Page 2 of Solstice

Standing here today, I’d drown you in the Boston Bay myself if it meant I’d get my son back.

He’d told me that once, but even that was my fault because I’dmadehim confess. It was the only way I’d ever gotten the truth out of him.

I sighed and shook my head.If only Marcus were here.If only Marcus were the one to marry Ivy instead. If only Marcus had been the one in Ireland, the one at those ruins, gifted with the ability to make anyone tell the truth.

Despite the scandal.

What would Marcus have done if he were me? What would have happened if the golden child had been cursed by fairies and doomed to live a life he didn’t choose?

It doesn’t fucking matter.

Marcus was dead, and I inherited this mess. Even if my father continued to be disappointed I’d lived, neither of us could change that. I stabbed out my cigarette and immediately lit another one.

“Alexei,” my mother said. “I wish you would stop that filthy habit.”

“We’re all wishing a lot of things right now.” I drew a deep, soothing inhale.

My father let out a displeased sigh and scowled. “You’ll never change, will you?”

I shot my gaze to his, horrible things threatening to spill over my lips.

“Still that same petulant boy,” he continued. “Angry at the world for no good reason.”

No good reason.

“Is that what you think?” I blew out smoke. “That I’m angry for no reason?”

“You decided a long time ago you weren’t going to be happy, and you’ve been living to spite me ever since.”

I cleared my throat. Well, it wouldn’t have been my wedding day if my father hadn’t found some way to rip out my guts and eat them in front of me. He had no fucking clue what waited for us out there. He had no idea what monsters lurked in the trees, biding their time for the right opportunity to strike.

This was so trivial, so fucking unimportant. I had a thousand other things to worry about—an evil fairy king, reuniting my family, making sure this realm stayed safe. And this? This is what addles the mind of the president of the United States?

I tried not to laugh. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“We’re almost ready for you,” Marcia, the wedding planner, said, sticking her head into the room.

“We’ll see you downstairs.” My mother gave me another tearful kiss as my father turned to walk away, barely an acknowledgment for his surviving son.

After they were gone, Jon winced and then sighed. “If it helps, I’m certain things went about as well with my parents in the bridal suite.”

I started to laugh, but as the sound came out of my mouth, a heaviness settled in my gut. Power shifted in the air, magic coalescing on my tongue. It reminded me of…

No. Not yet. It’s not time.

I need to find Ivy.

I raced across the suite to open the door, but Ivy’s sister, Kit, grabbed the handles from the other side and swung them open. She startled back a few steps when she came face-to-face with me.

“Lex, I need your help.” She shifted her icy blue eyes from me to Jon and back again. “It’s Ivy.”

Then she took off down the hallway.

Act I

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,

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