Page 86 of Solstice

“My bill failed in the Senate. So, there’s that.”

Father sighed, staring out at the river with an expression so like my own. Hell, it was like looking in a mirror sometimes. “Ah.”

“Ah?” I shook my head. Not that he’d ever been a beacon of fatherly wisdom, nor had we ever been very close, but that noise sounded loaded.

He gave me an encouraging nod. “You’re young. You’ve got a lot of time to try again.”

“What if I don’t want to?” The words flew out before I could stop them. Hell, I didn’t even know I felt that way until I said it.

He narrowed his eyes as he considered me, taking a drink of his liquor. “That’s the great game, Ivy.” He shook his head. “You put yourself out there. You do the best you can. They chew you up and spit you back out. The ones who keep going, they’re the ones left standing at the end.”

Far be it from me to take advice from a man who had forced me into this situation, a man who had once chided me for protesting it at all.

“You’re either in this family or you’re not.Exitus acta probat.”

In the days since, time had beaten him down. How long had it been defeating him before that? How many times had this town chewed him up and spit him back out? How many times would it do it to me? Was I so like him that I wouldn’t stop, no matter what? The next time I got caught, the next time someone broke into my house, my cell phone, my laptop, and leaked my secrets to the media? Would I keep going once they knew about Poppy and Carter, once they destroyed my image and my brand and everything to do with my personal life?

I drifted my focus across the crowd to where my mother laughed at something Senator Jacobs said, clutching both him and his wife. I wondered how much of my current situation she was responsible for. She might have forced the breakup with Carter and Miri four years ago and leaked the pictures to the public so I wouldn’t be tempted to call this off in favor of Miri. Had she manipulated my whole life?

More importantly…if I did become her, if I took up the mantle of the Washington matriarch, what would I do to my children? Would I be capable of doing what was done to me for the sake of national policy?

“Are you happy, Father?”

It had been a long time since I’d addressed him as anything other than “Sir,” and he turned to face me with his eyebrows furrowed. “Why would you ask me that?”

I shrugged and gazed up at him, hoping for the cold, honest truth. “Just wondering if you’d do anything differently, if you could do it again.”

“Oh, well.” He sighed and looked down to the ground, swirling his whiskey in his glass. “Of course. Everyone feels that way.”

“Would you marry Mother again?”

He snapped his gaze to meet mine, his features dropping. “Of course, Ivy. It wasn’t just an arrangement. She used to make me laugh.” One side of his mouth pulled into a smile as memories flipped behind his eyes. I’d give anything to put my hands on him and see what he was seeing. But no, those were just for him. Just forthem.“She’s tired.” He shook his head and took another sip. “She thinks the weight of the world is on her shoulders, like she has to fix everything. She doesn’t, and she can’t.”

Anything else he could have said wouldn’t have impacted me nearly as much. I’d been compared to Evelyn my entire life, as she had been compared to her mother and so on before that. Washington women were the backbone of this family, and without us, not even the first George would have done what he did.

It nearly broke my heart. If I didn’t want to be like her, I didn’t have to be. That started with taking a stand—for myself, for my siblings, for my father. And most importantly, for her.

If I was going to sabotage this wedding anyway by inviting a dark fairy king to crash it, then why not go all in?

25

Lex

“Malysh! Malysh!” Aunt Vera wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a hug, kissing the side of my face before licking her thumb and wiping off the lipstick she left behind. It didn’t matter how old I got; I’d always be a little boy around her. “You’re getting married! Such a beautiful thing!”

Vera had always been most comfortable in Russian, so we kept the conversation in her native tongue.I greeted her and turned to Uncle Dmitri, who’d arrived with four or five bodyguards currently roaming the outskirts of the Washington estate.

“Dyadya, good to see you.” I shook his hand, and he pulled me into a big hug.

“Good to see you, too.”He laughed and clapped my shoulder, inhaling his cigar. In the two years since I’d dropped Poppy at his doorstep, he hadn’t aged at all. He was still the big, burly man with the gold chain and the expensive suit.

“Look at you, huh?” He grabbed my chin and gave it a rough shake. “A full grown man now!” Dmitri kissed either side of my face before turning to the crowd. “Where’s my beautiful sister?”

My mother, Anna, appeared with my father, throwing out her arms so she could embrace her sibling. I didn’t know the last time they’d seen each other, but it had certainly been longer than it had for me.

“There she is!” Dmitri kissed my mother and hugged her tight.

“So happy you two could make it.” Mother and Vera talked about their trip in, and Dmitri asked my father about a foreign policy the emperor wanted to push through. I sensed my presence was superfluous, so I tried to take a step back, figuring we would catch up about my previous request later. My uncle put his hand on my shoulder to stop me.

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