It will be me pushing away from the world, and that will send a spear of pain right through everyone and they’ll deserve it.

  She died because she loved him so, that’s what they’ll say. She died of a broken heart.

  I step in up to my knees now, the river sucking more insistently at my dress. From my knees to my thighs, and I’m past goose bumps now. My lips would be blue if I could see them, and I’m shivering so hard my teeth chatter. Up to my hips. My navel. My breasts. My dress is so heavy that my feet still press against the riverbed floor, but the current is pushing, pushing.

  Come, come, it seems to say. This way. We have business this way, you and I.

  The gelid water gnaws at my nerves, but I persist, pushing forward until my hair swirls dark in the dark water and I can’t fight the current any more. My feet dance along the bottom as I struggle for balance and turn back to look at the shore, and for a moment, there’s a vision of another life, another Abilene. She forces back against the current and pushes to shore, she strips out of her dress like a selkie from her skin and stumbles gleaming and numb-footed to her car. Maybe she finds a way to love the little blue-eyed toddler and the blue-eyed husband whom she wrung the baby out of. Maybe this other Abilene can forget Maxen. Maybe she makes her way back to her house and starts her life over, a kind of frigid Potomac baptism that births her anew.

  But even as I see the vision of the other Abilene, I despise her. I despise her for living without Maxen, for living without the hope of him, and I’m just as cursed as that Lady of Shalott poem Greer teaches.

  The curse is upon me, the Lady of Shalott says when she falls in love, and I am the same. I am cursed. I am not well with my love.

  I turn away from the shore, and for some reason all I can think of is my mother’s face below the rippling mirror of her bath, pill bottles bobbing like strange dead fish in the water, the elegant curve of the abandoned wineglass. I had screamed for my father, had struggled with a child’s hands to pull her back into the air, had saved her life, and for that, I was sent away yet again, flicked away like a terrible, ugly bug.

  There’s no one to scream for me now. Whatever my failings, I’ve spared Galahad that at least.

  And I’ve been flicked away for the last time.

  The cold is curling into something else now, and my limbs are heavy and light all at once. The current pulls at my dress the way I wanted Maxen to, with affection and gentle insistence, and I let it, the way I would have let Maxen. I let it pull me down and forward, I part my legs to let the cold water inside me where he should have been. I let it tug on my nipples, nurse from me the way his child would have, if he would have allowed me to have his child. I let the river lick my throat and my lips; I part my mouth so it can stroke against my tongue.

  My cold river lover is everywhere, cradling me, caressing me, going into my most private places, and yes, yes, yes, it’s what I wanted, to be fully his so that I wouldn’t have to be mine any more, so that I would be wanted, so that there would be love waiting for me at the gates of at least one person’s heart. The water is tender with me, companionable.

  Eternal.

  And I let it kiss my eyelids goodnight.

  Twenty-Three

  Ash

  then

  A year spanned the time between losing one wife and finding the next, between Jenny’s death and glimpsing a long fall of gold-white hair at Mass and feeling my heart roll worshipfully in broken glass all over again.

  That year between wives was the hardest year of my life. Not even war could prepare me for the lingering, bone-deep grief of widowhood, and it certainly couldn’t prepare me for enduring that grief so publicly, so openly. Jenny’s death was the s
tory of my election, my inauguration, my first one hundred days—all of it revolved around the wife who died young and pretty and in pain—and likewise, it was as if the world salivated over watching my pain. I often felt like a circus oddity in those days, people gathering with avid curiosity to see my red-rimmed eyes, the hurt etched around my mouth. It was as if they could see as I could the ghost of a sweet, happy woman whom I’d failed. I’d given her everything of myself that I could give, and still, I’d failed her. I’d watched the layers of her life peel away like an onion in those last weeks, until at the very last there was only the unselfish, bright soul I’d always seen shining through her amber brown eyes. And the sight of that soul shamed me beyond compare. I had loved her as gently and as thoroughly as I was able, and it still had been so much less than she deserved.

  War had prepared me for one thing, however, and that was doing my work even as it felt like my world was ending. I was used to working without much sleep, with multiple crises, while the shock and confusion of a battle still stung my senses. And so I threw myself into the work after Jenny’s death too, I ate and drank and breathed my new job, I surrendered sleep to it, mental peace to it, leisure to it. So long as I worked and kept busy, the grief stayed where it belonged, until one day I looked up and it wasn’t quite so hideous to endure. I found I could feel sad, simply just sad, and miss her, and it didn’t flood me with an inky emptiness like it had before. I could pretend it was time that was healing me, or work, or some combination of the two, but I knew even then it was neither of those things.

  It was Embry.

  That night a week after Jenny’s funeral—the night Morgan took me to Mark’s club for the first time and let me flog her—it didn’t end at the club. It ended in Embry’s bed, with me desperate and him supple and willing, with every one of those seven years apart being mourned with bite marks and kisses over every inch of my beloved’s skin. It ended with him begging so beautifully—more and harder and make it hurt, make me feel you for days—and it ended with me knowing that it was wrong to take an old lover into my arms a week after my wife’s funeral…and also knowing that I wouldn’t stop.