“Kingsley?”

He turned around.

“I’m proud of you,” Søren said.

Kingsley looked at him and asked the question that had been plaguing him for nine months.

“Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” Kingsley asked. “You knew where I lived, where I was.”

“I wanted to,” Søren said. “I knew you could find me as easily as I could find you. When you didn’t, I assumed you didn’t want to find me.”

“I thought the same thing,” Kingsley said, “that you didn’t want to find me. It’s good then that your Virgin Queen got herself arrested.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“You won’t leave me again, will you?” Kingsley asked.

Søren sighed.

“You keep forgetting...”

“Right. I left you.”

“Will you leave me again?” Søren asked. “Even if we never...”

“No,” Kingsley said. “You’re right. I have all the lovers I could want. It’s friends I need.”

“What about family?”

“I need that even more.”

Søren walked to him, put his arm around him and embraced him like an equal, like a friend. It wasn’t what he wanted from Søren, but he knew it was what he needed.

“I’m still going to try to get you into bed,” Kingsley said as he pulled back and straightened his black tailcoat.

“Do your worst,” Søren said with all his old, cold arrogance, and Kingsley decided then and there he would get Søren back into bed with him even if it killed him.

And considering it was Søren, it might.

Kingsley and Søren walked through the door and found Sam behind the bar.

“Check this out, King,” Sam said. She lined up three champagne flutes. She poured the champagne into the flutes. Once empty she tossed the bottle in a spin and caught it by the neck.

“Tom Cruise can kiss my ass,” she said in triumph.

“Very good,” Søren said. When he reached for his champagne glass, Sam dipped her head and sniffed his arm.

“Sam?” Søren asked.

“Just a second.” Sam pulled back Søren’s sleeve and pressed her nose to his wrist. She inhaled deeply. Kingsley watched in curiosity and amusement.

“Why are you smelling me, Sam?” Søren asked.

“Weird. I don’t smell anything,” Sam said to Kingsley.

“C’est la vie,” Kingsley said over the top of his champagne flute. “Maybe I imagined it.”

“Let’s toast,” Sam said.

“What should we toast to?” Kingsley asked.

“To you,” Sam said.

“Agreed,” Søren said. “To Kingsley. Vive le roi.”

Kingsley swallowed hard and raised his glass.

“To me,” he said. “And my three dearest friends in the world.”

“Three?” Sam asked.

“The bartender, the blond and the booze.”

“And to The Eighth Circle,” Søren said, lifting his glass. “I will beat you for naming it that, one of these days.”

“Counting on it, mon ami.”

They clinked their glasses and drank their champagne. It was the first alcohol Kingsley had tasted in weeks. He’d been drunk on hard work and happiness since Sam had come back to him; he’d needed no other intoxicant.

“Your subjects await,” Sam said. Kingsley downed his champagne and set the flute on the bar. He tugged his vest into place and ran a hand through his hair.

He took a step forward.

“Kingsley?”

Kingsley looked back at Søren.

“Jeg elsker dig,” Søren said.

“I hate it when you speak Danish,” Kingsley said.

“I know you do.”

“Will you tell me what it means?” Kingsley asked, too happy to be more than playfully annoyed.

“It means good luck.”

Kingsley smiled back at Søren, gave a wink to Sam and knew then exactly what to say.

He stepped right up on to the ledge that overlooked the pit below. They’d expected a hundred, maybe two hundred people. Easily five-hundred packed the pit below. He saw financiers, CEOs, artists, entertainers, poets, politicians and plebeians. He saw somebodies and nobodies, and they were all his people. He would guard them with his life. Nine months ago he’d wanted nothing more than to crawl into the bottom of a bottle and drown in the dregs. Now he had before him five hundred reasons to live. And behind him, standing at either side of him, his two most important reasons to live.

The assembled crowd slowly quieted as his presence asserted itself. When at last silence reigned, he smiled down at them and in a loud clear voice spoke one and only one sentence to them all.

“Welcome to the Kingdom.”

42

Somewhere in London

2013

A SOFT SIGH came over the baby monitor as Kingsley finished his story. Grace looked at Kingsley and smiled.

She stood up, crooked her finger at Kingsley, and he followed her up a short flight of stairs and down a darkened hallway. A light was already on in the room—a painted glass hot-air balloon in miniature. The toy lamp cast hues of red, blue, green and gold on to the walls, painting a rainbow of light around Fionn.

“What are you doing up?” Grace asked as she reached over the side of the crib and laid her hand gently on her son’s small back. “Did you know we had company? Someone wants to meet you.”