Our foreheads are still touching, our words still too low for anyone else to hear. “You’ve always had a death wish, Embry. It frightens me more than I can tell you.”

“More than Greer being at the hands of Melwas? More than her being raped or hurt? Murdered?”

Ash’s fingers dig in hard, and for a moment, I feel every ounce of frustrated rage and fear he’s caging inside his body. “God forgive me,” he mutters.

“It should be him,” Merlin says, stepping close to us. “It’s still tricky, but Embry was also scheduled for a vacation out of state this week. And while it’s reckless and logistically thorny, there’s no real reason why it shouldn’t be him. We are in new territory with your wife’s abduction, Mr. President, and new territories require new solutions.”

Ash reluctantly releases my neck. “I feel like a coward staying here,” he replies bitterly. “Letting everyone else risk everything.”

“They risk it of their own free will,” Merlin says. “And even the great Maxen Colchester can’t stop people from using their free will.”

Kay is close now too, her hand on Ash’s arm. He relaxes the tiniest bit. “We are going to get her back, Ash,” she says. “We’ll keep this from the press, long enough for Melwas to think we aren’t taking any action, which might make him uncomfortable enough to make a mistake. We’ll send the best of the PPD and CIA and Special Forces, and we’ll send Embry. Between all those things, we will disrupt all the plans Melwas has made about Greer and we’ll stop any harm from coming to her.”

He swallows, closing his eyes. “I hate this,” he whispers. “I hate this so much.”

My heart twists, and before I can stop myself, I’ve got my arms around him. His head drops to my shoulder—the opposite of how we stood in this room last night, right before Ash palmed my cock and made me come all over his fist. Now I’m the strong one, now I’m the one offering comfort and release.

I hold him tighter. “I’ll get her back,” I swear.

“It should be me,” he says into my shoulder.

“But it can’t be.”

“You have to come back to me. Both of you. If I lose you, too—” His voice cracks suddenly. “My little prince. Please come back.”

People are casting sympathetic glances at us, at our seeming display of fraternal comfort. But I see the way Kay and Merlin look at us, the only two people in the room who know our past, and I see them wonder. About me and Ash. Me and Greer.

I step back, shuddering slightly at the feeling of Ash’s stubble rasping against my cheek as he pulls away. “I’m coming back,” I promise. “And your wife is too.”

After all, if it weren’t for Greer all those years ago, I wouldn’t have believed myself capable of love again. If it weren’t for Greer, I wouldn’t have Ash again. If it weren’t for last night, for the vows we spoke to each other and the promises we made with our bodies, then I wouldn’t have my own soul.

I have to rescue her.

She’s already rescued me.

3

Greer

after

I’m in a car. That much I know, that much I can feel by the vibration of the road thrumming through my skull. The thought comes, illuminating my mind, and then other sensory information floods in after it. My hands are taped behind my back, my ankles bound together. There’s something over my eyes and something over my mouth. I can’t see, can’t move, can’t hear anything over the roar of the tires. I tentatively stretch my legs out, first down, then side to side, then up. That and the scratchy carpet against my cheek confirm what I already suspected—I’m in a trunk.

For a moment, I’m almost amused. I’ve become one of those damsels in the legends that I teach about at Georgetown, one of those women in the stories who represents sex or virtue or deceit or any number of things to the gallant knight she’s entreating for help. To complain that these women are passive is to miss the point; they aren’t women at all. They’re symbols, defined by the meaning the knights make of them, recognizable only as the role they play in the knight’s adventure.

And right now, it’s hard not to feel a kinship with those cardboard characters. I’m in this trunk because of the meanings Melwas made about me, even because of the meanings the President and his Vice President have made about me. To Melwas, I’m a thing to be possessed; to Ash and Embry, I’m a living projection of their love and promises.

In other words, I’m being moved around in a story that isn’t my own, and I squeeze my eyes shut against my blindfold and vow that it will not continue. Not even if I have to kill Melwas myself.

I take a minute to calm my thoughts, to keep back the tears that might stop up my nose and keep me from breathing. I’m in a trunk. All modern trunks have trunk releases, right? If I release the trunk and we’re in heavy traffic, then someone will see me bound and gagged and surely I’ll be saved. But if I release the trunk and there’s no one around, then I’m screwed. He or they—whoever is in the front seat—will simply stop the car and shut the trunk again. And maybe hurt me for the trouble.

Which means I need my legs free at least, so I can run, no matter what the scenario.

The clean smell of the trunk carpet hints to me that this is a rental car, which means there’s a chance my captors haven’t been thorough in certain respects. I wriggle—quietly, trying to keep thumping to a minimum—so that my hands find the edge of the trunk carpet, and just as I hoped, it lifts up. Underneath, there will be a cavity where the spare tire and jack are stored, but I don’t care about that. I just want the tools. One tool in particular.