“Besides, what guy your age doesn’t want to spend the weekend on a college campus? There’s more than fraternities there, you know. There’s sororities too.”

Lyr rolls his eyes. “That’s not any better,” he explains as if I’m an idiot, which makes me laugh again. “Plus it’s summer, so there are hardly any people on campus anyway. And I’d be there with my mother.”

“I suppose that would hurt your game with the college girls—or is it boys?”

Lyr levels his gaze at me, a very serious frown on his face. “That’s personal.”

His stern expression strengthens the nostalgia—or is it deja vu? “Oh come on, you can tell me. I know you’ve heard stories about my misspent youth, surely you can’t be shy when you know all the things I got up to. Still get up to,” I amend, remembering how recently I’ve misbehaved.

“I don’t want frivolous attachments,” he says with dignity.

“You’re a teenage boy. That should be all you want.”

He shrugs, suddenly looking very young again. “I don’t even know what to say to girls anyway.”

“Aha! So it is girls!” But before I can dispense my (questionable) wisdom on the matter, my mother appears in the doorway of the balcony, impervious to the cool breeze in a white samite shift.

“Lyr,” she chides. “I sent you to get Embry ten minutes ago. What have you been doing?”

“Talking about college girls,” I say, just to irritate her.

It works. It doesn’t matter than I’m considered a war hero, that I’m the Vice President now. To Vivienne Moore, I will always be the troublemaking youth perpetually sneaking girls and boys into my room—sometimes both at the same time.

“Please don’t infect my nephew with your dissolute habits,” she says. “I owe my sister that much.”

Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes.

“And speaking of sisters, yours is waiting for you in the library. Which is what Lyr was supposed to tell you.”

“Morgan’s here?”

“Yes, she just walked in the door fifteen minutes ago,” my mother says. “And she was fairly urgent about seeing you, so I imagine it’s about work.”

With a sigh, I stand up and go to find Morgan.

“Oh, and she had someone with her,” Mother calls after me. “An event planner, I believe.”

An event planner? That makes no sense, and I plan on telling Morgan just that when I get to the library. I’ll tell her that and then I’ll tell her that I have a date tonight, so I don’t have time for any of her—

I freeze when I walk into the library, the awareness of danger prickling along my skin just like it had all those times in the mountains, except this time there are no bullets, no bombs or fire. Just my stepsister sitting stiffly on the sofa, a glass of something clear in her hand, which I’d wager it isn’t water.

And there’s someone else in the room. A young redhead I’ve thought of often since the wedding.

Abilene Corbenic. Greer’s cousin.

Abilene smiles at us both, and my skin keeps on prickling, my blood heating in my veins. She’s danger, pure and simple, and when she says, “Mr. Vice President, if you wouldn’t mind closing the door before we get started,” I know it for certain. It’s not the kind of danger I faced in the mountains—there’re no weapons under that tight bodycon dress—but it’s a danger I’ve faced more times than I can count in the Beltway.

Ambition.

I close the door and turn back to face the room, noticing for the first time how red and swollen Morgan’s eyes are, as if she’s been crying.

“Now,” Abilene says, still wearing a sharp smile. “Let’s start with why you’re going to do exactly as I say from now on.”

19

Embry

before

Three months of recovery and physical therapy from the gunshot wounds meant I was cleared to go back. They made no secret of my mother’s influence, told me they could station me elsewhere if needed, but I wasn’t shirking my duty, not now that the war was officially a war. And I wasn’t missing my chance to go back to Ash.

He wrote me every day that he could, and I wrote him back. He started all his letters with Patroclus and ended them with short, matter-of-fact sentences about what he’d like to do to me when he saw me again. He wanted to gag me with his cock, he wanted to see how many times I could come in a night, he wanted to stripe my back with semen as I kissed his boot. It felt like I had a perpetual hard-on the entire time we were separated, and so it was with a huge sigh of relief and a lot of nervous excitement that I boarded the train to take me to his base.

Ash was all I could think about, all I could see in my mind, and so I didn’t notice the face of the man who took the seat next to me. In fact I didn’t notice him at all until he spoke in that polished English accent with its faintest trace of Welsh. “Lieutenant Moore,” Merlin said. “What an excellent coincidence.”

It took some effort to drag my thoughts away from Ash and all the depraved things he’d promised me, but I managed to face Merlin with a polite smile.

“Mr. Rhys,” I said, extending a hand, which he shook. “Pleasure to see you. Out on the Queen’s business again?”

“Sadly not, but the happy news is that I am working for your government currently, as a liaison for certain strategic directives. I have a meeting with Captain Colchester tomorrow.”