I am not the mother of any of those children.
And in this moment, it doesn’t matter that Ash never loved Morgan or that Embry might actually despise Abilene, because they will still always be bound to these women in a way that can’t be expunged or blanked out. They will share a connection that I have no part of, that I have nothing to do with, and I will forever be exiled from these pieces of them. There are now parts of the men I love that will never belong wholly to me. There are places inside them that are forever stamped with another woman’s name, and even if I have children of my own, I will always, always have to share that title of mother of my children with someone else.
“Handsome, isn’t he?” Abilene says. Too late I realize that I’ve been staring at Lyr’s picture for too long, and although I’m normally quite good at mastering my expression, there’s no doubt Abilene saw a glimpse of the tumult inside my mind.
“He is,” I comment, pushing the phone back to her. “He looks like his father.”
“You can see why I knew for sure after I saw the boy,” Abilene says, taking her phone and giving the picture a fond glance. “And for a long time, I was happy with just knowing. It didn’t taint Maxen for me at all, you see, and I hated the idea that people would take this and turn it into some tawdry V.C. Andrews-style story.”
“But you don’t hate that idea anymore? You’re okay with ruining his life and Lyr’s life and Morgan’s?”
Her eyes flash. “I would never ruin his life.”
I’m suddenly furious again, and I try to hide it by standing up and walking over to the window so she can’t see my face. “Then what is it you think you’re doing now?”
“He needs to know that I’ll love him no matter what,” she says confidently. “Then he’ll see. When everyone else has left him, when everyone else has abandoned him, I’ll be there. And I won’t care what he’s done with Morgan, I won’t care that they had a son. I’ll be the only one to forgive him for everything. So you see, it’s not ruining his life at all. It’s bringing him to the one who loves him the most.”
I turn to look at her, to say something about how delusional she sounds, but before I can speak, I’m transfixed by the look on her face. I’ve never seen anything like it—her lips tilted up in a dreamy smile and her eyes bright with some uncomfortable fire and her cheeks flushed red with excitement. There’s a small tug in the back of my mind, a tug as old as humanity itself, a quiet alarm that says take care, there’s danger, danger from this person. It’s the first time that I’ve truly realized that Abilene is not operating purely out of malice or cold manipulation. There is a fever inside of her, something deep inside of her mind, and whether it was always there or whether it’s only newly developed, I don’t think it matters. It’s tilted her thinking, sent her sliding down paths no human should go down.
She’s beyond being reasoned with. It doesn’t matter what logic I throw at her, what facts I tell her, she will believe this fantasy about Ash above all else. That they’re somehow meant for each other. That his love for me is some kind of aberrant mistake that he’ll realize if only he could see. And she seems blind to the fact that the more she tortures him in the hope that it will drive him to her, the more she pushes him away.
And with a chill that I feel deep under my skin and in my bones, I realize that she could do more than try to kill me by proxy. She really could harm me—and more importantly, she could harm Ash or Embry. She could harm that child nestled inside of her. I no longer believe that there’s anything she wouldn’t do in her wild pursuit of Ash, anything she wouldn’t do in order to punish me for getting to him first.
“And Embry?” I say, trying to betray none of these thoughts, trying to pretend that this conversation hasn’t revealed the slithers and creeps of her mind. “He’s really just a way to punish me? To isolate Ash?”
Abilene tilts her head in something like pity. “You really do love them both, don’t you?”
There’s no point in lying about it, and I don’t want to. “Yes,” I say. “I really do love them both.”
She stands up and tucks her clutch under her arm, sweeping her hair off her shoulder with a smooth shrug. She looks like an ad for high-end maternity clothes, or maybe a socialite, caught in a semi-casual but still glossed-to-perfection moment. “Then I suppose you have your answer. And while you’re pining after Embry, and Ash is missing his best friend, I’ll be there to comfort him. Me.”
She doesn’t know about Ash and Embry, I realize. That’s one secret she couldn’t uncover, and thank God. If she knew that Ash loved Embry as well as me…it would go badly for him. Maybe Embry’s safe for now, at least as safe as anyone can be around Abilene.
So I don’t threaten her as she makes to leave, I don’t say anything provoking. I say what I think she wants to hear so that she’ll leave and go home appeased for the time being, and then I’ll have space to think. Space to fix this.
“You succeeded, you know. Hurting me. Melwas aside, knowing that Embry slept with you—even if it was because you were blackmailing him—cut me deeper than almost anything else you’ve done.” I’m being truthful, and the honesty seems to call to her.
She turns back from the door, and her face is softer, less disquieting than before. She looks genuinely remorseful about something. “Greer, I—well, I think you should know. That night with Embry…” She absent-mindedly touches her belly as she searches for the words. “I wanted to get pregnant. I planned it that way, and if I hadn’t gotten pregnant that month, I would have tried and tried again. If I couldn’t have Ash’s baby, then this seemed like the next best thing.” She looks down at her stomach with a smile, and then back up to me. “I had help from a doctor, because I knew there were a great many things I could make Embry do, but that wasn’t one of them. Embry didn’t know it was me. He was barely even conscious.”
I stand there, stunned and sick, my thoughts racing. “You raped him.”
“If you like,” Abilene says, lifting a shoulder. “I thought I did it rather kindly, as things go. It’s not like I pretended to be you in the dark. It’s not like he has to remember the feeling of betraying you.”
I simply stare. I’m past words, past real thoughts even; my mind is somewhere vacant, someplace where horrors dwell.
“I thought that might comfort you,” Abilene says magnanimously, as if she’s granted me a great gift and hasn’t just admitted to rape. And then she leaves, not bothering to close the door behind her.
I don’t know how long I stand by my desk, how long it takes to reel in these dark fishes of thought, how long it takes for this to forge into action, into a plan. But it’s close to dark when I have the answers I need.
I have to call Embry.
I have to stop Abilene.
ELEVEN
Now
SIX WEEKS Later
ELIOT SAID April is the cruelest month, but I can think of many crueler ones. January, when the holidays are over and the cold is hard enough to break your teeth on. November, when the skies go gray like they’ve forgotten how to be blue. March, with its muddy thaw and tree branches stark and skeletal.
But no month is crueler than October. Because October is the month I marry someone I don’t love for reasons I’m not sure I entirely believe in. October is the month when I take more steps that can’t be unstepped, weave more webs that can’t be unwoven. But what choice do I have? What choice have I ever had? There’s only ever been the choice between doing nothing and doing something, and goddammit, I’d rather choose something than nothing. I’ve chosen to do nothing long enough.
It’s a cold night tonight, and so quiet that I can hear the ash burning on my cigarette. So still that even the smoke refuses to move, hanging around me like a toxic fog.
I shouldn’t smoke, I know. It was a habit I kicked after the war. It’s just that I’m at war again, and this time with the man I love, and the first casualty is going to be my integrity. Twelve hours from now I’ll stand in a church and make vows I don’t intend to honor, make prom
ises I could never keep, paint myself another face with lies and hollow words, just like Hamlet accuses Ophelia of doing.
Those that are married already, all but one shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
I remember reading Hamlet aloud to Ash in Berlin, during some vacation we stole together during the war. My head in his lap, my bare feet hanging off the bed, acting out the voices and making him laugh at Polonius and sigh at poor Ophelia. Hamlet himself Ash could never understand, could never grasp why someone wouldn’t do what needed to be done right away.
“That’s why they don’t write tragedies about people like you,” I’d said, twisting up to look at him. “It’s too boring when the hero isn’t morally complicated.”
Ash looked amused. “Define morally complicated.”
“You know. Fatal flaw and all that. Hamlet’s passivity. Macbeth’s ambition. Oedipus’s pride.”
“Oedipus was trying to do the right thing by leaving Corinth,” Ash said. “Doesn’t that count?”
I glared at him. “Don’t be an idiot. His leaving Corinth set the entire prophecy in motion. He thought he could defy the gods! You don’t think that deserves a tragic end?”
He laughed then, the bare muscles of his stomach jerking against my face. I turned and kissed them, one by one, until I reached his navel, which I licked until he growled. And predictably enough, I ended up with his cock in my mouth and his hands heavy on my head, and after he came deep down my throat, he permitted me to lie on top of him and find release by sliding my cock against his muscular thighs. Even with that pathetic amount of friction, I still spent my load in a matter of seconds. Which then I had to clean up in the most humiliating way possible, of course.
I loved it.
But after all of that, and a quick shower and room service on top of it, it was clear Ash’s mind was still on the earlier topic, and when my head was back in his lap and his fingers were running through my hair, he asked, “So are there tragedies about people who don’t deserve it?”
“I said morally complicated, not evil. Most of the tragic heroes don’t really deserve the magnitude of what happens to them.”
“But if you try to do everything right,” Ash said slowly, “and try your hardest to be honorable always? Do those people get to avoid the tragic ends?”
I thought for a moment, mentally flipping through college textbooks and deciding. “No, I think it’s usually destined, no matter how good or brave the person is. Beowulf didn’t have a fatal flaw and he got bitten by a dragon. King Arthur for the most part is a just and fair king, but a single sin committed in his youth ends up being his undoing.”
“What was his sin?” Ash asked, fingers still running through my hair.
I closed my eyes, the sensation so pleasant and soothing that I worried I might drift off to sleep. “He slept with his sister.”
“It’s a good thing I only slept with your sister then.”
“Fuck you,” I mumbled.
He laughed again, and somehow ended up crawling over top of me, kissing my face and throat and chest, and that was the last we talked about fatal flaws and King Arthur.
And now here we are, in a tragedy of our own. Except we probably do deserve it.
I finish my cigarette and flick it onto the low patio where I’m standing. Behind me are bifold doors and rows of heat lamps and the silent bustle of the rehearsal dinner contained by glass. My rehearsal dinner, because I’m the groom, because tomorrow I’m getting married to the woman who sexually assaulted me and arranged for Greer’s abduction.
I pull the silver cigarette case out of my suit jacket and light up another one. I’m not ready to go back inside just yet.
“You don’t have to do this,” comes a voice at my elbow. I turn to see my stepsister standing next to me in a sleek strapless gown, as if she’s incapable of feeling the cold. Which she might be. I always suspected she was part reptile.
But she’s a loyal reptile, even as she’s reaching for my case and pulling out a cigarette for herself. I offer her the lighter and she lights the cigarette and snaps the lighter shut with an efficient, elegant click.
“You don’t have to do this,” she repeats again, gazing steadily at me over the glow of the cigarette. “It’s not too late.”
“Morgan, she holds all of our futures in her hands right now. If I do this, I can protect you and Lyr and Ash. Not to mention that I can keep my image for the campaign clean.”
Morgan sighs, giving the ash on her cigarette a delicate flick. “I don’t know if we can campaign with her at all, not with how dangerous she is. Maybe we should take our chances with her going public.”
She blows a pretty stream of smoke over her shoulder, using it as an excuse to glance behind her. Seeing that we are mostly alone, she says, “What she did to you was unforgivable, and how do you know it won’t happen again? Are you planning only on drinking from sealed bottles inside your own house?”
“I can protect myself, Morgan—”
Her eyes flare a bright green, so like Ash’s that I have to look away. “Is this a male ego thing?” she demands quietly. “Because what she did to you does not make you weak, and it’s not weakness to try to protect yourself in the future.”
“I know that—”
“I don’t think you do,” she insists. “Look, the statute of limitations in D.C. is fifteen years, there’s plenty of time to—”
“Absolutely not.”
“If we can get Dr. Ninian to testify,” she continues over me, “or even just bring evidence against her, then we can get Abilene convicted.”
“And then what happens to my image? What happens to my child if she’s in prison?”
“Is it definitely your child?”
I study my cigarette for a moment before I take a long drag. God, how I had hoped, how I had prayed when I hadn’t bent my head to heaven for years—please don’t let the child be mine, I’d begged. Let it be anyone’s, fucking Melwas’s even, just please not mine. But I couldn’t ignore the one thing Abilene truly wanted, which was to feel close to Ash. I’m the closest she can get, the truest imitation, and it was stupid of me to have hoped for anything different. Of course it’s my child. Nothing else would have satisfied her, save for conceiving a child of Ash’s, and thank God that’s out of her reach. For now.
“Two different doctors of my choosing have independently run the tests. I’m as certain as I can humanly be.” And then I soften for a minute. “It’s a boy.”
Morgan examines me. “You’d get him, you know, if she was in prison. He’d still be yours.”
“Yes. But I’m not going to win an election with the mother of my child in prison. It’s just not how it works.”
“Do you want him? The baby, I mean?”
I suppose she’s asking because she more than anyone knows how easy it is to cover up a child’s parentage, but it’s all far too late for that. And besides, “I do want him, Morgan. None of this is his fault, and I’ve always wanted children. And maybe this is as close as I’ll ever come to having a child with Greer, having one with her cousin.”
Morgan shakes her head as she puts her cigarette to her lips. “I hope for your sake that he takes after you.”
“I’ll love him no matter whom he takes after,” I say, and then add, surprised to find that it’s true, “I think I already love him.”
“Then you’ll have to protect him from his mother after he’s born,” my stepsister says. “Abilene will use him as a tool, especially if she realizes that you love him. How are you going to live like that, Embry? Cut off from the people you actually love and trying to protect your son from his own mother?”
I look down at my hand, my jaw working as I have to admit, “I don’t know. I just know that this is the best move I’ve got with the pieces I have.”
“Abilene frightens me,” Morgan says after a minute. “More than I can say.”
“Me too.”
“What happens next?”
I finish my cigarette and
grind out the embers on the patio with my gleaming Fendi dress shoe. “What happens next is I win that election. I keep Greer safe. And then I’ll know all of this has been worth it.”
THE NEXT MORNING is busy for everyone but me. Abilene, being an event planner, has planned a spectacle that would shame the Royal Family, something far from the elegant and restrained affair Greer insisted Abilene plan for her. No, this wedding is showcasing money and power—something both our families have in abundance—and the attention to detail is, I have to admit, masterful.
Too bad it’s all for a farce.
When Ash and Greer married, it was one of the worst and best days of my life. The heady combination of heartbreak and fucking before the ceremony had me whirling, the fevered hour I spent with the bride, the hour afterwards with groom as he kissed and bit me. It had been almost a full year since Ash and I had fooled around, excluding our kiss under the mistletoe, and it had been six years since I’d touched Greer like that. My body threatened to explode with it all, and as Ash wrestled me up against the wall in the small church dressing room, my body did explode.
Ash, stop, stop, I’m going to—
Yes, you are, little prince, I want you to. My dress shoes had slid against the carpet in between his legs, his mouth had been everywhere, licking every last trace of his bride off my face, and his hips had been angry and forceful against mine, his massive cock impressively thick and hard even through all the layers of our tuxedos. And it was in this grinding tangle of tuxedo-clad limbs and hot mouths that I came, right there in my pants.
Ash had been delighted, keeping me pinned against the wall with his teeth and powerful hips, panting through my every moan and shudder as if it were him who was coming and not me.
I want your cock to belong to me again, he’d growled then. I don’t want to miss a single orgasm of yours ever.
I’d been dizzy, flooded with too many hormones to think clearly. Ash, you’re getting married.
Weddings are promises, he’d said cryptically, and then ordered me to clean myself up. And so I’d stood through his wedding ceremony and endured his wedding reception, certain that day had been my last taste of paradise, and I was forever banished from the garden. Little did I know that the garden had been waiting for me all along, and that night when they let me inside their honeymoon suite, when we vowed together with words and flesh that we’d be married in this more elemental, important way, I realized that all along Ash had planned on this, on finally anchoring us to him in a way that fit our world best. As always, he’d found the most generous and vulnerable way to care for the people he loved.
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