now

“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” I say the next day, peering out of the window. “Strange to think this is only an hour outside D.C. It’s like another world.”

The car noses down a curving ribbon of road, green mountains swelling prettily in the distance, the road limned with heavy old trees and punctuated with bursts of sunny fields. We’d flown in this morning and then driven toward the address in the envelope, our usual convoy of black cars snaking through the spring-green foothills to take us there. I’m looking forward to some freedom after we arrive; Merlin worked his brand of twenty-first century magic, and apparently this location is secure and outfitted with everything Embry will need to work while we honeymoon. Which means privacy similar to Camp David’s, where the agents are on the perimeter and we are free and mostly alone within.

Thank God.

We come to a large gate, tall, simple, and strong, and the string of numbers at the bottom of Merlin’s paper sends the gates swinging silently inward. We turn onto a narrow drive, lined with even more trees and low pasture fences, and crawl slowly through the tunnel of green.

“Horses,” says Embry in a strange voice. And I look at my window to see that he’s right—at least two of the pastures we drive past have horses grazing and stamping around. They’re gorgeous animals, proud and rippling with muscle, their coats sleek in the afternoon sun, and I’m so taken with them that I don’t see the moment that the drive opens up to a massive house. But Embry does and gives a sharp inhale.

“Wow,” I breathe. It’s like something that something out of a storybook—three stories stretching into the blue Virginia sky, sprawling symmetrically into cupolas and gables and conservatories. It’s white and many-windowed, so that the whole thing seems to shine and glitter, a fairy tale castle with all-American touches. The black shutters, the peaked roof, the Colonial architecture. Behind the house, I can make out the splashing glint of the Shenandoah River. A new-looking stone sign in the center of the drive proclaims the house to be called New Camelot.

Oh, Merlin.

We step out of the car when it stops, and when we get to the front door, it’s locked. I use the wedding gift key to unlock it; the lock is new and the key is new, and it clicks and slides open easily as we step inside.

Even though we knew Merlin had prepared the property ahead of time for us, I’m still surprised at how fresh and welcoming it feels inside. We step into the large foyer, marked by a gorgeous curving staircase, and the drapes near us flutter—the windows were left open for us. And on the tables and stands, fresh-cut flowers fill the space with the delicate smell of spring. We walk through the foyer to the back of the house and stand at the tall windows overlooking a sloping green lawn that ends at the river. Near the river shore, a groundskeeper is splitting wood, and I think of how lovely a fire would feel in the cool mountain evenings.

“Fuck, this place is pretty,” Embry murmurs, wandering back to the front door to help the agents with our luggage. I hear him talking with them about security arrangements, but I tune it out, choosing to gaze out at the river instead, and the trees, and the mountains, all of it. I think back to all the fairy tales I loved as a girl and decide those princesses can keep their musty castles and Baroque chateaux—I’d take the proud gables and flashing windows of this American Arcadia any day.

There’s a chair next to the window, as if someone else loved this view as much as I do now, and I wonder who it was. Is this Merlin’s personal property? Is it a place he loans out to different people? His diplomatic friends, perhaps, or maybe the senators or lobbyists he likes to woo behind the scenes. Either way, I can see myself spending the entire next week in this chair, when I’m not in Embry’s arms of course, and I’m turning around to tell him so when I notice the small table next to the chair. It has a Bible on it.

A very familiar Bible.

My heart hammers in deja vu and grief as I take in the worn leather spine, the dented corners. The gold script stamped at the bottom.

Maxen Ashley Colchester.

It’s Ash’s Bible, the same one on which Embry swore his oath. Merlin told us after the Inauguration that he’d sent it to Althea Colchester, and we all thought it a kind gesture, since she’d given him that Bible herself when he was confirmed as a teenager.

But the Bible’s not with Althea Colchester in Kansas City. It’s here, in Virginia.

In a house that Merlin sent us to.

I touch the cover with my fingertips, the pebbled leather soft and cool just as I always remembered it being. The baby inside my body stirs, as if answering the living reminder of his or her father’s piety, and unshed tears sting my eyes as I lift my gaze to the window, desperate to look at anything but that Bible.

Why does it have to be here? Why couldn’t someone have warned me, prepared me, told me that my honeymoon would start with my heart breaking all over again?

And now I see and feel Ash everywhere—in the strong mountains and the towering trees, in this majestic house furnished as cleanly and modestly as he furnished his bedroom at the White House, even in the muscled swing of the dark-haired groundskeeper down by the river, who is now burying the axe in the ground at his feet and taking a minute to stare at the river. Even from here, I can see that he’s rubbing at his forehead.

Rubbing at his forehead with one thumb.

I didn’t say it was a gift from me.

Merlin’s words echo through my mind as I’m pushing my way out of the back door and onto the expansive patio. And before I know what I’m doing, I’m tripping down a long set of shallow stone stairs to the lawn, I’m holding my belly as I half-walk, half-stumble down the soft, grassy hill. I know I’m being foolish, I know I’m being absurd and stupid, and part of my mind keeps thinking of what I’ll say to the poor groundskeeper once I reach him—maybe that I was simply wild to see the river. So wild that I’m crying with it, nearly blind with it.

But the other part of me doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all, because if Merlin can believe that I’m a reincarnated Brythonic queen, then aren’t I allowed to believe only for a few moments that a strange dark-haired man could be Ash?

Is that so aberrant, is that so wrong?

God, I can’t breathe. It’s like all the air has frozen into place, like the world is cut out of diamond, and above and behind me, I hear Embry call my name, but I don’t care, I don’t care. And oh God, at the sound of my name, the man on the shore turns, he turns and looks at me, and I don’t know what kind of cruel trick this is, what kind of magic, but that man has Ash’s shoulders and hips, Ash’s powerful arms, Ash’s black hair and strong nose and square jaw. That man is walking towards me like he knows me, he is running and I’m running, and then we are close enough that I can hear my name on his lips, I can hear the harsh draw of his own breath, and then his mouth is on mine, his arms are banding around my back and his hands are huge and possessive everywhere, as possessive as his mouth, which takes and takes and takes and never stops.

Until we break apart, panting. On every gasping breath I smell the smoke and leather smell of him, his mint taste still on my tongue, and when our eyes meet and I see the green eyes of my Sir, my knees buckle and I drop.

“Easy, easy,” he croons, catching me as if I weigh nothing and lifting me into his arms. “I’ve got you, angel. I’ve got you.”

“You—you’re—”

“I know,” he says, his eyes crinkling in a smile.

“But…how?” My hands are on his face, making him look at me, holding him still so I can look at him, and I’m so greedy for all of him, and my heart is still thumping hard against my ribs because I’m witnessing a fucking miracle and my Sir is here, my king is here, my husband is here—Ash is alive.

“Merlin,” Ash answers. “And a little bit my own work too. I thought I was going to die, but—and I hope you’ll forgive me for this—I wanted to plan on living too. Despair is a sin, and I’ve always preferred my sins to be more enjoyable.” His eyes darken mischievously. “As you might recall.”

I’m pressing my fingertips to every crease and rise of his face, the face I thought I’d never seen again, the face I last saw pale and near-dead on a gurney. Every part of him was and is so precious to me, and God, how have I lived without these full, soft lips in my life? The dark fans of his eyelashes? The faint cleft in his chin? How can I be in his arms right now? Cradled against his solid, muscled chest? With his child nestled between us—oh God, his baby, he doesn’t know—

“I asked Merlin,” Ash continues, gazing at me just as hungrily as I’m gazing at him, “that if I somehow lived, if there was a way he could hide me. Make it so everyone thought I was dead. I did manage to live—it was a near thing, though—and Merlin worked his magic and made it so the world thought I died.”

My joy and awe are still so fucking real I’m throbbing with them, but for the first time, I feel a surge of vivid, gnawing hurt. “Why?” I whisper. “I thought—Ash, we thought you were dead. Embry blamed himself for months. I buried you, I—”

“Shhh,” he says softly, pressing his forehead against mine. “I know. And I’m so fucking sorry, I really am, except…I’m also not. I did it for a reason.”

“What possible reason?” I cry. “What possible reason could there be?”

“You,” he says simply. “And Embry.”

“I need more than that,” I tell him, a little fussily, which makes his eyes crinkle again. He hoists me a little tighter in his arms, holding me so easily, so gently, and even in my hurt and anger, I never want him to let me go.

“I realized the night before—” he has to close his eyes a moment before he continues. “The night before it happened. How much I loved you both…and how much I had wronged you both, however inadvertently.”

“Wronged? How could you think that?”

He sighs. “I had the privilege of meeting you and Embry at different times, having you both all to myself; I got to fall in love with you separately. But you and Embry have always had the shadow of me hanging over your love. I was present inside it even from the beginning.” He smiles sadly at me. “You never had the chance to love each other without me in between.”

I want to argue with him, I want to tell him that he’s wrong, but I think of the new, deep commitment Embry and I have hammered and forged since Ash’s absence, and how different it is from what we had before. Mature. Tailored to each other.

“If I survived, I knew that I wanted us to live forever as a three. And you and me had time as man and wife, and Embry and me had time as, well, as something anyway—but you and Embry needed that time too. And so it was my last gift to you. The time that I’ve gotten to have with the both of you, I wanted you to have with each other.”

“Your last gift to us,” I echo.

“Yes,” he says fiercely, “because I’m done giving now. I’m ready to take.” And his lips are hot and urgent on mine, setting my skin on fire and my pulse chasing through my veins. I’m suddenly terribly, squirmingly aware that I haven’t been spanked or bound or dominated in any way since my last night with Ash, and I’m going to combust without it.

Ash sets me down onto the grass so that he can kneel in front of me and press his head against our unborn child.

“Did you know?” I ask, running my hands through his thick black hair.

“Merlin told me, and it killed me to stay away. But I knew I wanted the two of you to marry first. That was very important to me. And I’m a bit of a prisoner here,” he says, looking up with a smile. “Since the world at large believes me dead and it’s better that way for all I’ve built if they keep believing it. But I didn’t want to wait a moment longer to see you again. To see this baby.”

“It’s yours,” I tell him softly.

The sunlight catches the tears glassing his eyes, and I catch them with my fingertips as they fall. “I don’t know if I can forgive you for staying away,” I say in a choked voice. “For leaving me. For the pain.”

He looks up at me through those long, perfect eyelashes, now sparkling with tears. “Just promise me that you’ll spend the rest of your life trying.”

Now I feel my own tears spilling to match his. “Deal.”

“And answer me honestly—did it work? Your new husband, do you love him as deeply as you love me?”

“Yes,” I admit, and the confession is all at once freeing and gutting. “Yes. I love him just as deeply.”

“Then I’ll take your rage and your hurt. I will gladly pay any price, because to know the two of you love each other as I love you is all I’ve wanted since the day we came together. Since that first night—Oh.”

He breaks off and I turn to see Embry standing several feet away, his hands by his sides and shell shock etched on his face.

“Achilles,” Embry says numbly.

Ash rises from his knees, and for the first time I really notice what he’s wearing, ragged jeans and a soft, tight T-shirt, and even dressed like that, even coming up from his knees, he still looks every inch a king.

“Patroclus.”

They stand there staring at each other for a minute, and then Ash crosses the distance to Embry in several long, powerful strides. There is a single second when the two of them seem to breathe in heaving, muscled tandem, and then their mouths are crashing together, Ash cradling Embry’s face, and Embry’s hands fisted violently in Ash’s shirt.

“How?” Embry keeps mumbling against Ash’s lips. “How?”

“I want to spend the rest of my life telling you,” Ash says. “Will you let me?”

And Embry nods and nods, his nodding turning into more kisses, and then the three of us are together, sharing one kiss, the same kiss

breathless

wet

equal

alive

And then we’re falling to the ground, and there’s no time to go to the house, no time to care about who might see, there’s only time to share what we’ve been missing all this time, what our bodies have been yearning for, and right there on the soft grass, in the warm sunlight, our three hearts beat as one once again and we share every breath, every kiss, every single drop of our love. Equal and alive.

Three.

* * *

When I was twenty-nine, I saw a king come back to life.

And we’ve been living happily ever after ever since.