Page 63 of Solstice

“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.

19

Lex

Iplanned to personally see to Theo’s last requests. He’d been required to create a will when he started working for me, and now that I was pretty sure he was dead, I wanted to make sure his family was well taken care of. Did it make me a monster that I couldn’t do more for him? Maybe. But I had the rest of the world to think about.

“It’s about time.” Poppy crossed her arms and squinted her eyes. We were in the woods where I normally met her for lessons, far away from the prying eyes of Washington high society. “I’ve only been waiting forty-five minutes.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t take that tone with me.”

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