Page 95 of Solstice

Lex and I had spent the better part of the night trying to get through the queen’s defenses before we gave up and went back to Mount Vernon. When I still hadn’t heard from Siobhan the next morning, I asked Kit to put out an APB and find her the way she had last time.

“It doesn’t work like that,” she’d told me. “There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

By the rehearsal the next day, I had come to the resounding conclusion this was going to be a disaster. The closer we got to the actual wedding, the more I dreaded it. Despite what Lex thought, by going through with this, we were dangling a shrimp in front of a giant blue whale and daring him not to eat us with the bait.

We don’t know he’ll come. We don’t know what will happen,I tried to tell myself. There was no sense in panicking before I had all the facts.

Speak of the devil…

My sister eyed me from inside the dining room, giving a smile to a few of Lex’s relatives as she walked out onto the balcony next to me. Bodies moved on the lawn below, all of the people hard at work setting up for a wedding that had been twenty-six years in the making.

“I’m still working on it,” Kit said. “When I ran the diagnostic, I found something interesting.”

“Oh?”

She rattled off a bunch of computer jargon that only partially made sense, something about a firewall and leaving a back door open. She could only figure that out because we were in the place where it happened. It had to do with who had screwed with us after Carter and Miri moved to California and who had leaked the photos to the media.

There could have only been one outcome from an affair between us going public, and that was exactly what happened. Miri left me. I hadn’t seen her since. My mother had as much motivation as anyone. But why not out Carter, too? Why only Miri and me?

Hopefully, Kit could find something…anything…to point me in the right direction.

With the queen showing up and the attack from the king, I had forgotten all about the leaked photos. That all seemed insignificant compared to what I worried we might truly be up against. Still, if it turned out to be my mother, my own flesh and blood, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from exposing her. This might be enough to finally push me over the edge, to go public with the way she treated me. Hell, I might as well go public with all of her skeletons.

“Jury’s still out on Siobhan. But I’ll keep trying.”

“Thank you, Kit.” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I owe you.”

“You bet your sweet ass you do.” She winked. “You fucking loser.”

“You insufferable twat.”

She laughed and pulled me into a side hug.

“I saw you talking to a Kennedy yesterday.” I raised an eyebrow.

She shook her head. “Oh, fuckface? Yeah, good conversation. He rattled on about his daddy’s big plans for his political future.” She stirred her tiny straw in her cocktail. “As if I gave a shit.”

I teased, “You’ll never win a husband like that.”

“Hmm, just what I need on top of fairy royalty trying to destroy the world.” She shrugged. “The Kennedy is a distraction. If Mother thinks I’m interested, she won’t meddle, and I can keep minding my business.”

I nodded, but internally I winced. Evelyn wouldn’t care if we knew or what we thought about it. If she did, she wouldn’t have done it. This was all politics to her—our lives, our careers, all part of the Washington brand. That left no room to be an individual, and the pressure had suffocated me all my life. Now, it stifled my siblings.

All of this would be solved if I used my gifts to my advantage, but I couldn’t hide when I was inside someone’s mind, and my mother would be a tough nut to crack. Trying to expose her would expose me, and I still hadn’t figured out how to explain all of this to her.

“Places everyone,” the wedding day coordinator said. I internally groaned and forced a smile, plastering that politician mask on the way I always had.

Off we went, down the stairs to the back lawn, over two thousand chairs lined the grass on either side of the aisle, positioned facing the altar made out of ivy and roses. The Potomac would provide the backdrop to our nuptials as it had for hundreds of Washingtons before me.

The wedding coordinator, Marcia, went over the particulars, where the men should stand, how they should stand, when the ladies should walk down the aisle, how long to wait in between each person.

Kit, Abigail, and I took our places inside the door leading to the basement, waiting for Lex, Henry, and Jon to stand at the altar.

“Has anyone seen the groom’s party?” Marcia put her hands on her hips and trotted off around the corner to find my fiancé. My father stood next to me, and from this angle, hiding behind the stone wall, we couldn’t see the head of the altar or the chairs leading up to it. No one could see us, either.

“Getting through the vows is the worst part,” Father said, patting my hand when I grabbed his elbow. “No one prepares you for standing up there for so long.”

Why would he say that?

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