Solstice (Midsummer #3)

15. Lex

15

Lex

MARCH

W hen Miri told us about the king, I changed my perspective. He had probably fucked with our lives in other ways. Were we all victims without knowing it? We needed more information, and we had precious little time to find it. Miri flew home shortly after leaving Maine, but Ivy and I reached out to Poppy once we were back in DC.

“I’ve never tried it before.” Poppy crossed her arms and shrugged. She’d teleported here a few minutes ago and now she sat on the couch in Ivy’s office with her hair in long braids down either side of her body. She must have grown another six inches in the week since I’d last seen her. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“Do you think that’s why the king would want you?”

Again, she shrugged. “My lady said he wanted to kill me, not use me.”

“Did the queen ever use you?” Ivy asked.

“Yes.” Poppy nodded. “But not without asking.”

“But not to go back in time?” I narrowed my gaze on her as she shook her head. She wasn’t lying, at least not that I could sense, but that didn’t mean she was telling us the complete truth.

“Thank you for feeling safe enough to share that.” Ivy kissed her on the temple and stood, turning to me on the other couch.

“If either of them comes looking, the king or the queen, you’ll tell us, right?” Ivy asked, seemingly expecting the girl’s agreement.

Poppy met my eyes with a smile and nodded. But something about the grin seemed fake, and that piqued my interest. Poppy was smarter than she seemed, and sometimes, I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to turn into some kind of hell-monster, set on killing us all. It took a lot to convince myself she was just a little girl who needed a family, and even then, I kept myself guarded.

I wanted to love Poppy as much as the others, and maybe it made me an asshole to admit I didn’t, that until all of this was over, I couldn’t trust her completely. Well, fuck it. Fine. If it made me the bad guy, I’d be the fucking bad guy. We shouldn’t have brought her here in the first place, and every second that ticked by was another that the king could find her and kill us for taking her.

“Thanks,” Ivy said. “How are things at Vera’s?”

Poppy said things were okay and talked about Ursula, but my thoughts drifted elsewhere, to what this could mean. Of course, I had the initial gut reaction any other person might have: ask her to go back and change something to see what happens. Maybe stop Siobhan from giving us this gift. Stop our parents from forcing us together. Stop Marcus from going out on that boat.

But c’mon, I’d seen Back to the Future . I knew fucking with time had serious consequences, most of which made my head spin. Still, it posed the question, if I could save Marcus and marry Miri and never ask anyone for the truth again, would I?

It was a compelling thought, if only because I didn’t know my answer. If Marcus hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have gone to London. And if I hadn’t gone to London, I never would have had that night with Carter. I might not have met Miri. Ivy would have happily ended up with Marcus, and Carter likely would have been a footnote in both our stories.

Sitting there in my living room with my fiancée and her kid, I wasn’t sure I would change it. I missed my brother. I always would. I loved Miri, and if I had the chance, I’d marry her in a heartbeat. But I’d once told Ivy that there were worse people I could end up with, and I’d meant it. We had come a long way since those ten-year-old children wrestling backstage at her mother’s inauguration. I wasn’t sure I would trade that for anything else, and I definitely wouldn’t trade our time at Solstice for a life where she married my brother instead.

Once upon a time, I might have, but now, I couldn’t stand it if Ivy hated me again. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hated her. We’d grown so much. We’d done so much. I used to wish it would have been me who died instead of Marcus. Today, I thanked my lucky fucking stars it wasn’t.

“Knock knock,” came the voice from behind me, and I sat up, a small twist of panic seizing my gut at the sight of Ivy’s little sister.

“Abigail?” Ivy pushed to her feet. “What are you doing here?”

“You said to come over for brunch.” She looked at Poppy, eyebrows furrowing. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Poppy,” she said, her smile wide, her hand out in front of her to take Abigail’s.

“She’s my cousin,” I said. “On my mother’s side.”

“Oh.” Abigail seemed delighted, her gaze brightening. “I didn’t know you were having family over. You should have told us. Mother would have wanted?—”

“No,” Ivy cut in. “It wasn’t a planned thing, and you shouldn’t tell Mother she was here.”

Abigail’s smile faltered, but she nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

“How are you related?” Poppy asked, likely to be polite. She already knew everyone in Ivy’s family from the pictures around our place.

“My sister,” Ivy said.

Poppy nodded, her grin growing wider the longer she looked at Abigail.

“Well, I’ll take Poppy and leave you two alone.” I nodded toward the exit, and Poppy stood to follow, but she paused when she got closer to Abigail.

“Nice to meet you,” Poppy said, eyes twinkling. “So very nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, likewise.” Abigail gave us a wave before turning her attention to her sister.

Poppy practically skipped down the hall to the stairs and into the family room, plopping in front of the fireplace. “She seems nice.”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t buy the innocent act. “Keep Ivy’s siblings out of this, you understand? They don’t know about you. They don’t know about the king or the queen or any of that shit.”

Poppy pursed her lips, seeming to mull this over before responding. “Don’t you think they should?”

“Their ignorance keeps them safe.”

“When the king comes, he’ll go for your family first.”

I paused, analyzing her words. Of course, I’d been thinking that myself, but what would prompt Poppy to say it? And what the fuck were we supposed to do about it? I couldn’t see a situation in which we sat our extended family down and explained what happened to us in Ireland: how we’d been marked, how we’d stolen a child from Faerie and crossed interdimensional space to bring her here. Where does someone even begin that mindfuck of a story?

Maybe one day it would come to that, but we weren’t there yet, and I prayed we never would be.

“Especially if I’m still living with Dmitri when he does,” Poppy added.

“What do you suggest?” I raised my eyebrows, but she didn’t say anything else, just sat in front of the fire and poked at it with the metal rod. “Yeah, I don’t have any better ideas, either.”

“Tell everyone I’m adopted from Russia. Let me live here with you. We can protect each other.”

“Even if I could do that”—I sat down next to her and leaned back on my hands, letting the warmth from the flames wash over me—“you don’t want to live with us. Our lives are messy and complicated.”

“I’m a human child born in a fairy realm. I can cut through space and time. I’m okay with messy and complicated, thanks.”

I snorted. Quick as a fucking whip, this one . “You’ve been living with the Romanovs too long.”

“That’s my point, stupid.”

Now that Ivy was elected and we planned to get married, maybe we could adopt her. That would certainly bring her close enough for me to keep an eye on her until I trusted her. It’d be easy to make up some cover story and pay to have her past well hidden. She could be our daughter for real.

When the king got out, he’d come for us. We already knew that, and if Miri’s memory was real, he took Poppy no matter what. Perhaps there was no point in trying to hide her. Maybe this was pointless from the beginning.

If Poppy had a brain behind those eyes, then why weren’t we using it? We should have been trying to teach her how to protect herself, how to use her fairy gifts to her benefit. We needed to stop denying her part in this. The king would come for her, and she needed to be ready.

“Let me work on it,” I said. Maybe I could convince Ivy to talk to her mother. Maybe I could bullshit my way through the fallout now that we had our own foothold in politics. “Poppy, how often do you practice your gifts?”

She shrugged. “I teleport most nights.”

“But you’ve never tried to mess with time?”

She shook her head.

“I want to make a deal with you,” I told her, leaning in so no one else would hear us.

That intrigued her, and her tiny features screwed up into confusion as she mirrored my pose. “What deal?”

“You’d have to trust me.” That would take a lot. I never wanted to bring her here, and now that she was, I had to recognize she was a liability. But, likewise, so were we to her.

“Hah.” She laughed and rolled her eyes. “To quote you, why the fuck would I do that?”

I chuckled hearing her high-pitched childlike voice say curse words. Maybe in this world, she was only twelve, but Poppy was no child.

“I think the king is already in this realm,” I told her. “I think he’s coming for you, and I want you to be able to protect yourself when he does.”

Poppy looked at me, furrowing her eyebrows. “We’re stronger together.”

“I know.” I nodded, conceding her point. “But you may not have a choice, you understand? You may have to go with him to save yourself.”

“I don’t want to go with him.” Poppy shook her head and glanced back to the fire. “I won’t.”

“I know that, too.” I leaned in closer, whispering now. “You might have them fooled, but not me. I think you’re smarter than that, and I think you’ve been hiding something from us for a while.”

She swallowed but didn’t comment on my accusations.

“I think when the time comes, you’ll know what you have to do, and I think you’re strong enough to do it.” I leaned back, silent as I stared into the fire. The conversation died between us and in that silence, I felt a bargain strike, unspoken but mutually agreed. We were family because we were part of the same story, and even if neither of us liked it, we needed each other.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Meet me here tomorrow at lunchtime.” A plan formed in the back of my mind, one that would help me sniff out whatever Poppy was hiding from us while preparing her for what would come next.

* * *

I didn’t know how this was going to go, but I figured I had to give it a shot. No one else knew we were meeting. Ivy had gone out with her sisters, and I had the whole place to myself.

This plan had been forming ever since Miri showed us the memory of Alberich saving her from the car crash. I put myself in the shoes of the egomaniac that had been terrorizing Faerie for eons. I imagined living my thousand millennia as the strongest, scariest thing in the world, only to be replaced by a human child that could manipulate space and time. Poppy was powerful, quite possibly more so than the king or queen combined. Fear could be a great motivator, and if I were him, I’d want to kill it, too. Hell, I’d do worse if I thought it would protect my realm, hence the reason I wanted to leave her right the fuck where we found her.

Given that, if I were an immortal being that had broken out of Faerie into a different realm with unknown rules, I’d bide my time. I’d wait for the most opportune moment, or perhaps, in his case, the most ostentatious moment. I’d watch my prey meticulously to learn their habits and search for their weaknesses.

The fairy king wasn’t one to sneak in and do the deed quietly. No. On Samhain, he had made a grand show of invading the queen’s quarters after her night of rituals. He’d waited until she was weakest, until she was distracted, and then he’d shown up with his forces and easily brought her to her knees.

The wedding.

That’s when I’d do it.

That would be the biggest, flashiest time to announce his presence, and that gave me loads of ideas.

All this time, I’d been insisting we should draw him out, make him fight him on our turf. I didn’t know how yet, but we had fairy gifts and Miri had been keeping him out with hers. That meant he wasn’t impervious to them. He could be contained. Once that spider in my mind started turning this nugget over in its web, my plot solidified while I waited for Poppy to show up.

Finally, the space around me shifted and a loud zap echoed through the air. She appeared in the living room, her hands crossed behind her back as she eyed me suspiciously.

“I’m here.” She took a step toward me and swallowed, glancing around to ensure we were alone.

“Thank you for coming.”

She nodded. “I’m still not sure what you think you’re going to tell me that I don’t already know.”

“I want you to practice.” I gave her a knowing look. “If you can control it, he can’t use it against you.”

She narrowed her gaze. “I already told you, I can’t go back?—”

I cut her off. “What if I told you I knew that you could?”

“Because the king is at Miri’s car crash?” Poppy rolled her eyes. “He’s the king. He can do all kinds of dark magic.”

“Yesterday, I said I wanted to make a deal with you. I’m trying to get the paperwork to bring you here permanently.”

Her eyes widened, her hands coming to a clasp in front of her chest as excitement flushed through her.

“That’s not part of the deal. I tell you that so that you know I’m serious about what I’m going to say next.” I stood and walked toward her, keeping my voice calm and level as I spoke. When I met her gaze, I didn’t see the child we’d brought home two years ago. I saw an ancient soul, someone that had lived multiple lifetimes and kept her secrets closely guarded for the doom they could unlock if anyone knew them. “I’ll help you survive the king. I’ll work with you to figure out the breadth of your gifts, but I expect loyalty in return.”

She straightened when I said the word, tilting her chin up to face me. “Loyalty.”

“Yes. If I find out you’re working for Alberich behind our backs?” I shook my head. “Poppy, I’ll do anything to protect my family. You understand that?”

Was she too young to pick up my threat? Was I mistaken when I believed her to be older than she appeared? When she nodded and pursed her lips, she confirmed my suspicions. She understood everything I said and didn’t say perfectly.

“If you turn me over to the king or betray me, I won’t hesitate to use what I know against you.” She steeled her tiny jaw and shot daggers at me from behind that brown gaze, saying so much with that one expression. If I betrayed her, she’d do the same. She knew where we lived; she knew where our secrets were buried. She could ruin us with barely any effort.

That should have shocked me. I hadn’t expected her to reciprocate the threat, but now that she had, I respected her more than I thought I ever would.

“This is our secret, then?” I held my hand out to her, and she took it, hers so small and infantile in mine.

“Yes.” She gave our clasped hands a firm shake.

“Good.” I cleared my throat and took a step back. “Let’s begin.”

“How?” She sat down on the couch and crossed her legs up under her body.

How indeed. I had a couple of different things I wanted to try, but the one I thought might work the best was meditation. When I’d been trying to figure out how to manipulate my gift, being able to focus my thoughts and control my breathing had done wonders. Perhaps she could start there.

“Close your eyes.”

She did, and I turned on a guided session I’d downloaded from an app. I didn’t claim to be a great Zen master of controlling my worst impulses. I smoked like a chimney, fucked my spouses multiple times a day, and once upon a time, I’d consume anything put in front of me. These days, handling my emotions meant I didn’t accidentally make people tell me the worst things they’d ever done, so I’d learned some control.

“This isn’t working,” Poppy said, five minutes in. “I’m not going to travel through time by breathing. If I could do that, I would have done it already.”

“Try harder.” I restarted the session, and this time, she managed to sit through most of it before giving up.

“This is stupid.” She crossed her arms and opened her eyes, staring incredulously at me. “My mind is already focused and centered.”

“Really?” My curt tone made her glare. Agitated with her lack of cooperation, I decided to shift tactics. Seeing her stubborn cheeks get red and puffy gave me another idea. “What are you going to do if the fairy king guts Carter right in front of you?”

She squinted her eyes and twisted her lips in disgust. “He won’t.”

“He might.” I shrugged, continuing. “He might take Ivy and break every bone in her body while you watch.”

“Stop it.” Poppy’s eyes pooled with tears. “You won’t let him.”

I threw my hands up. “I might be dead.”

“Lex, stop.”

“I might try to kill Alberich only to have him rip me apart and force you to witness every fucking part.”

Poppy surged to her feet and stomped the ground, her hands in fists at her side. “Fuck you, Lex! I didn’t come here to listen to this.”

“Yeah?” I stayed as calm as I could, knowing this was the right avenue to take. The more upset Poppy got, the more the air around her shifted. It charged with her fury, growing electric the longer it went on. “Why’d you come here?”

“You wanted to make a deal.”

“Yeah, and you promised to be loyal to me.” I kept going, knowing any second, she’d break. “How are you going to be loyal if you can’t even do what you were created to do?”

The slap stopped me, and not because it hurt. Yeah, I deserved it, but the second her hand collided with my face, the world around me moved. I fell back on my ass, landing in the mud on the side of a river. All the oxygen whooshed out of my body, and it took a few seconds before I could force my lungs to inhale again.

“What the fuck?” I croaked, holding up my hands to shake off the crud, trying to push to my feet. Nausea rolled through me, arching up my throat, and if it weren’t for the fresh air blowing in my face, I would have yakked all over the place.

Poppy stood next to me and groaned, wiping her palms off on her jeans. “What happened?”

“What do you mean? You took us to some random fucking shitho—” I stopped myself because I recognized this place. We were standing on the shores of the Charles River in Boston, and out in the middle of the water, rowing teams sporting Harvard sweatshirts sailed past us.

“I feel really weird, Lex.” Poppy grabbed her head with one hand and twisted her fingers into mine with the other. “That wasn’t normal.”

I took a step closer to the water’s edge, narrowing my gaze on someone at the end of the last boat, his dark hair shimmering in the light. I hadn’t seen my brother in eight years, but fucking hell, I’d still recognize him anywhere, even this far away.

My heart dropped into my gut. My knees shook. My head got so foggy, I thought I’d fall over any second.

“Lex, we need to?—”

Between one breath and the next, the world whooshed around me, splitting me apart and putting me back together again. My molecules soared, twisting and reforming and, God, it hurt in places I didn’t even know existed. When we were back in my living room, every nerve in my body revolted. I hunched over and vomited in the middle of the vintage Persian rug Evelyn had insisted we take from Mount Vernon. I didn’t know if it was the shock of seeing Marcus again or the absolute blinding agony of ripping through time. But whatever happened to me, I couldn’t pick myself up from that spot. I lay face down on the floor, tears streaming over my cheeks, trying to suck air into my lungs to restart my aching, bleeding heart.

Marcus, my soul cried. Marcus.

“Are you okay?” Poppy’s tiny, cold hands gripped my shoulder, bringing me back to reality. “Lex?”

I nodded and rolled to sit up, rubbing my trembling hands over my face. “Jesus fucking Christ, that was him.”

“Who? You knew those people?”

“My brother.” My voice shook as I tried to process it. “You took me to see Marcus.”

Realization sank into her eyes, her childlike features dropping. “Are you saying it worked?”

“Yeah, Poppy.” I nodded. “Yeah, it fucking worked.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket, indicating a number from New England, and a tremble of excitement went down my spine. Ignoring the implications of what had just happened with Poppy, I climbed to my feet and lumbered into the next room so she didn’t hear me.

“Hello?”

“Lex, it’s Victor.” He cleared his throat. “Siobhan is in DC, and she’s asking for you, all four of you. The whole gift must be present.”

I paused, playing out the scenarios in my head. This could be a trap. If I were the king of fairies and I wanted to lure out the people who had hidden an abominable child of space and time, I’d use Siobhan as bait.

She was the one who had our answers. She could get rid of the gift. She could make this all go away. At the very least, I could finally get the truth out of her, assuming my gifts worked on the one who gave them to me.

“Why all of us?”

“I don’t fucking know, do I?” Victor let out a frustrated sigh. “You asked me to call if she showed up. I did. She wants to talk to you. So go see her, ya wee bloody bastard.”

And he hung up on me.