now

Three months later

“I, Embry Lance Moore, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The cold wind whips around my ears as I look up at the dais where Embry stands with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, looking sober and painfully handsome in his long wool coat and leather gloves, his hand resting on a Bible that’s all too familiar.

It’s Ash’s Bible.

I don’t realize I’m crying until the wind gusts again, freezing the tears right off my face. Ash kept that Bible on his end table always; it wasn’t unusual for me to crawl into bed and find him already there, shirtless and absorbed, the heavy book propped against one pajama-clad knee. Many nights I fell asleep to the sound of those onion-skin pages turning carefully, to his steady breathing as he shut the Bible around his finger and closed his eyes to pray about what he’d just read.

My faithful king.

Merlin wraps his arm around me, handing me a handkerchief to try to minimize the danger of tear-induced frostbite. I lean into him, his body strong and slender under his own wool coat, and I remember a time as a little girl when I was terrified of him. Now, after the last three months, I count him as one of my dearest friends. Nimue too, his new wife, who is on the other side me of me. And on the other side of her, her adopted son and heartbreaking reminder of all that I’ve lost, Lyr.

I steal a glance at him, and even at seventeen, he has so much of Ash in his face, in his bearing, all black hair and serious features and green eyes that already promise honor and dignity.

I turn back into Merlin and try to stop crying.

Up on the dais, the ceremony concludes, with Embry waving at the people and then giving Galahad—snuggled tight in Vivienne’s arms—a kiss on the forehead. A ripple of adoration goes through the crowd.

I cry some more, and this time Lyr himself reaches across Nimue to hand me a fresh handkerchief.

* * *

I don’t remember much from the night my husband died. I don’t even know if I want to—what I do remember is horrible enough.

Being pulled away from Ash after I kissed him goodbye.

The paramedic saying, “Shit, he’s fading—he’s going—” as he struggled to get an IV.

The smell of blood like salt and metal and the white knife sticking out of his body like a bone.

The Secret Service agents yanking me away as I screamed, and they had to wrestle Embry back too—I saw him swinging at the agent trying to move him away, eventually he was carried, he was kicking, he was screaming too, both of us screaming and fighting to get back to Ash’s side.

It was protocol, see. To get us all to different secure locations in case the attack wasn’t finished, in case there was more…

Neither Embry or I were there when Ash died. It was Merlin.

Fitting, I guess. Merlin was there when Ash’s life began…and then he was there as it ended.

By the time the protocol had been satisfied and the Secret Service pronounced us all safe, Ash was dead, his body en route to the funeral home, and the nation was in shock. A president had just been killed on live television. And not just any president, but Maxen Colchester—the hero, the handsome king who had won a nation with his honesty and goodness and bravery. He’d died to save his own opponent, who was also his best friend, and it more than humbled everyone to witness. It shook the country, rattled the country right down to its bones. Here was a man who not only said good and brave things, but acted on them even until the very last, who carved a new definition of honor and courage into the dictionary with a white knife and red blood.

I should have listened, Embry said over and over again. I should have listened. It’s my fault.

His guilt filled him like water, like blood.

And I—I was nothing. A ghost. A vacancy of grieving air. I sleepwalked through the funeral, through the interment of the ashes. Merlin asked if I wanted to keep the cremated remains or scatter them, but my mother-in-law wanted her son in the family cemetery in Kansas City where she could visit him, and no one had the heart to refuse her.

My heart had been burned up alongside my husband’s anyway.

Kay was sworn in the night Ash died, and also became the lead name on the ticket, naming Trieste as her Vice Presidential candidate. It was a close race, with Ash’s death casting a huge confusing pall over everything. Did the sympathy vote go to his sister? Or his best friend and fellow soldier?

It went to Embry in the end, but only by the skin of his teeth. When he got the call, I was standing in his hotel room; the watch party was in the ballroom down below.

“I have to go down and give the speech,” he said, swallowing. His hands were shaking. “Will you come?”

I would come. Somewhere deep inside my hollow form, there was a memory of a girl who had been groomed for such moments, and that girl knew the importance of continuity. Whoever won, having Ash’s widow at their side would show the country it was okay, that the transition of power was good and necessary, and would hopefully lend an air of something like post-mortem endorsement from the fallen President. I would have done the same had Kay won.

Embry gave a beautiful speech, mostly about Ash and what a leader Ash had been. How much he intended to honor Ash’s wish for peace. And for the first time, he told the world that he’d loved Ash not only as a brother in arms, but as a man.

All Ash had ever wanted was to publicly call Embry his own, and now Embry was giving him that at last, even if it was after Ash was in the ground.

I suppose there was some media furor around it, but it was mild, over quickly. That Ash had been queer as well only seemed to add to the ways that the nation grieved, not subtract from it, and that the new President-Elect was openly bisexual merely added to the energy of his election. Aside from a few men stepping forward to sell tell-alls of torrid nights with either Ash or Embry, the truth of their love floated up into the air like a balloon and drifted easily into the horizon. The world was ready to know it and mostly be okay with it. Ash would have been proud of that—he did always like to believe the best of his people, and here they were, being the best about one of the most personal, intimate parts of his life.

The day after Embry won the election, with the November cold creeping in through the corners and windows, I found out I was pregnant.

I texted him—who else would I text?—and he came to the White House right away, finding me sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at the pregnancy test like it might bite me, with citadels of cardboard and packing tape closing me in like a prison. I was supposed to move out that week, make room for Kay who would live there until Embry moved in after his Inauguration, and I’d insisted on packing up all of our personal effects myself. Ash’s toothbrush and half-empty bottle of mouthwash. His comb, with a single black hair caught in the teeth…now the only hair of his that existed on Earth.

The pregnancy test sat surrounded by it all like some kind of mythic relic, the Holy Grail I’d been striving for these past three years. How long I’d waited to behold this one thing, these two blue lines, and now seeing them made me electric with fear.

Embry scooped me easily into his arms and carried me to the bed—my marital bed, Ash’s bed—and arranged me against his chest. I felt like I couldn’t breathe for either joy or grief or both.

“I don’t know whose it is,” I said numbly. “Yours or his.”

“It doesn’t matter, Greer. I’m yours either way.”

He pressed his hand low on my stomach. He took a breath. “And if it is Ash’s—” He broke off, but he didn’t need to finish because I knew what he was thinking.

If it was Ash’s, then it might be the only part of him we had left.

* * *

Three months after Embry’s Inauguration, we marry in a quiet ceremony by Vivienne’s lake. It’s late April, with a fresh spring breeze rustling along the shore, and as Embry and I say our vows, he keeps one hand in mine and the other on my belly, which pushes through my simple white dress in a taut curve. The baby kicks as I say I do, and we both laugh. When we exchange rings, we exchange the same ones we already had, so that I’m wearing the wedding ring I married Ash with and Embry is wearing the band Ash gave him the night before he died.

My love for the two of you exists inside your love for each other—when you love each other, you are loving me.

I have to believe that’s true. I have to believe that this is what Ash would have wanted, and anyway, there’s no other way it could have happened—Embry and I were magnetized together by our hurt. Who else could understand my loss? Who else would miss every part of Ash, not just the leader or the friend, but the cruel, demanding lover and the devout Catholic and the tired soldier who still had trouble sleeping at night?

With each other, the pain seemed bearable because we could share it and nurse it and tend to it, and keep our memory of Ash alive and thriving. The first time we fucked, the night of Ash’s funeral, each pretending he was still there with us, it felt like the first time I could breathe again, and I hoped and prayed to God it was what Ash had meant the night he died. That no matter what happened, he would want Embry and me to be happy together.

Happy would be a stretch without Ash. But being together…yes, we could do that at least.

And for the sake of the child in my belly, I hoped that happiness would come again, even if I doubted it could ever come for me. But for Embry and this baby, I wished all the happiness in the world.

Strangely, the biggest advocate for our relationship was Merlin. Merlin who had once admonished us to keep our ménage a secret, who had once pressured Embry to keep his relationship with Ash hidden. It was as if something broke free in Merlin after Ash’s death, like a great burden had been lifted, and for the first time I saw how truly capable of compassion and friendliness he was.

“Let the public gawk,” he said with a dismissive gesture when Embry and I told him about the baby. “I daresay they’ll ultimately find it romantic, that you found comfort with each other. And if they point back to the Melwas video and cry affair, who cares? You have more than enough PR capital to spend on it.”

And today, at our wedding, he is in the very front row. He was there at the private wedding Mass Embry and I had first thing this morning, the only one sitting in the pews as we made our vows with the Church. And here at the ceremony we are having for our friends and family, he walked me down the aisle to give me away. He beams at us as we exchange our vows for the second time today, and for a moment I have to absorb how strange I would have thought this wedding years ago. Behind me, Morgan stands as my matron of honor, in front of me stands Nimue performing the ceremony, and behind Embry stands Lyr, straight and manlike in his tuxedo, so very like Ash that it hurts and it heals to see him here in this moment. And between us both sits Galahad in his own miniature tuxedo. He’s found a stand of early dandelions and he’s busy plucking them in his little toddler fists and blowing the seeds at our legs. And in his happy laugh, I hear both Embry and Abilene. Whatever her faults, he has the best parts of her—the spontaneity, the courage, the determination—and now he is my son too, and I love him as I will love my unborn child once he or she is born. Embry and I are waiting until the birth to find out the sex.

In the small spread of chairs along the shore, all the people I care about and love are here, with nothing but blessings in their hearts for Embry and me—Vivienne, Kay and Althea Colchester, Trieste, Belvedere, Uri, Gawayne, Percival Wu and Emily Gareth, and Lynette my assistant.

With all of them watching, and for the second time in my life—and technically the second time today—I marry the President of the United States.

After the ceremony, we have the reception on Vivienne’s wide lawn—surrounded by mountains and with the water glinting teasingly through the trees—and Merlin finds me after the cake and dancing.

“Would you mind taking a stroll with me?” he asks. “The sunset will be quite pretty over the lake, I think.”

I kiss Embry goodbye for now, and he slings his tuxedo jacket over my shoulders when I tell him where I’m going, and then Merlin and I step out on the smooth path down to the lake.

“Congratulations,” Merlin says. “It was a beautiful wedding.”

“Thank you. I wish…”

But I don’t actually know what I want to wish for. That I didn’t need to have a second wedding because my first husband was still alive? Obviously, yes, of course, that an infinite amount of times over.

Still, these last few months Embry and I have shared…I don’t know that we could have shared them at any other time. Even after Chicago, when we were both still technically unattached, I don’t know that we could have built something lasting and real, because we would both have ached for the man we really wanted, possibly to the detriment of loving each other. It’s only been in the shadow of his death, in the real chasing of his ghost, that we’ve been able to offer ourselves naked and unconditionally to each other. Because we are all that we have left—and all that we have left of Ash. Our love finally has finally grown from a sapling in the shade of Ash’s mighty heart into something powerful and eternal in its own right.

So I can’t wish things the same, but I also can’t wish them differently. I will always be half a heart without Ash, but sharing the remains with Embry has been beautiful too—all the more beautiful for his own pain.

Thankfully, Merlin seems to know what I’m struggling to convey. He nods as he takes my hand to guide me over the rocky rise that leads to the shore path, and again I notice how strong he is, how still young he is. He’s barely touching fifty, and his hair and eyes are as dark and fairytale-like as ever. I get the sudden sense, just from the warmth of his hand holding mine, that behind all that urbane sophistication, behind all that mystery, is a surfeit of carnal and deep power. Nimue is a lucky woman.

“I have a wedding gift for you,” he says, “but first I wanted to tell you a story. And I’ve been waiting to tell it to you for a very long time.”

“Is that right?”

“But I think you know the first part. You’re about to publish a book about it.”

I look up at him with some surprise. “The book about kingship in the Dark Ages?”

“The very same.”

He helps me over a log—help I wouldn’t have needed just a month ago, but the baby nestled in my belly has grown enough to shift my center of balance now, plus I’m still in my wedding dress—and then we are at the shore itself. The water laps clear and quiet at the multi-colored stones, and the music and merriment of the reception fade behind us. It’s almost like we’re in a different world now, a world apart from time, from the usual grinding on of events and history.

“I suppose you’ve never noticed, in all of your research, how many parallels there are between the stories about King Arthur and your own life?”

I laugh a little. “It’s hard not to notice, talking to someone named Merlin.” I say it mockingly, teasingly, but he doesn’t respond in kind.

“Greer, think. Not about my name, but about everything else. Your affair with Maxen’s best friend, his son with his sister—all of it. Has it never struck you as odd?”

I pull back and stop, looking at Merlin to see if he’s truly serious. “It’s never struck me as odd because King Arthur as we know him isn’t real. There’s a historical figure we can point to as the source of the legend, but everything else—the incestuous son, an unfaithful queen—they’re all just stories. They didn’t really happen.”

“They did happen,” Merlin says quietly. “I know because I was there.”

I stare.

He stares back, eyes like obsidian mirrors reflecting my own face, my own uncertainty, and revealing nothing of his own.

“Some things happened differently,” he continues softly. “And the legends have confused a lot. People have changed names, changed roles, but the heart of it is the same: once upon a time, there were two warriors who loved the same woman as much as they loved each other. And everything that happened afterwards led inevitably to tragedy.”

“You can’t expect me to believe that,” I protest, but my protest sounds hollow, even to my own ears. It’s something about the lake right now, something about his eyes. Something about the fog creeping in from the edges of the forest, like a memory from another world. I struggle and search for all the reasons why this is impossible. “You scared me with a story like this when I was a girl too. Remember? Keep your kisses to yourself.”

At that he touches my chin, making sure our eyes are met. “Greer, I told you everything that you needed to hear to make things happen the way they needed to.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“And not just you. I told Embry what he needed to hear, and Maxen as well.”

“No.”

Merlin continues gazing at me in that way of his that reveals nothing—well, almost nothing. There’s something in those depths that reassure me, and I’m not sure what it is. Benevolence? Sincerity?

“When I told Embry all those years ago that he had to sacrifice his relationship with Maxen in order for Maxen to do great things…when I told Maxen that there was no way he could accomplish everything he wanted to do in a single term—I didn’t say those things because I believed them, Greer. I said them because they were what they needed to hear, just as I said the things you needed to hear. Everything I told you, every warning or request or piece of advice, was all designed to bring us here. To this.”

“To what?”

Merlin looks up at the sky for a minute, the sunset painting vivid color in his onyx eyes. “Peace.”

“I—” I don’t have a response to this. I’m confused and stunned and a little angry and still disbelieving. And as I’m cycling through all of these feelings, Merlin leads me to a nearby log and bids me to sit.

“It had to happen this way,” he says gently, peering down at me. “Every part of it. The way he loved Embry during the war, the way he loved you, the heartbreak over both of you. Jenny. Your wedding and then your abduction. Every single thing drove Ash to become more than a leader. He became a king, a legend, and the work he did is going to stand for the next century. His sacrifice ensured that—the memory of his heroic death is going to protect all that he’s built. But none of it—not the peace or the prosperity or the progress—could have happened without the three of you loving and hurting for each other as you did.”

I still can’t find any words—thoughts, feelings—anything. It’s as if someone has come to tell me that the sun is dark and the sky is below my feet.

“It was all necessary, Greer. Every moment of it. And I’m happy to say that this time I got it right.”

“Got what right?” I whisper, looking up at him.

He smiles kindly and sits next to me, glancing meaningfully at my belly, at the hand that curls protectively over it, where Ash’s ring winks in the scarlet and orange light. “There is a happy ending this time. Last time, you and Embry chose the memory of Ash’s grave over each other, and last time, there was no child of Ash’s body inside you.”

This provokes the first real flash of feeling from me other than shock. My heart flutters in my chest to match the hard flutters in my stomach. “The baby is Ash’s?”

“Yes.”

My eyelids burn and I look away. Embry and I had decided not to do a paternity test because we knew it didn’t matter to our future—in another, better life, I would have carried both their children regardless—but still, I had wondered. Wished for this one last piece of him.

Merlin is still smiling, his eyes on the lake now. “There’s so much ahead of you.”

The sun finally drops below the mountains, kissing everything green and gold and foggy, and I decide to believe him. I decide to push away how impossible it all is, how thoroughly surreal, and just accept what the quiet water and Merlin’s dark eyes already seem to know.

“Another eight years in the White House?” I ask, looking at the lake too. “More children?”

“More children for sure. Too many, some might say,” he chuckles. “But not another eight years in the White House, only four. Embry could easily win if he runs again, but he won’t want to. The next fight will fall to Morgan and Kay, and whoever wins will safeguard Maxen’s legacy just as carefully as Embry would. The future will go to Maxen’s sisters.”

“Embry won’t want a second term?” I ask, confused. “Even if it’s obvious he could win?”

“There will be something else he wants more. Which reminds me, I have your wedding gift right here.” He reaches inside his pocket, withdrawing a small envelope with long, elegant fingers.

“Shall I open it now?”

“Why not?” he says, standing up and smoothing his jacket. “It is for you and Embry both, of course. That’s how wedding gifts work.”

I open up the envelope and a key falls out. Just a plain silver key, the ordinary size and shape of a house key. It glitters orange in the fading light.

There’s a small piece of paper inside as well, with an address I don’t recognize and a string of numbers at the bottom.

“You’ll find the necessary travel plans already made,” Merlin says briskly. “And Embry’s schedule cleared for the next week and a half.”

I blink up at him. Embry and I hadn’t planned on taking a honeymoon—partly because my last honeymoon had ended with an abduction, and partly because we still didn’t have the heart to celebrate our marriage without Ash.

“You planned us a honeymoon?”

Merlin smiles but doesn’t answer, turning to walk back to Vivienne’s house.

“But why did you give us a key?” I call after him.

He pauses and looks back at me. “I only said it was a gift, Greer. I didn’t say it was from me.”