Page 62 of Solstice

“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 entireFianna?”

Siobhan hummed a noise of reluctant agreement.

“What’s theFianna?” 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.”

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