Page 58 of Solstice

This was going to suck.

I pushed inside, walking through the kitchen and steeling myself as my siblings came into view. They stood around the dining room table, sipping champagne and laughing with each other. When three sets of eyes landed on me and our new guests, they all froze.

We reeked of defeat. The last several months had been stressful. I’d been working eighty hours a week, sunup to well past sundown, trying to protect Poppy, trying to figure out what happened to us, trying to find Smythe and Siobhan, all while dealing with a media that wanted to chew me up and spit me out. That didn’t even take into account my predominantly male coworkers that didn’t know me or support a damn thing I proposed. After whatever happened with the king tonight, well, I didn’t know how to hide this.

“Ivy?” Abigail balked. “Are you all right?”

“What happened to you?” Jon took a step closer.

“Who the hell is this?” Kit straightened, her eyebrows going halfway up her head as she looked at the crowd of beat-up fairies forming behind me.

“Where can we take him?” Siobhan asked.

“Upstairs,” Carter said, helping her and Donnelly get Finn to the steps.

Lex moved to stand behind me, perhaps sensing what was about to happen. I’d hit a breaking point, and I let out a sound that was half laugh and half sob, startling even myself. Abigail tried to reach out to me, but I’d lost it and couldn’t stand the connection, so I moved away.

“What happened to me?” I laughed harder, unable to get air into my lungs fast enough. “Jesus, Abigail.”

“X.” Lex put a hand on my shoulder, and if I’d been in any right mindset, I would have sobered at the touch. But I was covered in my own blood, and maybe some of Finn’s. The king was out, and the world had officially gone to hell. We were all at risk, even them. Lex wanted to keep this between us, but I couldn’t hold my tongue. I’d officially lost the last part of me that could handle the stress.

They’re a part of this,Siobhan had said.You don’t have a choice.

No, I never had a choice, and neither did they. If I was a part of this, then they were at risk because of me. I had to tell them to protect them. They had to know so they could protect themselves.

I opened my mouth and the last four years spilled out—the affair with Miri at boarding school, Lex and Carter in London, the trip to Ireland. Midsummer. The curse.

“Until the end, we promised.” I held up my hand, showing them the scars as proof. I explained that it hit us again two years later and drove us back together, back to Ireland. I told them about the king and queen on Samhain and Miri’s wall of thistles.

“That’s how we know Poppy.”

Lex put his hands on the back of a chair and hung his head between his shoulders as I went on, unable to stop me but also unable to fault me. Perhaps he knew this would happen. Perhaps we had already waited too long.

“And tonight?” I ran my hands over my face. “Tonight, he came after us and he strangled me.” I pointed to the burn on my neck. “He—” I almost told them he was inside my head, but I paused because I wanted to make sure I hadn’t imagined that before I told anyone. There was no sense in scaring everyone if it turned out to be nothing. “He’s coming after us all. Nowhere is safe. We need to call Miri. We have to make sure she knows.”

No one said anything for a long moment, my heart thundering in my head.

“I know how it sounds,” Lex added, taking a deep breath and letting it out through his nose. “I didn’t want to believe it myself. But the gifts are real. I can tell when anyone’s lying. Carter’s lucky. Ivy can read people’s minds. Miri can grow plants by willing it to happen.”

Kit narrowed her piercing stare on me before she asked, “Have you read mine?”

I sighed. “No, I wouldn’t do that without asking. I try not to, anyway. I can’t always help it.”

Abigail remained quiet, slinking into a chair with a dazed look on her face.

“This is incredible, Ivy,” Jon said.

“It’s horrible,” I corrected. “It’s a goddamned nightmare.”

“You’ve been able to do this for four years?” Kit looked between us. “Is that what all that Siobhan and Smythe bullshit was about?”

I nodded as Carter came back into the room, his eyes sympathetic like he’d overheard what we were talking about.

“The woman who went upstairs,” he said, “that’s Siobhan.”

Kit blinked and glanced toward the steps, a longing expression in her eyes like she wished she’d gotten a better look.

“I’m sorry to rope you into this, but the fairy king could come after you.” I ran my hand over the heated X on my neck. “You could be in danger.”

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