Solstice (Midsummer #3)

20. Ivy

20

Ivy

L ife didn’t stop just because Alberich may or may not be after us. I still had to report to Congress and stroke the egos of my colleagues so they would consider passing my bill through the Senate. I put on the fake smile and shook all the right hands. I made videos for social media and took time out of my day to answer questions live. But at night, when the politics were over, I went home to my husbands, who plotted and schemed with Siobhan, Finn, and Donnelly.

“The timing needs to be perfect,” Lex said. “If you can’t get the army back in time for the wedding, we’re screwed.”

“If the Fianna’s not there in time for the wedding, assume we’re dead.” Donnelly stabbed his cigarette out and immediately lit another one.

“Don’t listen to him,” Siobhan said. “Don’t assume anything until you see it with your own eyes.”

“Even then,” Finn added, “question it. We’re dealing with powerful beings that have no hang-ups about squashing tiny humans like you.”

Siobhan smacked his arm. “You’re scaring them.”

“They should be scared, Banshee,” Donnelly said. “This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”

Finn pursed his lips and shrugged. “Maybe third stupidest. Calgary was a clusterfuck.”

“You said you’d never talk about that again.” Donnelly pointed at him while Siobhan sighed and looked between me and Lex.

“This is a long shot, Ivy.” She patted my shoulder. “But I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

She said it to give me reassurance, and the fact a banshee didn’t have a bad gut instinct about our plan gave me a spark of hope. I should have said something about invading the king’s mind. I hadn’t been completely honest with them, and holding on to this information didn’t do anyone any good.

If he could reverse the connection, he could see us right now. He could be watching. Of course that had occurred to me, but I had to believe I could control who entered my mind and who didn’t. I believed I would feel it if that sort of tether opened up, just like I had that night with the dream. So, I stayed quiet. I kept it to myself, holding it in my back pocket in case I needed to pull it out at the last minute.

That conversation had been four days ago, and the day after that, Siobhan left to go find her sister. Finn was finally healed enough to head north with Donnelly. Carter had rented a room in a hotel a few blocks away to keep up pretenses, but he spent most of his time at our house. Tonight was the last night he’d be in town before he left to go on his press tour.

“I hate this part the most,” I said. Lex was sound asleep next to us, the long days at the office catching up to him. “The anticipation of the next morning.”

Carter held me tighter and kissed the top of my head. “It’s only for a little while.”

“It’s always too long.”

“I’m worried about you, Weeds.” Carter kissed my forehead and wrapped his arms around my torso, pulling me in close to him. “Talk to me.”

What could I say? My mind had connected to the king’s, and in that intimacy, I’d seen things I shouldn’t. I didn’t know what this meant for all of us, and between everything else, I was falling apart. My upcoming nuptials were approaching faster than I wanted, my bill was unlikely to pass through the Senate, and we had no idea what was going on with Miri. She had all but stopped taking my calls.

I knew how I looked. I saw it in the mirror every morning, the bags under my eyes, the loose clothes hanging off my bones. If I stopped to let myself think about it, I’d lose my composure and never get out of this bed again. So I couldn’t stop. I didn’t stop. I worked until I was exhausted, and if I had a spare moment, I focused on Poppy or Abigail or research.

“You don’t have to bear this alone.” Another kiss to the side of my neck. “I’m here. Let me share it with you.”

Whether it was his words or the years of trust and intimacy between us, I turned in his hold and wrapped my arms around his waist, tucking my head under his chin.

“It hurts when she’s gone.” I let myself sink into despair for a moment, here in the dark with Carter where I was safe. “She made me swear to never let her stay away for too long, and now she’s acting like none of this matters. I don’t understand what went wrong.”

“She misses you just as much.” Carter pressed his lips to the side of my temple and held me tighter. “I’m sure of that.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“No, but…I know her well. So do you. This is her grandparents, nothing more.”

The affection in his tone made me look up at him, balancing my chin on his sternum. “I would burn it all down for either of you.”

“I know.”

“I’m teetering on the brink of doing that,” I whispered, terrified saying the words any louder would cause my utter collapse.

“What do you mean?” Carter looked between my eyes, perhaps searching for the truth. “Are you gonna stalk into Kensington Palace and demand to see her?”

I searched his gaze for sincerity. “Do you think that would work?”

“No.” He furrowed his brows like he couldn’t believe I was serious.

“Carter, it’s more than her family. There’s something else going on, I can feel it.” I’d been feeling it ever since I went inside her mind to find the truth about the king. Something had been kept from her, just like the car accident. Something that was slowly eating its way through her soul. Despite the distance between us, whatever it was had infected me, too.

When we made that vow in the woods, the four of us had been linked on more than a physical level. Each of their souls echoed in my bones, in my molecules. I had been inside their minds. We were soul mates in a million different ways. The fact she was hiding from me meant something, and it didn’t have to do with what those cunts in the media printed about us.

I believed Miri would let hell freeze over before she’d willingly be separated from us, the ones who loved her the most. She’d made me swear never to let this happen again. So whatever was keeping her away this time, it was bigger than her family, bigger than all of this.

“They’re keeping her prisoner or she’s sick or”—my voice shook at the possibility—“something, Carter. It’s something.”

“Shh.” He leaned down to kiss me, wiping away my tears with his thumbs. “She’s okay, Weeds. She’s okay.”

I stopped to pull back and look at him. “Would she tell you if she wasn’t?”

He nodded and answered without hesitation. “Yes. She would.”

He hummed and put his finger under my chin, forcing me to look up at him. Indigo eyes shined with that eternal light Carter always emanated. It had been the thing that attracted Lex to him in the first place. I’d seen that memory so many times that it had sort of become my own, almost as if I was there with them that night.

“What’s going on with you?” Carter whispered, leaning down to kiss my lips.

I sighed and sat up, pulling away from him. “What do you mean?”

“Lex thinks you’re hiding something.” He raised an eyebrow. “I told him that couldn’t possibly be true. We don’t keep secrets from each other anymore. Isn’t that right, Weeds?”

I bit my bottom lip as heat blossomed up my body. Leave it to Carter to sneak past my defenses. All he had to do was make me limp and pliant with oxytocin.

“He’s hiding something, too.” I narrowed my eyes at my husband. “I see him and Poppy sneaking around, whispering to each other in dark corners.”

“Aren’t you happy they’re getting along?”

No, something wasn’t right. The king’s voice echoed from the depths of my subconscious. Suffer in silence, suffer in solitude. Then you will know the pain you have caused.

That had been the curse he used on the queen. I’d had my chance to tell Siobhan and the others, but when the time came, I sat there like nothing was wrong. I went along with this idiotic plan because, for some reason, the thought of telling them the truth terrified me more.

Suffer in silence, suffer in solitude.

Earlier, I had opened my mouth to say something when Carter asked Poppy if she’d seen the queen. Poppy said she hadn’t, and Lex gave her a look that seared itself into my memory. She was lying and he knew it; I saw it in his eyes. Yet, he hadn’t said anything. Not then, and not since then.

Why?

The only reason I could think of was that he had an ulterior motive. He’d proposed we lure Alberich out at the wedding in an attempt to get him on our turf, under our control. Out of all the other scenarios, why that one? And why had he been so sure of it? The answer, of course, was obvious. Lex had been plotting and scheming on his own while appearing to go along with ours.

“It’s more than that.” I took a deep breath and rolled so I sat on top of Carter’s pelvis, my knees on either side of his hips. His hands went to my thighs, rubbing his thumbs over my skin in a gentle caress. “He won’t let me in.”

Carter rolled his eyes and shoved at Lex’s sleeping form. “You two are ridiculous.”

“Wait, stop,” I said, but it was too late.

“What?” Lex grunted, not bothering to lift his head.

“What are you doing with Poppy?” Carter asked.

That got Lex’s attention, and he pushed upright, whipping his head around to face us. “What?”

Carter looked back at me. “Both of you. The truth.” When neither of us said anything, he cleared his throat and forced the issue. “Now.”

Lex sighed and sat up, scooting back against the headboard and reaching for his cigarettes.

“I’m inside the king’s head,” I said, deciding to bite the bullet and go first. Lex’s incredulous gaze met mine and I held it, knowing he had his own skeletons to air out. “The night we found Siobhan, he wrapped a tendril around my throat and—I don’t know. I saw things.”

Carter ran a hand over the back of his head and let out a breath. “Fucking hell.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you say anything?” Lex said.

“We need to call Siobhan and tell her,” Carter added.

“No,” I said, every impulse I had balking at that idea. “Look, it’s not that I don’t trust them. I just…I think we should keep this between us for now, just until we know what it means.”

Lex shook his head and stared at me with his incinerating gaze. “Is he watching us right now?”

“I—” I started to deny it, but I didn’t want to lie to them, not anymore. My chest felt lighter the more I spoke, the burden not as heavy now that they knew, too. “I don’t know. I can usually tell when my mind has been infiltrated. This feels different.”

“How?”

I grabbed their hands and showed them everything, all the disorganized mess that had dumped into my mind’s eye. I’d been able to see memories the king thought were tucked away forever. When Alberich choked me, I’d latched on to a piece of him that he didn’t know still existed inside of him.

Just as I went to pull away from Lex and Carter, I got a hint of a memory from Lex I hadn’t seen before. It was recent. One of him and Poppy…and Marcus? My curiosity got the better of me and I remembered that look in Lex’s eyes when Siobhan brought it up earlier in the night. I wanted to dig deeper, but Lex yanked away, slamming the door between our mental connection so hard, I gasped.

“What the fuck was that?” Carter’s indigo gaze cut to our husband.

“Was that Marcus?” I couldn’t believe it. I just…I couldn’t fucking believe it.

Lex ignored our questions, narrowed his gaze at me, and twisted his lips into a sneer. “I thought we were asking before we went skipping through each other’s minds.”

I climbed out of bed, needing to be on my feet for this conversation. “Was that Poppy and Marcus?” Venom rolled through my veins, my naked body flushed with the heat of our argument. “Did Poppy take you back in time?”

“Yes,” he admitted, hanging his head. “I’ve known she can do it for a while.”

“A while?” It erupted out of me in a growl. I could have clawed his eyes out.

He confessed what he’d been up to, that he’d been working with Poppy to hone her skills. “She can control it. She can manipulate him with it.”

If I could kill people with my mind, Lex would have been burned to ash on the spot. The fury radiating in my body could have brought a weaker man to his knees. Truth be said, I had been hiding an H-bomb of a secret myself. When he sent his frustration right back at me, I allowed it because fuck…we were two fucking peas in a pod.

“If she can control it, she’s a weapon he can use against us.” I tried to keep my voice low, but arguing with Lex always brought out a different side of us both.

“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” Lex found his sweatpants and slid them up his legs. “Poppy will follow my plan because she loves you both. Now that Siobhan is involved, even better.” He ran a hand over his hair, brushing it back from his face with a tired sigh.

“What’s your big plan, huh? Train her up and send her to him like bait?”

When Lex didn’t answer, my heart sank into my gut. I had to get to Poppy. I had to stop her. “How could you put her in danger like that?”

Lex shook his head. “She’s not in danger, not yet. He’ll want to use her against us first. He’ll need to put us in our place, and until he does that, he has to keep her around.”

“That wasn’t up to you to decide.”

“No.” He eyed me with an incredulous glare. “It was up to Poppy.”

I almost accused him of manipulating her, but there was more going on inside Poppy than she let us see. She played the child card, but behind those eyes existed a knowledge I could only guess at. “And she agreed to this, knowing what he might do to her?”

Lex nodded. “She’s got an out. She can teleport anywhere she wants, anytime she wants.”

“What if he turns her against us?”

He made a sad noise and turned to our husband. “Nothing will turn her away from her beloved Carter.”

I looked at Carter, who up until now, hadn’t said a word. He seethed with rage, staring at our husband as betrayal burned behind his red-rimmed eyes.

“How could you do this?” Carter’s voice broke, like he didn’t know how to filter his outrage and stay calm. “How could you do this… to me?”

“Poppy’s lying to you, Chicago,” Lex said, his tone softer. “When we asked her if she’d heard from the queen, she said no. The lie hit me so hard, I almost threw up.”

“So what? She knows where the queen is. She’s keeping herself safe.” Carter pushed to his feet, getting in Lex’s face. “Does that mean she deserves to be used like a pawn in your sick fucking game?”

“This isn’t a game,” Lex snarled, remaining the cold, stoic monster he wanted everyone to think he was. “And in case you haven’t noticed, she’s more powerful than anything anyone’s ever seen. Pretending she’s not will put all of us in danger, including her.”

I couldn’t argue with him. Once again, Lex had been the bad guy for the greater good, the anti-hero in this fucked-up fairy tale, the one that had to fall on the sword so everyone else would be okay.

“You should have told us.” Carter’s jaw squared. “This is about trust. You knew we’d be pissed, that we’d try to stop you. That’s why you didn’t say anything.”

Lex didn’t argue, just redirected his focus to me. “What about her, huh? Your precious Weeds is a fucking sleeper agent for the fairy king. Don’t you think that’s something we should discuss?” His sharp hazel gaze cut right through me.

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Up until now, it’s felt like he’s been invading my mind. This time…I’m invading his.”

Carter swallowed his anger and hung his head between his shoulders. “We’re a family. A team. It’s not supposed to be like this between us.”

“Every family has fights.” Lex tried to take a step toward him, but Carter only wiped away tears and stepped back.

“I guess I ought to come clean, too.” He put his hands on his hips and held my gaze. “I’m going to see Miri while I’m on my tour.”

My heart bottomed out, sinking into the abyss of my aching gut like a boulder. “What?”

“Part of it goes through London. I’ve scheduled a stop at Danae Enterprises on a day that Her Royal Highness is supposed to make a rare public appearance.”

“How?” Lex’s one word held so much anguish, I almost rushed to hug him before remembering I was upset with him.

“My agent is her cousin, remember?” Carter shrugged. “She’s sneaking me in. Miri doesn’t know.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, everything in me growing heavy with his confession. Jealousy flared to life harder than it ever had before, and not for the first time in my life, I wished I could trade places with him. I wished I had what he had with her, that unconditional friendship, that trust that meant he could reach out to her when she wanted to be unreachable to everyone else.

“Tell her I love her,” I whimpered. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her to come home.”

“What a fucking match we all are, huh?” Carter shook his head and sighed. “Keeping secrets and hiding away in foreign palaces.”

“I promised to rescue her from her evil grandmother.” I swallowed the sob that threatened to climb up the back of my throat as I remembered that night. I still wanted to keep it; I just didn’t know how to get to her. This seemed like a viable approach. If I couldn’t go myself, I could send Carter.

He took a step closer, brushing a pinky down the side of my face. “You still might have to. When it comes to our princess, my knight’s heart is no match for your royal one.”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “That’s bullshit. You have your whole California bond. All we have is us ?”

“She’s my soul mate, same as you, Weeds. But she loved you first, and she always has.” Carter turned to Lex and pulled him closer, grabbing our hands in his. “We promised until the end, the four of us. No more secrets. No more lies.”

If my heart could have shattered any more, it would have.

“Promise me,” Carter said, glancing between Lex and me. “We are never going to defeat him if we don’t work together. Promise me.”

“I promise.” Lex nodded, glancing at me with sincerity in his eyes.

“I promise,” I agreed and met it with my own.

We had made this same vow before, God knew. But this time, I meant it. This time, Lex and Carter meant it, too.