now

Embry opens the door for me clad in only sweatpants, a glisten of sweat still stippling his collarbone. The contours of his arms and chest and stomach are on perfect, sweaty display, and I know he worked up that sweat by fucking my wife.

I have to take a deep breath to keep myself in control.

I want to lick that sweat right off him, I want to reach into those sweatpants and grip what’s mine by right. I want to shove him to the floor and give him everything he’s ever given me, all the anguish and the longing and the happiness, I want to hammer it back into his body until it becomes part of him forever…but that’s not why I came here tonight.

I came here for a goodbye. No matter how much I hope telling him the truth will save him, no matter how much I hope that all my diligence this past week has succeeded, I have to be prepared for tomorrow. In another life, I wasn’t prepared, I wasn’t ready, and when I died, I died leaving a kingdom in ruins.

This time will be different.

“Achilles,” Embry says as he closes the door.

“Patroclus.”

“Do you want a drink?”

I do, oddly enough, and I tell him so. Together we walk into his study, where he opens up a globe bar and pours us each a healthy glass of scotch. He leans against the edge of his desk and I lean against the doorframe, and I take a minute just to appreciate him. To savor the picture he makes. Those tight, flat muscles along his stomach and chest, the compact swells of his arms.

He’s always been like this—lithe and graceful, sculpted in the slender, idealized ways of a Greek statue—the kind of body built to make my heart pound and my cock ache. Where I’m rough with dark hair across my chest, he’s almost boyishly smooth, and where I’m curved and clad with muscular power, he is light and lean.

The differences and samenesses between our bodies fascinate me not because we are both men, but because we are both people, because he has a body and I have a body and we love each other with those bodies, and every secret of his body is fascinating to me because he is fascinating to me. I want to find every place where we are different and every place where we are the same and compose hymns to them both.

“I can’t think straight when you look at me like that,” Embry complains, taking a drink.

I smile at him, knowing it will flash the dimple that torments him so, and he groans. To think it might be the last time I hear him fret about my dimple has my stomach clenching in fear and grief.

You can’t stand here staring at him forever, I chide myself. Do what you came here to do. Say your goodbye in case there is no chance for it tomorrow.

“Have you ever wondered about what you had to do to make me say yes?”

The way his hand freezes in midair, the scotch glass hovering near his lips, tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Ash…”

“You see, at first, it was simply the delight of denying you, and after our night together in the woods, it was the only thing left to deny. But I never meant to deny you long. I thought, soon enough, there will come a moment that will perfectly mark all this denial and waiting, and we’ll both remember it forever. You know how unhealthily obsessed I am with firsts.”

Embry doesn’t respond, those sooty eyelashes blinking slowly as he takes a drink, as he processes what I’m saying.

“And then that moment never came because I proposed and scared you off. But the second time—the second time, I made a real decision. I thought, when he says yes to me. When he says yes to me and there’s nothing left between us, then we’ll have our last first. That’s what I wanted you to do to earn it, Embry. I wanted you to say yes to me.”

I take a step forward, and he closes his eyes, looking pained. “Ash.”

“What I didn’t realize,” I say quietly, ignoring him as I take another step forward, “was that you were saying yes to me all along.”

The air between us seems to hum and throb, destiny again, fate, except there is no other memory of this, I never did this in my other life. This moment, in both of my lives, is happening for the first time.

“Ash.” Embry’s voice is strangled.

“Every time you gave me your trust, your obedience, and your surrender. Every time you fought me knowing you would lose, every time you carried me when I couldn’t limp along myself, and every breath and kiss you ever shared with me—it was all you saying yes, every moment of it. You’ve said yes to me so many times I’m surprised I could even hear the word no.”

Embry’s head is ducked down; he’s breathing hard. “Stop,” he begs. “Please.”

“You were saying yes, Embry, and I wasn’t listening. But I’m listening now.”

He looks up at me, and I’m close enough to touch him now, so I do. I take his right hand, and from my pocket, I pull out the ring I’d wanted to throw into the lake three years ago but couldn’t bring myself to. And I slide the ring on his finger, an older, slightly different twin to the one on his left.

He watches as I do it, his jaw tight, his chest shuddering with every breath, and when I’m finished, I bring the finger wearing my ring to my mouth. “You are just as much mine as Greer is,” I tell him. “And I am just as much yours as I am hers. I wish to God it hadn’t taken me so long to see, that I could have told you this years ago. That I could have given you this years ago.”

He watches my lips against his finger with something like agony. “Given me this ring?”

“No. What comes after.”

“Our last first?” he asks raggedly.

“Our last first.”

And then he’s on me, grabbing at my tie and yanking me to his mouth, and we kiss like we used to kiss in the early days—hard and searing and uncertain—and then we’re both stumbling out of the study and up the stairs, kissing frantically as we climb, and Embry’s hands are so eagerly stripping away my jacket and belt that I have to laugh, and then we’re in his bedroom.

“Galahad is with my mother,” he says. Then he shakes his head. “Not that it matters—if he was here, I’d just close the door and fuck you anyway. Do you have any idea how fucking much I want this?”

I laugh again because I do have some idea. His erect penis is straining hard at his pants, his chest is flushed a very appealing shade of red, and his fists are clenched at his sides.

He glares at me. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

More glaring. “You’re a bastard and an asshole.”

“All true,” I say, “although I was hoping to hear the word ‘asshole’ in another context tonight.”

His mouth twitches in a way that makes my chest tight. What if this is the last time I get to see that smirk, that smile of secret amusement? “Shit, I can’t laugh now,” he says. “It will ruin the moment. Take off your clothes.”

“Am I your submissive tonight?” I ask as I unknot my tie and unfix my cufflinks.

“No,” he says immediately, softly. “No. You will always be my king. That’s how I want it.”

An uncomfortable warmth chokes at my throat. “Little prince.”

He steps forward and takes my cufflinks from me, sets them on his dresser and returns to me to help me peel off my shirt. “You asked me two years ago how I wanted it,” he says after we’ve bared my chest. He drops down to untie my shoes, and the sight of him kneeling at my feet and tending to me sends an extra—and unnecessary—jolt of heat to my cock. I’ve been hard since the moment I saw him, but I’m leaking now. Pulsing and needy.

Embry tugs off one shoe, then moves to my other foot. “For a long time, I thought I’d want to fuck you the way that you fucked me sometimes. I would be the man and you would be the youth, I would be the king and you’d be the knight kneeling in supplication. But after the last debate, I realized—” the other shoe comes off and he moves to my socks “—that’s not what I really want. At all.”

“What do you want?”

He stands up, taking my hand and then curling it around the back of his neck and pulling our foreheads together. “To serve you.”

It’s my turn to breathe raggedly now; I can’t even remember how to breathe. “You know it’s all pretend, Embry. Every bit of it—the kneeling, the bruising, the humiliation. It’s a game. Make believe.”

I’m telling the truth.

“Liar,” he breathes, stepping in so that our stomachs and chests press and heave together. “I told you before, everything has been real with you from the very start.”

And he’s telling the truth too.

Maybe that’s why so many people don’t understand kink, because we’re both right. It’s real and it’s make believe, it’s deadly serious and sinfully playful, the truest expression of ourselves and also an elaborate game of pretend. Both, both, both, and to forget either is to forget the reason behind the kink, which is to be intentionally and vulnerably and happily…human.

That’s it, that’s the heart of it. To be human.

He kisses me again, gently this time, taking care to kiss around the edges of my mouth, to kiss the special spot behind my ear, to rub his cheek against my own. He sighs as my stubble chafes his still-smooth cheek. “The first time I saw you, I knew you were a man who couldn’t keep his shave.”

“I should shave more.”

“And then where would I go for such scratchy kisses? Don’t you dare.”

He kisses my chest and stomach, and then he carefully unfastens my pants, undressing me as carefully as a valet, folding my clothes and setting them aside as I prefer instead of just dropping them on the floor. We both make a noise as he peels off my boxer briefs and my erect cock springs free, glistening at the tip, and then he repeats, “I want you to be my king when we do this. Please.”

“Do you want me to be in charge?”

He breathes out, and it seems to free him and shame him as he answers, “Yes.”

“Hey,” I say, taking his hand. “We can change at any time, okay? If you don’t want me to have the reins five minutes from now or sixty minutes from now, you just tell me and we’ll change. I can be your submissive or we can meet each other as equals. Nothing’s permanent tonight.”

Even as I say the words, a knife of fear slices a wedge out of my happiness, reminding me that tonight won’t last forever and that some things are permanent. Death, for example.

I shake away the fear, returning my attention to Embry. “Do you understand?” I ask. “I don’t care which way the power flows tonight or if it flows at all. I told you once that I’d be any kind of man for you, and I meant it. I want to share my body with you, whichever way you want it.”

Embry stares at me in the near dark. Our only light comes from the open door to the hallway and the streetlights glowing outside the window. “When you say you’ll be any kind of man for me,” he whispers, “my heart beats so fast. But oh, Ash, I don’t want you to be any kind of man for me. I just want you to be the man you already are.”

I kiss his sweet forehead, understanding. “Okay, little prince. We’ll start now, and just know we can stop at any time.”

“It’s insane that you need to tell me I can safe out when I’m going to be the one fucking you,” he says with a choked laugh. “But it makes sense somehow. You are more dangerous wielding love than you are wielding pain.”

It makes sense to me to me as well, and I suppose it’s always made sense, because it’s what I’ve wanted from the very beginning. People don’t look at you with the whole world in their eyes because they fear you—they look at you like that because they love you.

I pull away and walk over to the bed, where I recline against the pillows and make myself comfortable. “Show me your cock,” I order him. I don’t bother fisting my own—I’ll make him suck it in a minute anyway—and instead I turn all of my attention on him, on this last time I’ll get to see him go red with humiliation. This last time I’ll see him hook his thumbs in his pants and reveal the v of his abdominal muscles, the spread of dark hair at the end of his happy trail, the narrow lines of his hips. The bounce and sway of his full, hard cock.

He’s struggling with himself as he kicks his pants away on the floor, and it’s another last too, seeing him plunge through every depth of shame at my command.

“That’s just exposing your cock,” I say lazily, imperially. “Show it to me.”

He takes a deep breath and then uses a thumb on his staff to push it down, to make it jut perpendicular from his body. And then he takes a step closer, turning so that I can see his body in profile, the hard penis and the tight stomach above it. The glow coming from the window puts a silver burnish on his skin, limns every hair with light. He’s all man, all perfect.

“Mmm,” I say. “I suppose that will do.”

The tiniest flicker at the corner of Embry’s mouth relieves me—he realizes what game I’m going to play—but then he ducks his head again, and I’m reminded that the game has power, that the game is real.

I spread my legs. “I need to be cleaned,” I say, again like a magistrate, bored almost, although I’m anything but bored as I watch the tremors ripple through Embry’s body as he approaches me. He climbs onto the bed with shaky limbs, his sides heaving hard as he lowers himself to his stomach and slides his arms under my thighs.

I watch his head dip low to my most secret place.

I feel the hesitant flicker of his tongue across sensitive, creased skin.

It’s unbearably carnal to witness, the dark crown of his head between my legs, and I have a moment when I realize this is what women see. This is what Greer sees when we eat her. I’ve seen a lover bob up and down on my cock, their every flinch and gasping inhale exposed to me, but this—it feels so private somehow, truly intimate, because there’s so much I can’t see—I see only the flutter of his eyes and the wrinkle in his brow as he concentrates so hard on rimming me properly. But I can only feel the bump and press of his nose against me, the sides of his cheeks smoothing against my hair-rough thighs—even the point of his chin feels like a new discovery as he turns his head this way and that to lick and nibble.

“We’ve never done this either,” I murmur, sliding my hand through his hair. “So much I’ve missed out on.”

He moans his agreement, and I feel the vibrations against my skin, which makes me moan. It’s so wet, so dirty, and so loving and servile, and intimate and earthy, and everything I’ve ever loved about sex all rolled into one. When I look down the length of Embry’s body, I see the hollows in his ass cheeks that reveal how hard he’s pressing his cock into the mattress right now. I wish I had the time to make him come all over the sheets first, I wish I could see his body trembling with an inadvertent orgasm while he had his tongue inside me, but alas.

Maybe in our next life.

I grab his hair tight and guide his mouth to my cock for a moment, purely so I can see and feel it one last time. The stretch of those refined lips, the flex of that perfectly chiseled jaw. Those dark eyelashes resting on his cheeks. His mouth so hot and wet and good on my skin.

Last time, goes the voice in my head. Last time.

I ignore it. “Put your cock inside me,” I say, as if I’m ordering him to give me a massage. As if I’m a spoiled king making the most depraved demands of his courtiers. “Make me feel good.”

Embry comes off my cock with color high in his cheeks and a gasp. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I will.”

He slides off the bed to get to the night stand and opens a shallow drawer. Inside there’s a bottle of lube and a silicone toy. No condoms, no baby wipes, nothing that speaks to partners or to the anticipation of partners. Just a lonely life.

That’s going to end, I think, and the thought gives me relief. That it’s pain I will be able to soothe away, that like a good Sir, I’ll be able to give Embry aftercare for all these hard years. The best aftercare I’m capable of giving.

Embry is careful but thorough, using his finger to coat me inside and out, his eyes flicking up to mine constantly, gauging my expression. I can see his heartbeat in his cock as he works his way inside, the pulse hammering at the side of his neck, the stunned bite of his lip as he slides his finger all the way to the knuckle and feels the full clench of me around his digit.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “You’re so hot inside. Burning hot.”

“Give me more,” I say, keeping my tone imperious, although I’m not fooling anyone with my cock dripping onto my stomach and my hips making slow rolls against Embry’s hand. “I want more.”

“Yes, Sir,” he says with a comely flutter of his eyelashes and adds a second finger.

I arch a little at the feeling of fullness, at the protest of the muscles around my entrance, and he puts a calming hand on my stomach, sliding it underneath my erection so that he can press down on my stomach at the same time his fingers hook upward and stroke a spot that has my toes curling.

“Remind yourself that it’s not pain,” he says, echoing his instructions from that long-ago night in Lyonesse. “And you want it because I’m the one giving it to you.”

“I want it because you’re the one giving it to me.”

The fingers stroke in exploration, in preparation, and right now the kink is so thin and light, like a sheet thrown over furniture, showing the shape of the real thing underneath.

When I say, “Service me with your cock,” what I mean is let’s share everything, let’s leave nothing else between us.

And when he removes his fingers and slicks up his erection with a trembling hand and I say, “Such a good, eager boy,” what I mean is I love seeing you shake with love for me because I am always shaking with love for you.

And when, for the first time in both my lives, he presses his tip against a place I’ve never shared with anyone and I say, “Make me feel good,” we both know I mean I want to make you feel good, I want us to feel good together, I want to see your face as you feel it and as you come for me.

Embry closes his eyes and pushes in. Just an inch. Just enough to send a frisson of electric pain up my spine.

Another inch. He lets out a moan like he’s dying, his eyes still closed.

I inhale sharply at the new invasion, and I can’t help but arch again, which makes him open his eyes and look down at me with a dazed expression. It seems to take him a moment to remember where he is or what’s happening. He pulls back enough to run his hands up my inner thighs and spread me wider, and then he pushes my knees ever so slightly up. Opening up my center, baring my hole to him.

And then he guides himself back to my anus, his massive cock pressing in past the ring of muscle more easily this time.

“Jesus, you’re big,” I grunt, and he laughs—which hurts, and I groan, which makes him laugh even more.

I reach up and collar his throat with my hand, pleased to feel how fast and eager his pulse pounds under my fingers. “Serve your king now.”

“Yes, Sir.” And Embry gives a slick thrust, pulls out, and then slides all the way home.

“Fuck,” I mumble, my grip on his neck growing tight as my body breaks out into a shivering, happy sweat. It’s a feeling so close to pain, so close to pleasure, but it’s not quite either yet, something unformed and unshaped, something that is sensation in its rawest form. And it’s dirty, it’s so fucking dirty, making him fuck me while I choke him, watching his stomach muscles flex and work to push into me and stroke me from the inside out.

“Fuck is right,” he pants, closing his eyes again. A drop of sweat rolls along his temple. “Jesus Christ, it’s tight. It’s better—God—better than I ever could have dreamed. Fuck.”

“Open your eyes,” I order. “Watch my face as you serve me.”

He obeys, opening his eyes with what appears to be a struggle, his mouth all parted and his cheeks flushed and his pupils blown wide. And whatever he sees in my own face unravels him.

“Oh God, Ash,” he says in a choked voice, his hips still moving in dirty, delicious thrusts. “Oh God.”

I can’t fucking handle how handsome he is like this. How perfect. I pull him down for a hot kiss, sloppy and urgent, and whatever change in angle that creates sends a bolt of pleasure straight to my core.

“Oh,” I breathe. “Oh.”

I think I see now why Embry likes this so much. I mean, I’ve always known in an abstract way that it must feel good, and it felt good when Embry fucked me with that toy at Lyonesse, but it’s nothing like now, nothing like having a virile, beautiful man between your legs, nothing like having something hot and vital seeking out your own hot and vital places. And then that man being someone you’ve loved for so fucking long, that man shivering with how good you’re making him feel…

Another slow thrust against my prostate, and my vision sparks along the edges.

“Oh Embry,” I say. “Oh, fuck. Fuck me.”

That earns me another urgent kiss, more of those exquisite strokes. And then we fall into each other, the kink sliding away as easily as a sheet, the thing underneath as naked and needy as our bodies in this deep, filthy moment. Embry braces himself on a forearm over me, sliding his other arm under my waist to crush my body tight to his, and then we kiss like we’ll never get to kiss again. Each kiss is mirrored by a piercing stroke down below, each stroke is followed by ripples of muscle and flesh, each ripple is followed by pants and moans that we swallow up from each other again and again, hungry for the other’s hunger, thirsty for the other’s thirst.

And each kiss, each slide and stroke, each brush of thigh against thigh, seems to say last time, last time.

The first and last time.

He breaks the kiss so he can gaze down at me, his eyes soft, and the light catches on a few silver hairs near his temple, on the fine crinkles around his eyes, and I think of the spoiled young prince I met almost twenty years ago, how young and eager to fuck and fight we both were. How little we knew of ourselves and the world and love. What bloody, aching messes we made of each other’s hearts.

I wouldn’t trade away a single second of it. Not for anything.

I reach up and trace the tiny lines around his eyes. “We’re not young men anymore,” I murmur.

He drops his face so he can whisper the words against my mouth. “You make me feel young.”

And there are no more words after that.

He crushes me against him once more, lying flat and full along the length of me, so that I feel every pound of him, every inch. Every stroke comes with the weight of his body, each pound of his heart is echoed by mine. And we make each other feel young, with something we should have done in our youth but are now sharing instead as men in our prime, and it’s painful to think of the years we missed of this—and somehow all the more perfect that we waited until we were almost forty to do it. There’s a reverence in our touch now, an awe and a gratitude that comes with having lived-in bodies and scarred, wise hearts.

I come first, my cock pinned between our stomachs, and he kisses me the whole time I come, cherishing me, thanking me, and when our mouths part he tells me all the things I’ve ever told him—you are so handsome when you come, so pretty like this, you make me feel so good. And I come like fucking death itself, nearly blacking out with the ecstasy of Embry inside me and above me and around me, each wave of wet pleasure hotter and more airless than the last. Until I am nearly blacked out for real, my vision hissing with sparks and my ears ringing as my cock pumps spurt after spurt of cum onto us both, as my orgasm unspools from a place so fucking deep inside that it doesn’t even feel real, it feels like a part of me so old and elemental that it must have existed before time itself.

And then Embry follows me over the edge, and I don’t let him kiss me because I want to see every second of it on his face, every flutter of his eyelashes and part of his lips and furrow of his brow as he grunts his release into me, ejaculating so hard and so hot that I can feel the pulse of him in my ass, I can feel the heat of his semen scorching the insides of me.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you,” I say back. And neither of us moves for a long time, even as the semen on our bellies cools and goes sticky, even as we go soft, because we want to savor this moment forever, live in it forever and never leave. The final gift.

Our last first.

* * *

“Does this mean you’ve forgiven me?” Embry asks. We’ve showered—Embry looking so puppy-dog eager that I allowed him to slake his lust inside me again…and then I flipped him around and returned the favor—and now we’re in his bed.

There’s something hard and small under my back; I reach behind me and pull out one of Galahad’s binkies. My chest tightens, so does my throat. I’m never going to have that. Binkies in bed, children wriggling and messy in my house. I missed my chance with Lyr, and tomorrow will be the end, and I’ll never know the feeling of a warm little body snoozing against my chest, or the sound of baby giggles or the sight of my wife or my lover cradling a child of my own flesh and blood.

I place the binky on an end table and then turn back to Embry, pulling him into my arms and feeling his cheek against my chest.

Last time, last time.

“What would I have to forgive you for?”

“Saying no to you. Leaving you. Everything.”

I kiss the top of his head. “There’s nothing to forgive. I know now why you said no. I know why you left. And Embry, even if I didn’t know, even if it still broke me in half knowing you didn’t want to marry me, I couldn’t have faulted you for needing what you needed. Asking you to marry me—both times—it had implications beyond us simply loving each other. I was asking you to be publicly queer. Even now, it isn’t always safe, and there’s no way I could have promised you that we wouldn’t lose our jobs—or worse—over being out together. The only thing I could promise you is that I would have loved you no matter what, stayed by your side no matter what the price.”

“I know that,” he sighs against my chest. “Which is why I worried you thought I was cowardly, because you were willing to do that, and you thought I wasn’t.”

“Safety isn’t cowardice, Embry. I was hurt, of course I was hurt, but how could I blame you for taking care of yourself?”

“And now it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow will come and we will fight each other, and all these years of back and forth will have been for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” I say, running a thumb along his arm. “We got to have tonight.”

“And your wedding night.”

“And your wedding night.”

“The forest after Caledonia.”

“That night in Rome with the wine bottle.”

“The night after the Inauguration.”

“You couldn’t walk for a day afterward, remember?”

He laughs. “It was worth it.”

“It’s all been worth it, little prince. For me.”

He presses his lips to skin above my heart. “For me too.”

Last time, last time.

“If I asked you not to go to the debate tomorrow, would you listen?”

He groans and rolls onto his back. “Is this about that non-existent Carpathian threat? I saw the files, Ash. There’s nothing there.”

“Merlin says there’s something. I’m terrified there’s something. What if I didn’t go—if I pretended to be sick or there was an emergency or a crisis—would you agree to postpone the debate then?”

“It would throw off my entire campaign schedule. I can’t.”

It’s my turn to groan. “Not even for your own safety?”

“I’ve come too far to fuck this up,” he says, propping his head up on his arm to look at me. “I’m sorry, Ash, but I’m not going to throw away my shot at the White House just because Merlin has a bad feeling. You can play hooky from the debate all you like. I am going to be there.”

“Is making war on Carpathia that important to you still? They’re done, Melwas is gone. Greer is safe.”

Embry looks down at my chest, biting his lip in thought, and when he raises his eyes back to mine, what I see there gives me some hope. “You might be right about Carpathia,” he says softly. “And war. Putting Abilene in the ground today reminded me that even if you’re burying an enemy, it doesn’t feel good. And seeing Galahad ask for her…” he breathes out. “I don’t know if I have a taste for making orphans,” he says, attempting a joke.

I stay serious. “Do you really mean that?”

Can I trust this country with you?

He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I mean that.”

“But you still want to win.”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug that manages to look elegant even though he’s propped up on one elbow. “Even if I didn’t, it feels too late to turn back now.”

“I’m worried it’s too late for a lot of things.”

It’s like everything is arrayed against me at once, everything has gone wrong, and the one person who could fix it all just by listening won’t.

Is this what fate feels like from the inside? All those tragic heroes Embry told me about in Berlin, is this how they felt as their lives converged in inevitable ruin around them?

Embry leans down to kiss me. “It’s not too late for us to love each other.”

And I almost tell him. It’s what I came here to do after all—to tell him the truth. I almost spill out every last insane detail about this other life, which may or may not be a hallucination, but it’s a hallucination I share with Merlin, and for some reason I can’t help but believe in it. It feels so right to me. So true and so real. I could tell him about a flat-topped hill and an isle called Avalon and about the queen we both loved. I could tell him how it ended in the worst possible way—broken, unfinished, every last one of us betrayed—every last work unraveled by ambition and years-old hurt.

But I don’t tell him, even though it’s what I came here to do, because it still sounds too impossible even in my own mind. He’d never believe me. I barely believe me.

Instead, I let him kiss me, I let him hold me, and in the silvery dark, we make love one last time. He doesn’t know it’s our last time, but I can feel it in every kiss and whisper of flesh, singing as loud as a cathedral choir.

Last time, last time.