Page 11 of Beltane

“So self-sacrificing, aren’t we, Princess?” Lex let out a disbelieving laugh, burning my cheeks and making me feel small and silly. “Ivy has been having nightmares for years, the king and the queen and Siobhan and who the fuck knows who else getting inside her head. Carter has to drink himself to sleep every night without you, and me—” He cut off, his voice having risen to the point where it echoed off the walls. Lex paused to collect himself before calmly saying, “I’ve been holding it all together by my fucking fingernails. Siobhan said it was the four of us in this…four,Miri.”

“I’m here now.” I matched his ire with my own, the months of stress finally catching up to me as I glared right back at him. Ivy had always been the one to go head to head with Lex, and normally, I didn’t see the point in fighting with him. Now, perhaps I was looking for someone to be mad at, someone to take the blame for what I’d lived through, what I had allowed to happen.

“You’re here now.” He repeated the words like they meant nothing. In his mind, what was the point of showing up after the battle had already been lost? The damage was done, and we might never be the same. “I needed you three months ago.Weneeded you three months ago.”

“Lex,” Carter cut in, “c’mon. Take it easy.”

“Easy?” Lex made an incredulous laughing noise just as Ivy grabbed my hand in solidarity. “She’d be lucky to get easy from me.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Ivy said, but that just caused him to direct his wrath to her. “I can’t imagine going through these last few months alone.”

“She was alone by her own volition.” Lex cleared his throat to try to stay calm, but a thick wall of ice grew behind his eyes.

“I was protecting you,” I said, my voice carrying now, steaming-hot tears sliding down my face.

“And who was protecting you, Miri?” Lex slammed his hand down on the water, dousing us with a sobering splash. All this time, I’d thought he was mad at me because I’d broken his heart, broken Ivy’s. But that was only a small part of it. He was most upset that I’d put myself in danger, and it widened the chasm in my heart. He’d been afraid of what could happen to me while I was gone, and lo and behold, his worst fears had come true. Now, all that energy came out as visceral anger.

My cheeks burned as I stared at him. God, he could be so cruel when he wanted to, but I understood him better than anyone ever had. Lex lashed out when he got scared. That had been the reason he treated Ivy the way he had his whole life. I suspected it had to do with losing his brother at such a young age. Bleeding hell, it might have gone back even further than that. When it came to something he really cared about, Lex would rather destroy it himself than see someone else take it from him.

“You broke his spell before, Princess,” Lex said, moving toward me with an intimidating glare in his hazel eyes. “Why don’t you try harder? Or maybe we can throw you in front of the king like we did last time. Perhaps you can be useful and grow a wall of thistles around the fucking world.”

“Stop it.” Carter moved at the same time Ivy did. He had one hand on Lex’s shoulder while Ivy pushed him back.

“What did you do to your legs, huh?” Lex went on, his scowl hardening, his lips twisted with anger. “You think no one saw the way you sliced yourself up like a Christmas ham?”

“Lex!” Ivy let go of me to give him a hard shove in the chest, but I’d already had enough.

Magic licked at my fingertips, every plant in a fifty-mile radius responding to Lex’s threat. Ivy had been nursing a tender pothos in her bedroom, and now, I willed it closer to me. Vines crept over the walls like thick green spiderwebs, twisting as they came closer, wrapping around Lex’s wrists and neck.

“Stop it,” he said, yanking at them, but I didn’t. I coiled them tighter, wrapping them around his waist and legs, confining him until he’d stop threatening me. Rage boiled my blood and tears blurred my vision, the anguish of Lex’s words mixing with the fact I had so little control over my own life. “Miri, what are you doing, stop it.” He writhed, trying to get away. “Stop it.Tell me the truth! What happened to you?”

“I don’t know!” My scream echoed off the walls, sending a shock wave through the room, exploding in every direction. Water flew up around us like a tsunami, hanging in the air, weightless, like gravity had ceased to exist. Time stopped. The world stopped. And for one brief moment, I heard the king’s voice again, barely a faint whisper…“There’s a good girl. Come for me.”

The tenderness in his voice sliced me in two, and the pain brought me back to reality. I crashed into Carter as my knees gave way. The water slammed into the tub with a loudswoosh,time restarting like a punch to the gut.

We flew to either side of the bath, my back slamming into the porcelain so hard, it radiated pain down my legs and up my neck to my skull. My hands trembled from the magnitude of the magic I’d just put out, and it rolled around in my gut like acid. I had terrified them…fuck, I’d terrified myself. Where had that come from?

“There’s a good girl. Come for me.”

Oh, God…No, no, no, don’t think about that. Put that away. File that in the darkest part of your heart.

Closing my eyes, I did. I swallowed it and forced myself to forget the moans I’d made while Alberich whispered in my ear, his voice deep and soothing, coaxing me to relax while he took what he wanted.

None of us said anything for a long moment, just staring at each other as we independently debated what had happened and what to do next.

“I think that’s enough for one night,” Carter said.

I didn’t wait around for more. Wiping tears from my cheeks, I got out of the bath, wrapped a towel around myself, and walked into Ivy’s room. The sound of my wife’s wet feet padded behind me until she shut the door, enclosing us there together.

“Don’t listen to him,” Ivy said. “He was scared for you. He doesn’t always know the best way to?—”

“I know,” I said, shaking my head while I yanked on a pair of Ivy’s shorts and one of her tank tops. “I’m exhausted, and I don’t have the strength to talk about it more tonight. Can we just…can we just go to sleep?”

She nodded and wrapped me in her arms before leading me to her bed, scooting in behind me. I was asleep moments after my head hit the pillow, and I vaguely recalled Carter and Lex making their way to the same bed sometime later, but I hardly woke up. In that small moment of intimacy, I found the first bit of peace I’d had in months and slept with little fear of what would await me when I woke.

3

Carter

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