Page 51 of Solstice

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?”

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