Page 71 of Solstice

“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?”

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