Page 49 of Solstice

“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 wecouldadopt 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?”

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