“We should get back to base,” I said, opening my eyes but not looking at his face. If I saw those green eyes flash with hurt, that square jaw tense with pain, it would be over. I would cave and let myself get sucked into something I would inevitably turn toxic and awful, because that’s what I did best.
Ash slid off me and stood, offering me a hand, which I didn’t take.
We walked back to the base in silence, parted ways without a word, though I could feel him looking at me the entire time. I feigned illness for the going away party, thinking that was the last time I’d have to see Colchester, though I knew even then that I’d never be free of thinking about him.
And that morning when I left my room with my bags, I found a small gift outside my door, a wrapped package. I forced myself to wait until I boarded the train at Lviv to open it, and when I did, it felt like someone had buried their Glock in my ribs and pulled the trigger.
A copy of The Little Prince. From Ash.
I pressed my forehead to the train window and willed myself not to cry.
14
Embry
before
Patroclus—
I’ll only email you this one time, but I hope you know that every day you don’t get an email from me is a day that I want to email you. I’ll be composing letters to you in my head for years to come, but I have to send at least this one.
I keep going back through this last year. Have I read everything wrong? Was I wrong about the way things felt when we danced, the way I felt you looking at me when I said your name? Was I wrong about the way you responded underneath me when I kissed you?
It must be Morgan. I can only imagine what she told you about me, but please know that everything we did that week was consensual…and optional. Embry, I don’t have to be that kind of man if that’s not what you want. I’ll be any kind of man for you. Just don’t disappear.
—Achilles
Life went on. For three years, it went on. I did a short stint in the South Pacific, went to Poland for eight months, then to Leavenworth for a year. Between deployments, I went home to Seattle, to my mother’s giant house with its expansive lake at the front. I played with Nimue’s baby boy, argued with Morgan, dabbled in every kind of dissolution I could find to take my mind off the things I’d seen and done in Carpathia.
And to take my mind off Maxen Ashley Colchester.
Not a day went by that I didn’t think about him. Dancing, kissing, what his thick erection felt like against my own. His email, his I’ll be any kind of man for you.
I couldn’t allow him to change himself for me. I wouldn’t. It was drastically unfair to him—not to mention that I didn’t want him to change. Maybe I was too fucked up to be what he needed, maybe I resisted the idea that he was what I needed, but in the close, quiet dark of night, my brain still buzzing from sex or liquor or worse, I knew the truth. Maybe I’d have to be wrestled into it, pinned against a wall or shot at, but once Ash had me at his mercy, I would be completely his. Any humiliation, any subjugation, anything he chose to do to me, I’d accept and enjoy. Hell, I’d thank him for it.
And that scared me more than anything else.
So it was settled: No Colchester. For his sake and mine.
And the years went on.
The world changed again. I was crouched behind a dining room chair in Vivienne’s lake house waiting for Lyr to come tearing around the corner so I could grab him and pretend to eat him like an ogre when my phone buzzed. It was Morgan.
Did you see the news?
No, I’m playing with Lyr before we eat. Btw are you coming to dinner?
Just turn on the news, idiot.
I still waited for Lyr, pouncing on him and nibbling on his cheeks as he giggled and squirmed in my arms. He was normally a quiet little boy—serious and reserved—but only Cousin Embry could make him laugh and squeal, so whenever I saw him, I made it my mission to do just that. Maybe it was a perennial flaw in my code, because seeing Ash laugh and smile had been just as gratifying to me. Maybe I just couldn’t stand to think of all these serious people living their lives so seriously; quiet and solemn even about the best things in life.
I flung a maniacally giggling Lyr onto the couch, tickling the sides of his still baby-chubby ribs, and reached for the remote.
“Do it again!” Lyr begged.
I rumpled his dark hair and flipped on the TV. “Cousin Morgan says we have to watch the news instead of play. Isn’t she awful?”
He nodded, but he didn’t fuss or complain. Instead, he burrowed into my side and stared up at the big flatscreen with me.
On the news, Krakow was on fire.
Carpathian separatists strike at the heart of opposition read the crawl at the bottom of the screen, and it was obvious right away that this time was different. This wasn’t the scattershot attacks on trains and villages that had come before. This was real terror, calculated and planned and flawlessly executed. Five buildings in the Main Square, in the heart of the city. A simultaneous bombing of St. Mary’s Basilica. Nine hundred dead.
And Melwas Kocur, the self-styled leader of the “Nation of Carpathia,” had already claimed responsibility.
There’s nothing new about atrocity. There hasn’t been anything new about it since humans dropped out of trees and started arguing about who got which swath of savanna. But perhaps the best testament to human nature is that each atrocity feels new, feels just as awful as if it were the first murder all over again. And this felt new. This felt different.
This felt like war now, even all the way from Seattle.
I got the call a few hours later that I was going back to Ukraine.
A week after that phone call, I kicked my duffel bag into my room in the barracks and walked back out to the yard. The base hummed with all the comings and goings—literally hummed. Choppers were lifting in and out, Humvees and Jeeps rolling through the gates, and soldiers swarmed everywhere, all busy, all shouting and energetic.
I looked at them, feeling a little bit like a senior on the first day of his last year of high school. All these boys seemed so…young. And eager. I wondered how many of them had truly fought before. How many had stood in a bombed village with sheep bleating madly as their pens burned? How many had carried screaming children away from the corpses of their parents, had heard those telltale snaps in the trees, the sounds of bullets whizzing by, and had to keep going, knowing they could be shot and killed at any moment? Colchester had been right to shake some sense into me all those years ago. I wanted to do the same to these boys now.
I went to the captain’s office to check in with my new supervisor, expecting some guy named Mark listed in my deployment orders. But surprise, surprise, the captain of my new company was not some guy named Mark.
It was Colchester.
I froze in the doorway, completely unprepared for this, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape my body and go to him. He who’d lived in my thoughts and fantasies, and inside the ghosts of all my bad decisions.
He looked different. It wasn’t just the three years between our last meeting and now; he’d lost the boyish features all men carry into their early twenties and he’d grown into himself. Wider shoulders, stronger arms, the jaw slightly more squared, the cheekbones more sharply dramatic. His skin was still the warm, bronzed color I remembered, a little richer maybe with the summer sun, and his hair was still that dark, raven black, thick and a little longer on top than he used to wear it.
His expression though, as he peered down at the laptop on his desk, was the same serious expression from before, those lips turned down into what he probably thought was a frown, but with that full mouth, was almost a pout. He rubbed his thumb across his forehead as he read, and I couldn’t stop following the movement with my eyes, remembering what that thumb felt like against my windpipe, tracing the line of my jaw.
His face changed as he clicked and read something new. The barest tilt of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth and eyes, and then
the smile faded and he shook his head, as if irritated with himself. He closed the laptop with sudden vehemence and startled visibly when he looked up and saw me in the doorway.
“Embry?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe it was really me.
And at that moment, I would have done anything he asked—anything he wanted—just to hear him say my name again.
He stood up and came around the desk, and for a moment I thought he might hug me, might press his body against mine like I’d imagined thousands of times alone in the shower, but he stopped just short of hugging distance, extending a hand for a handshake instead.
A fucking handshake.
“I thought my captain was someone else—”
“I was promoted just a few months ago, and they ended up placing me here because of my experience with the separatists,” Ash cut in.
“Oh,” was the only thing I could think of to say.
“Are you going to shake my hand, Embry?”
Some petulant part of me wanted to say no. Why, I had no idea, since arguably the reason we weren’t hugging right now was because of me. My choices. My cowardice.
He withdrew his hand, his dark gaze sweeping over me. “It’s rude not to shake someone’s hand,” Ash reproached.
“Then order me to shake it if you want to,” I said irritably. Irritable because of the way my cock stirred at his look. Irritable because all this awkward tension was my fault. Irritable because I could have been his, if only I would have answered that email three years ago.
“Shake my hand,” he ordered, calling my bluff.
“Fuck you,” I said in reply.
Ash’s eyes narrowed and iced over, a frozen green lake. “Twenty pushups, soldier.”
“What?”
“You’re a first lieutenant, correct? And I’m your captain? That means you’re one of my men now, and you belong to me. Your discipline belongs to me, and you disobeyed a direct order. Now drop and give me twenty.”
I stared at him. I mean, really stared, my mouth open and my face a mask of incredulity. “But—”
“I believe,” Ash said coldly, “that the words you are looking for are, ‘Yes, sir.’ And it’s thirty pushups now, for your ongoing disobedience.”
Still staring at him with my pride stinging, I dropped to my knees and asked testily, “Is this what you wanted?”
He looked down at where I knelt in front of him. “Yes,” he answered, voice still cold. “It is what I want. Now do as you’re told.”
Fuck you, I wanted to spit at him, but I knew better. In a battle of wills with Ash, I’d lose, and I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if I decided to complain about it later. Ash’s reputation as a stellar soldier aside, I knew what a dumbass I’d look like if I went and fussed that my captain made me do thirty pushups I didn’t want to do.
So I lowered myself to my hands, flattened out my body, and did my first pushup. As I came up, I felt the rubber tread of a boot through my ACU coat, digging cruelly into my back.
“You didn’t say, ‘Yes, sir,’” Ash said softly. “It’s fifty now.”
I wanted to kill him. I wanted to get to my feet and punch him until my knuckles bled. I wanted to wrap my hands around his neck and strangle the motherfucker. Which didn’t explain away the sharp lust wrapped around the base of my spine, the erection that hardened more every time I pushed myself up and felt that boot pressing into my back.
“I still haven’t heard it, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Better. All the way to the floor, now. If you can’t do it on your own, I’ll have you kiss the floor each time you go down.”
I endeavored to do better, but I was only on number twenty-four and my arms were shaking. I was in fantastic shape—that wasn’t the issue—the issue was his boot on my back and however many pounds of angry Colchester he was leaning on it. I struggled down and then up again, knowing that Ash wouldn’t be happy with my effort.
“Oh, no,” Ash tutted. “Looks like we do need to kiss the floor.”
I swore ferociously. “I’m not kissing the floor,” I growled.
The boot left my back, and then Ash was squatting in front of me. “How about my boot then?” he said. “Go ahead. Kiss it, and then we’ll both know you’re performing your discipline properly.”
“I hate you,” I said with a quiet fierceness. “I hate you so fucking much.” But I’d already lost, and we both knew it. I’d always lose when it came to Colchester, because when it came to Colchester, I’d always want to lose.
So I lowered myself down and kissed his boot.
It smelled like leather and pine needles and just the tiniest whiff of dust from the dry yard outside. The suede felt unexpectedly soft against my lips, softer than Colchester’s own lips had felt against mine three years ago. I heard him exhale slowly, heard the pounding of my pulse in my ears.
And for a quiet moment, there was no war. No Carpathia. No Morgan and no tense history between us. For a moment, I even forgot to hate myself.
For a quiet moment, with my lips on Colchester’s boot, there was only peace. There wasn’t the shame or the stinging pride, there wasn’t the resistance—only simple, unfiltered existence. I was almost dizzy with it. I was dizzy with it, my breath changing and my blood moving differently and had life always been this detailed before? This vibrant? Every molecule singing its own peculiar song so loudly I could almost hear the walls speak and the floor shout?
“Embry,” I heard Ash say. “Embry, come back. Embry.”
I felt fingers under my chin and I was being guided up to my knees. “Little prince,” Ash murmured. “Where did you go?”
I blinked at him. I didn’t understand the question, and he seemed to see that.
“You were hovering there with your lips on my boot for a solid minute or two,” he explained, his lips quirking into a smile.
“I was?”
He was kneeling too, close enough that I could see the facets in those cut glass eyes. “I didn’t mind,” he said, still smiling. “You looked good down there.”
I could smell more than his boot now, I could smell him—smoke and fire and sharp leather—real leather—not the kind on his boots but the kind belts are made of. And whips.
My hands were shaking. I scrambled to my feet, wiping at my mouth and trying to put as much distance between him and me as I could without actually fleeing his office.
He watched me, amused. “Are you okay?”
I was not okay.
“Can I finish my pushups another time? Sir?”
The amusement evaporated, and he shook his head after a moment. “You’ve done enough, Lieutenant. Consider your disciplinary obligations satisfied.” He didn’t apologize.
And I found I didn’t want him to.
15
Embry
before
“Go or I’m pushing you down there!” Colchester shouted at Dag. In the background, the now-familiar click boom of a tripwire explosive thudded through the hallway, nearly knocking us off our feet.
“Check in,” I said into the radio, even though my ears were ringing too much to hear if they answered back. Ash was still shouting at Dag, barely fazed by the explosion; there were more shouts coming from down the hall.
Just three hours ago, the rest of Ash’s company and I had rolled into the abandoned town of Caledonia to set up an outpost. It was supposed to be easy—or whatever passed as easy these days—no guns needed, just some HESCO walls and a few generators, enough to select one of the evacuated buildings and fortify it. The sweeps of the other buildings in town were supposed to be perfunctory, unnecessary.
It had been a trap. A fucking trap. The whole fucking time.
Ash had thought of the elevator shafts as a way to get out, and almost all of the company who’d been caught in this rat-trap had made it down to the basement, but there were at least three unaccounted for. Three that were all my men. Ash had insisted that he’d be the last man down, and init
ially I was going to wait with him because I couldn’t stomach the thought of him waiting alone, but now that three of my men were stranded in this no man’s land between the lower floors and the enemy-occupied upper floors, there was no way in hell I could leave.
“Check in, or I’m fucking coming down there,” I yelled into the radio. I tried to peer down the hallway, but there was only smoke.
Christ. I’d been deployed for two weeks and I was about to die. In an ancient apartment building, halfway across the world from my family, yards away from the man I loved. On fucking linoleum. Who wants to breathe their last on fucking yellowed linoleum?
Whatever Ash had shouted at Dag, it had worked. Dag crawled backward through the open elevator doors and into the shaft, using the small ladder inset into the wall to work his way down. Ash turned to me.
“Ready?”
I shook my head, pointing down the hall. “We got three still out there, sir.”
His pupils widened ever so slightly when I said sir, just as they had the whole week since that strange moment with the pushups in his office. We hadn’t talked since then, or at least, hadn’t talked about anything that wasn’t duty and war, but the moment lingered between us, and I couldn’t look at his face without remembering what his boot leather felt like against my lips. I felt like he could see it in me, like he could smell the desperate confusion burning in my blood, but he didn’t push, he didn’t chase. If anything, I got the feeling he was a little hurt that I kept my distance, which made it twice now that I’d hurt him because I was too fucked up to get my shit together and admit what I wanted.
It was agonizing. Every minute of it.
But right now, all of that faded behind us. There was too much to do to survive in the here and now.
“I’m going down there,” I added, unshouldering my M4.
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