Solstice (Midsummer #3)

18. Ivy

18

Ivy

I said I was okay, but someone had taken a sledgehammer to my head, scooped my brain out, blended it, and dumped it back in.

Diana’s laugh and her impenetrable stern gaze, a swell of adoration and unyielding envy burning in the center of my chest.

The glint of the sun shimmering off a ruby ring, my most prized possession, the one I’d spent millennia looking for, the one that would get me out of Faerie once and for all.

Seeing Poppy for the first time and knowing, deep down, she meant something important. She would be my downfall.

I had to destroy her. I had to absorb all that energy. I had to ? —

These weren’t my memories. They weren’t my emotions, and yet, as I tucked myself in Lex’s arms for the drive home, worried about both Siobhan and Finn, I struggled to understand where they’d come from. My stomach churned and my chest tightened, screaming at me that I already knew. There could only be one explanation, but I didn’t want to face it. Not yet.

My heart ached for Theo and his family. I didn’t know if he was dead or gone or if he would find his way back to our house, disheveled and aching from his experience with the king. My conscience slapped with shame. Even though he knew the risks when he signed up to be our bodyguard, I still hated the fact he’d gotten involved in this because of me. We owed him a debt we’d never be able to repay, and my heart hung heavy for his sacrifice.

When we arrived at my townhouse, Lex and Carter hopped out to help Siobhan with Finn, but I recognized the vehicles parked along the alley. My siblings were here.

“Shit.” My voice sounded hoarse, and considering I’d been choked within an inch of my life, I was surprised I could talk at all. I ran my hands over my hair, trying to brush it out of my face, and wiped at the blood under my nose. I was a mess. “It’s my bachelorette party.” I’d completely forgotten. With my upcoming nuptials, trying to get my bill through, going to see Siobhan, and researching any possible way to defeat the king, it had slipped my mind.

“Who’s here?” Siobhan said.

“Kit, Jon, and Abigail.”

She nodded, urging me forward. “It’s okay.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What?”

Finn groaned as Lex and Carter struggled with his weight, but the big fairy somehow managed to get his feet under him. The wound on his chest dripped with shimmery crimson blood, and I winced as I imagined the pain. It likely would have killed a human.

“They’re a part of this, too.” Siobhan gave me a reassuring glance and gestured me toward the door.

“I think the fuck not.” I rebelled against getting my siblings involved, swearing to protect them no matter what. Drawing them into this fairy-tale bullshit would only put them in danger.

“You don’t have a choice,” Siobhan said as a sedan pulled up behind us, the headlights blinding me for a moment. She pushed me behind her, a hand on her weapons, but relaxed when the driver got out.

“Lieutenant,” she said, rushing to jump in his arms.

“Hiya, Banshee,” he said, giving her a kiss. He was tall with dark hair and bright blue eyes, almost glowing in the moonlight. When he lifted his gaze to Finn, his expression sank and he pushed past me to get to the wounded fairy. “Commander?”

Finn could do little more than groan and wince. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“We need to get him inside,” Siobhan said.

I took a deep breath and led them through the yard and up the stairs to the back door, pausing before I opened it. My hands and clothes were covered in my own blood. My hair was a fucking mess, and running my hands through it only made it knottier. The welt around my throat burned from where the king had strangled me.

This was going to suck.

I pushed inside, walking through the kitchen and steeling myself as my siblings came into view. They stood around the dining room table, sipping champagne and laughing with each other. When three sets of eyes landed on me and our new guests, they all froze.

We reeked of defeat. The last several months had been stressful. I’d been working eighty hours a week, sunup to well past sundown, trying to protect Poppy, trying to figure out what happened to us, trying to find Smythe and Siobhan, all while dealing with a media that wanted to chew me up and spit me out. That didn’t even take into account my predominantly male coworkers that didn’t know me or support a damn thing I proposed. After whatever happened with the king tonight, well, I didn’t know how to hide this.

“Ivy?” Abigail balked. “Are you all right?”

“What happened to you?” Jon took a step closer.

“Who the hell is this?” Kit straightened, her eyebrows going halfway up her head as she looked at the crowd of beat-up fairies forming behind me.

“Where can we take him?” Siobhan asked.

“Upstairs,” Carter said, helping her and Donnelly get Finn to the steps.

Lex moved to stand behind me, perhaps sensing what was about to happen. I’d hit a breaking point, and I let out a sound that was half laugh and half sob, startling even myself. Abigail tried to reach out to me, but I’d lost it and couldn’t stand the connection, so I moved away.

“What happened to me?” I laughed harder, unable to get air into my lungs fast enough. “Jesus, Abigail.”

“X.” Lex put a hand on my shoulder, and if I’d been in any right mindset, I would have sobered at the touch. But I was covered in my own blood, and maybe some of Finn’s. The king was out, and the world had officially gone to hell. We were all at risk, even them. Lex wanted to keep this between us, but I couldn’t hold my tongue. I’d officially lost the last part of me that could handle the stress.

They’re a part of this, Siobhan had said. You don’t have a choice.

No, I never had a choice, and neither did they. If I was a part of this, then they were at risk because of me. I had to tell them to protect them. They had to know so they could protect themselves.

I opened my mouth and the last four years spilled out—the affair with Miri at boarding school, Lex and Carter in London, the trip to Ireland. Midsummer. The curse.

“Until the end, we promised.” I held up my hand, showing them the scars as proof. I explained that it hit us again two years later and drove us back together, back to Ireland. I told them about the king and queen on Samhain and Miri’s wall of thistles.

“That’s how we know Poppy.”

Lex put his hands on the back of a chair and hung his head between his shoulders as I went on, unable to stop me but also unable to fault me. Perhaps he knew this would happen. Perhaps we had already waited too long.

“And tonight?” I ran my hands over my face. “Tonight, he came after us and he strangled me.” I pointed to the burn on my neck. “He—” I almost told them he was inside my head, but I paused because I wanted to make sure I hadn’t imagined that before I told anyone. There was no sense in scaring everyone if it turned out to be nothing. “He’s coming after us all. Nowhere is safe. We need to call Miri. We have to make sure she knows.”

No one said anything for a long moment, my heart thundering in my head.

“I know how it sounds,” Lex added, taking a deep breath and letting it out through his nose. “I didn’t want to believe it myself. But the gifts are real. I can tell when anyone’s lying. Carter’s lucky. Ivy can read people’s minds. Miri can grow plants by willing it to happen.”

Kit narrowed her piercing stare on me before she asked, “Have you read mine?”

I sighed. “No, I wouldn’t do that without asking. I try not to, anyway. I can’t always help it.”

Abigail remained quiet, slinking into a chair with a dazed look on her face.

“This is incredible, Ivy,” Jon said.

“It’s horrible,” I corrected. “It’s a goddamned nightmare.”

“You’ve been able to do this for four years?” Kit looked between us. “Is that what all that Siobhan and Smythe bullshit was about?”

I nodded as Carter came back into the room, his eyes sympathetic like he’d overheard what we were talking about.

“The woman who went upstairs,” he said, “that’s Siobhan.”

Kit blinked and glanced toward the steps, a longing expression in her eyes like she wished she’d gotten a better look.

“I’m sorry to rope you into this, but the fairy king could come after you.” I ran my hand over the heated X on my neck. “You could be in danger.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this secret this whole time.” Jon shook his head.

“Who would believe me?” I let out a breath, relieved to finally be able to share this with the people closest to me.

“What’s the plan?” Abigail crossed her arms. “If he’s out, he’s heading here, right? How do we protect the place?”

I admired her tenacity. She really did remind me of a younger version of myself. “My house is warded,” I said, remembering what Siobhan told us earlier in the night. “We’ll be safe for now.”

“We know what he wants,” Lex said, reaching into his pockets for his cigarettes.

“And that is?” Kit looked between us.

“Poppy.” Carter shook his head. “She’s more powerful than us. We’ve been protecting her by hiding her.”

“And Poppy is the little girl you rescued from a fairy realm?” Jon narrowed his eyes, glancing at Carter and Lex as he scratched the back of his head.

“Yes,” Carter said. “It sounds incredible. We didn’t believe it ourselves for a long time.”

“It’s still unbelievable most days.” Lex straightened, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Jon looked at Kit before shifting his gaze to Abigail. She nodded and returned her attention to me. “What can we do to help?”

“Wait, you believe us?” I looked between them, certain that any moment, I’d wake up and this would be a dream. They’d commit me and put me on a psychiatric hold. Once that got out, my mother would never let me leave the house again. My siblings were grounded in reality, as logical as I was, if not more so, especially Jon.

“I don’t think you’d go along with this if it were a stunt,” Jon said. “Neither would Carter or Lex.”

“You look exhausted, Ivy,” Abigail said. “It’s been weighing on you.”

“I’ve known something was up for years.” Kit sighed and pulled half her mouth into a smile. “You should have told me sooner, you fucking loser.”

Tears burned my eyes, and I blinked them back. “Shut up, you fucking twat.”

Kit laughed and stood, coming over to give me a hug. For someone who balked at affection of any kind, she held me tighter than ever. Then, like something out of a corny Christmas movie, Jon wrapped his arms around us, followed by Abigail. We formed a Washington sibling group huddle that broke me to pieces.

I wanted them to stay with us where it was safe, but I couldn’t honestly expect them to move in. I didn’t know where the king was or when he would strike again. Our lives didn’t just stop because some fairy king might be after us. I still planned to go to work the next day… right ?

Fuck, my brain hurt.

“What happens now?” Kit stepped back, looking between me and my husbands.

I took a deep breath at how much my siblings supported me, how much I cared for them and wanted to protect them from all this.

“For right now, we need to rest and recoup.” Lex looked at me, reaching out to take my hand so he could intertwine his fingers in mine. “We’ll ask Siobhan to ward your houses tomorrow. Sleep here tonight.”

“Slumber party!” Abigail threw up her fist. “Fuck yeah.”

“Wait, you’ve known about Siobhan the whole time?” Jon turned to Kit, who rolled her eyes.

“Don’t give me that ‘you always leave me out’ bullshit.”

“But you do!” Jon whined. “You do always leave me out.”

“He’s right; you do always ignore him when he’s around.” Abigail gave Kit an affirmative shrug.

“Okay, first of all,” Kit rebutted. The two of them bickered while Abigail instigated further, but I wanted to go check on Siobhan and Finn. Lex and Carter followed me up the stairs, groans and muttered curses echoing down the corridor from my office. I didn’t know what to do for an injured fairy in the human realm. Did they heal the same way humans did? Should I call a doctor?

When I peeked inside the room, Finn lay stretched across the couch, his head resting on Donnelly’s lap. The darker-haired fairy wiped sweat off his commander’s face with a white rag, holding down his shoulders so Siobhan could stitch up his chest from her spot on the chair next to them.

“Damn it, Banshee. That hurts,” Finn growled.

“Stop being a baby,” Siobhan hissed, yanking at a piece of thread. Where the hell had she found stitches? I didn’t have—no, it wasn’t stitches. It was dental floss. I grimaced when I noticed she was using a sewing needle to yank it through his skin. “I’ve stitched up fledglings who were worse off than you.”

Finn’s once glowing complexion had now faded into a dusty pallor that would indicate near death on a human.

I cleared my throat, and three sets of eyes shifted to me.

“No need to lurk by the door,” Finn weakly muttered. “This is your house.”

“Do you need anything?” Lex took a step around me and glanced at the littered supplies. “I can call for a doctor.”

“He’ll be healed by morning,” Siobhan said.

“We think,” Donnelly muttered.

Siobhan’s eyes lifted, shooting daggers into him when she repeated, “He’ll be healed by morning.”

Donnelly glared back at his counterpart, but didn’t argue.

“Please forgive their poor manners,” Finn struggled to say. “I trained them both better than this.”

“Rest,” Donnelly said, kissing the side of Finn’s head. “You need to conserve your energy.”

Finn groaned and leaned in to the touch as Donnelly’s hand stretched down over Finn’s chest to connect with Siobhan’s. I wondered about their relationship, but I didn’t pry. It wasn’t any of my business.

“We’re all set for right now, thank you.” Siobhan sat up straighter, stretching her back muscles. “You look wrecked. Get some sleep, mates. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Okay,” I nodded and turned to leave, stopping when she called out again.

“Ivy?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t sleep alone, yeah?”

I nodded, noticing she’d said that in front of both Lex and Carter. Neither would let me get away with breaking that agreement, especially not tonight.

* * *

After we showered and dressed for bed, I tried to call Miri again, but it went straight to voicemail. Lex tried after that, and she still didn’t answer. It was early in London, or late depending on one’s point of view, so we promised to try her again once we woke up.

“Princess,” Lex said, “we’re okay, but we have news. Call us. Immediately. Stop fucking around. I love you.” When he hung up, he set his tired stare on me and Carter. Under any other circumstances, I imagined Lex would have wanted to fuck us both before calling it a night. But I didn’t have it in me, and perhaps he could tell that because he simply crawled into bed on my other side. Carter passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Lex only narrowed his eyes at me and licked his lips.

“You should have told us you were going to tell your siblings.” He tapped his cigarette into the dish between us.

“It just came out.” I shook my head and sighed. “I didn’t plan on saying anything.”

He nodded, an echo of something sinister behind his eyes. It was there for a moment and gone, almost like I’d imagined it. I knew Lex better than anyone, and it reminded me of the look he’d gotten earlier tonight when Siobhan had mentioned Poppy. But I was exhausted, so I figured I’d deal with that tomorrow.

Lex leaned down and kissed me before putting the ashtray on the end table and sinking farther down into bed. “You scared the shit out of me tonight.”

I ignored the churn in my stomach. “Yeah, me too.”

He intertwined his fingers with mine, the vows on our hands brushing up against each other as we slid palm to palm. “I can’t do this without you, X.”

“Don’t tease me. I’m tired.” I rolled my eyes and scoffed, figuring this was another sarcastic tease from Lucifer reincarnate, but when he grabbed my chin and forced me to look back at him, I paused.

“I mean it.” He looked between my eyes, his hazel counterparts wide. “Whatever happens next, don’t fucking die on me.”

I grabbed his wrist and tried to slide inside his mind the way I always had, but he put up a shield, something he’d never done before. I furrowed my eyebrows and tried harder, but he broke the contact and rolled over so I couldn’t see his face.

“Get some sleep,” he barked.

As much as I wanted to lay my hands on his skin again and make him show me, he’d had enough for the night. Hell, I’d had enough, too. My body was tired from the fight with the king, so when I finally closed my eyes to give in to unconsciousness, I fell in like an anvil.

My dreams took me back to the woods on Midsummer. The humid air choked me, and the sun radiated as warm and heavy on my skin as it had four years ago. Voices echoed on the wind, and I glanced to my left to see four bodies dance and twirl their way into the ruins. Us. Versions of us from four years ago. Those were hallowed grounds, the walls full of magic we barely understood.

From this perspective, it was like I was looking through the eyes of a bystander. Off in the distance, Siobhan peered from behind a tree, smiling to herself as she watched us. But if I wasn’t in my own head and I wasn’t in Siobhan’s, then whose dream was this? Whose memory was I in?

The answer chafed at me, but I couldn’t quite grab it.

The memories flipped forward and backward, reorganizing in my brain before coming to a stop in front of the queen.

Samhain.

I recognized the platform with the enormous tent on top of it. The king had long since chased us out of the realm, and now he leered over Diana with red cheeks and furious eyes. Except…I was the king, and I looked down his long, narrow nose at the fairy he’d loved for centuries.

“Give her to me,” the king snarled, but the queen only smiled.

“How weak you look”—she shook her head—“storming in here the day after Samhain. All these years, and you’re still so desperate for my attention.”

That set him off. He whispered something in a language I didn’t understand, but I vibrated with his intentions.

Suffer in silence, suffer in solitude. Then you will know the pain you have caused.

He opened his palm and blew a ruby-colored powder in her face. She coughed and rubbed her palm over her nose, sneezing as she scrambled away from him.

It shocked me, and I gasped, a red-hot fury sizzling down my chest, even in sleep. The emotion got Alberich’s attention.

“Ivette? Is that you?”

He closed his eyes, relegating both of us to the darkness of his mind.

“I can hear your human heart racing, Ivette.”

I didn’t know what to do or how to wake up. Certainly, this was a dream. I slept soundly next to Lex and Carter; he shouldn’t have been able to get inside my head. But…he wasn’t. I was in his head. At least, I thought I was.

“You’re smarter than this, Ivette. Give me the child, and all of this goes away.” The dark tendrils of his magic circled the part of me that connected us, caging me in, trapping my arms to my sides. “Give her to me! Give her to me!”

The pressure squeezed. All the air pushed out of my body.

I tried to call for Lex or Carter, tried to reach out for Miri, anyone who could help me. But no one came. No one could. It was just him and me and this strange tether that had formed when he touched me. Now I was dying and there was nothing I could do and this was it, the end of the story, nothing more for Ivy Washington.

Wait, a voice said. My own voice. My own consciousness. Stop panicking…This is a dream , an illusion, nothing more. I am smarter than this.

I reached out for Lex’s presence. Even this deep in sleep, he hummed through my veins as cool as ice. He always had, no matter how many times I’d tried to get rid of him. I latched on to that energy, that manifestation of him inside my soul, and I yanked.

The more I tugged, the more he pulled back. I had no idea if he even knew he was doing it, but it brought me back to reality. My eyes snapped open, and I inhaled a deep lungful of air, running a hand over my face to make sure I was back in my own body.

Calm down. It’s okay.

Soft snores on either side of me confirmed Carter and Lex were still asleep, and that neither of them had been inside my head when that happened. My secret was still safe…for now.

Except when I sat up, Donnelly leaned against the doorjamb with his arms crossed. His bright blue eyes focused on me like a predatory cat’s, glowing with their strangeness and intensity. He pushed upright and nodded toward the hallway as he turned to leave.

Not sure that I would go back to sleep anyway, I extracted myself from Carter’s hold and grabbed my robe from my closet. After shrugging it over my shoulders, I tied it closed and walked down the hallway to my office.

Finn slept on the couch, his wound somehow looking worse than it had several hours ago. Siobhan sat on the other sofa, a blanket over her lap, her hair undone and hanging in soft waves down her shoulders. Big puffy bags hung under her eyes, accenting the grim set to her mouth and making her appear as exhausted as she must have felt on the inside.

Donnelly pointed to the spot next to Siobhan and took his place next to Finn, gently lifting the commander’s head so he could put it on his thighs again. “Sit. Hang out for a while.”

“How’s he doing?” I absently followed his orders, slumping down in the empty seat. Siobhan pushed the blankets over my lap, sharing her warmth with me.

“He’s alive,” she said. “That’s all that matters right now.”

Donnelly narrowed his eyes. “How are you?”

“I’m in better shape than Finn.” I gave him half a smile. “So there’s that.”

“Hmm.” Donnelly looked at Siobhan, who grabbed my hand.

“Have you talked to Poppy?”

I shook my head. “I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. She’ll come when she can.”

Siobhan glanced at Donnelly before swallowing hard and taking a deep breath. “There’s more to the story of her birth, more that I didn’t tell you.”

I raised an eyebrow, silently asking her to go on.

“The night you came to Faerie the first time, the night of the Midsummer festival, that’s the night she was born. She came into the world at the same time you made your vows.”

“What?” I squinted, trying to put the pieces together. “That can’t be true. She’s at least twelve?—”

“Time passes differently on that side of the realm. That Midsummer was the last celebration where the king and queen blessed their union. After her birth, it all fell apart.”

“You said her powers are of space and time.” I looked between Siobhan and Donnelly, hoping one of them would explain.

“And you asked if she could go back in time.” Siobhan pursed her lips. “Care to elaborate?”

It wasn’t my story to tell, but I didn’t see how they could help if they didn’t know all the details. “When Miri met eyes with the king for the first time, it unlocked a memory from her past. He was there the day she got into the car accident that killed her parents. He pulled her from the vehicle.”

Siobhan glanced at Donnelly again.

“That’s not possible.” He absently ran a hand through Finn’s hair.

“His powers are unimaginable,” Siobhan argued.

“We followed him for six hundred years, Banshee. If he could go back in time, don’t you think he would have done that, I don’t know, when Halifax nearly decimated our entire Fianna?”

Siobhan hummed a noise of reluctant agreement.

“What’s the Fianna ?” I looked back and forth between them.

“It’s the king’s army, his most elite soldiers. They were there the night he attacked the queen.”

I remembered. They had nearly caught us when we were running for our lives out of Faerie. We’d only made it because Siobhan found us before they did.

“When we asked Poppy, she said she didn’t know if she could do it.” I rubbed a hand over my tired eyes.

“The next time you see her, bring her to me, please.” Siobhan squeezed my hand in a show of solidarity, and I remembered the twenty-two-year-old girl I’d been when I first met her. How we both had changed since then, how we both had stayed the same.

“I have a question,” Donnelly chimed in. “Where’s Miri?”

I sighed, wondering what was going on with her that she wouldn’t say. She’d been distant the last time she visited, almost like she was keeping secrets again. “She was here just a few weeks ago. She said she couldn’t get away again so soon.”

“Uh-huh.” Donnelly looked at Siobhan again.

“What’s with the secret looks? What am I missing?”

“You share a group gift,” Siobhan said. “You need each other to survive.”

“I realize that.” I rubbed my tired eyes, praying I didn’t have a headache leading into the day. We had a lot of ground to cover, and precious little time to do it. Not to mention my real life. I had meetings and congressional committees to attend. I had no time for fairy nonsense. “She’s the royal princess of England. She can’t just drop everything because you’ve decided to come out of the woodwork.”

“She’s vulnerable by herself, all the way in England,” Donnelly said. “She needs to be here, at least until this is over.”

“What am I supposed to do? Break into Kensington Palace and abduct her?”

“There’s an idea,” Siobhan said.

I rolled my eyes, defeated. “I wasn’t being serious.”

“Why not?” Siobhan balked. “Human women like that kind of shit.”

I scoffed at the utter ridiculousness of that notion. “Yeah, there’s a good headline. Congressional representative abducts British royalty for sapphic fairy war.”

“Fuck the headlines, Ivy,” Siobhan said. “This is about saving both realms from destruction. This is bigger than a stupid trash magazine.”

“I called her,” I said. “She knows we need to be together.”

“That’s not good enough,” Siobhan countered. “If she’s alone for too long, he’ll get to her. He’ll hurt her. He might have already done it.”

I winced at the possibility, all the horrible visions in my mind churning the anxiety in my chest.

“I’ll deal with Miri,” I said. “What happens next?”

“I’m still formulating the plan.” Siobhan pursed her lips, seemingly in concentration. “I’ll have all the pieces in place tomorrow.”

I shivered, remembering the dream I’d had, and looked at Donnelly. He stared at me like he had in my bedroom, like he could see straight through my guards, all the way down to my secret heart.

“The night of Samhain,” Donnelly said, “the king put a spell on the queen.”

Suffer in silence, suffer in solitude. Then you will know the pain you’ve caused.

I cleared my throat and forced the words away. The fact the king had sensed me in his memories terrified me. I didn’t know what that meant. He had always been able to haunt my nightmares, but now that I was haunting his, did that mean he could see more? If I was connected to him, he might be connected to me and…God, this was all so confusing.

“If she’s out,” he continued, “both realms are at risk. Faerie cannot exist without them both, and this realm cannot contain their energy for long. We need to find them, and we need to put them back where they belong.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” I looked between them. “We’re three humans and two and a half fairies.”

“I heard that,” Finn growled, making both Siobhan and Donnelly chuckle.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Donnelly said.

“Your incessant scheming is keeping me awake.” He cracked his eyes open and attempted a smile.

Donnelly grinned, and Siobhan rose to walk closer to her lovers. I recognized the shift in intimacy and my lack of place in it, so I stood to leave. Siobhan stopped me with a hand on my wrist.

“We’ll talk more in the morning,” she said. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

I should have told them about this strange connection to the king. I should have told them about what I’d seen and what his intentions had been when he’d cursed the queen. But I didn’t yet know what it meant or what I should do about it, so I kept my silence and headed back to my room.