Page 20 of Beltane

We atedinner together and schemed the rest of the night. We needed to contact Siobhan, but we couldn’t count on her being alive or still willing to assist. Ivy’s siblings, Abigail and Henry, could be useful in keeping Ivy’s mother distracted, but other than that, we didn’t want them involved. We talked in circles until we couldn’t see straight, but ultimately went to bed with nothing more than conjecture and a list of possibilities.

Without Siobhan and Poppy, we were on our own. Without the queen, we had nothing but each other.

Ivy and Miri curled up in the middle of the mattress with Lex on the other side, protecting our most valuable center. The four of us hadn’t reconnected the way we used to, and the tension between Lex and Miri hadn’t fully healed. I wasn’t sure they’d even talked alone since their argument in the tub.

It could be good again, if we tried. If we defeated the king. If we still had our bond after all this was over. If we still loved each other.

The thought that this might end ached deep in my gut. I loved my spouses, each one in their own way, and I sure as hell liked being lucky. Maybe it wasn’t as useful as being able to detect lies or as powerful as invading someone’s mind, but I lived an easy life because of it. I liked having my gift, and I liked the people I shared it with.

I woke up around 3 a.m. parched, and I went downstairs for a glass of water where I found Miri out on the patio, her hands splayed out to either side of the railing, her skin glowing in the moonlight. She wore a floor-length lavender silk nightgown, mirroring her dark hair as both floated around her in the breeze.

For a moment, I paused to watch her, memorizing the slender slope of her neck as it became her shoulder and the way her spine rolled down the middle of her back in a delicate curve. She looked like a goddess, like the queen of the night come here to destroy us. She glanced over her shoulder and caught me staring, her eyes illuminated from within. In the months apart, she’d lost the fleshiness around her hips that had once made her soft and pliable. Now all hard edges and sharp corners, she seemed more evil than she was. But Persephone was the Goddess of springtime and the underworld for a reason. Both could be true.

“What are you doing awake?” I asked as I took a few steps closer.

She hummed and returned to admiring the cool night air, lifting her chin as the wind picked up the pieces of curly chestnut locks around her face. “Listening.”

The trees rustled, whispering secrets only Miri could understand. Still, I closed my eyes anyway, hoping that I might get lucky, that I might be given a rare opportunity to see behind the curtain. An owl hooted in the distance, and the crunch of last autumn’s leaves hinted at a larger animal moving close by—maybe a deer or a mountain lion.

“What are they saying?” I murmured.

“They’re coming,” she said.

I snapped my eyes open and looked at her, my heart rate starting to skyrocket. “Who’s coming, Miri?”

She shrugged, but didn’t seem bothered by whatever it was. “Don’t be scared. They’re not here to hurt us. The trees will protect us.”

I thought about running back inside to wake up Lex and Ivy, but I wanted these few moments alone with her. I understood why she had pulled away, and I understood how she could believe she was a danger to us. Furrowing my eyebrows, I cleared my throat and stuffed my hands in my pockets, hoping she took what I said next with love and not accusation. “Why didn’t you tell me…about your memory…about what you suspected? Why did you keep it fromme?”

Miri didn’t say anything, just looked back out to the woods and took a long, deep inhale. “What would you have done?”

“Something,” I said. “Anything besides leave you alone all this time.”

She made a sad laughing sound, shook her head, and wrapped her tiny, delicate hand around the inside of my elbow before leaning her head on my shoulder. “No, my darling. You couldn’t have done anything at all.”

“I would have tried. I would have…” Fuck, I didn’t know. “I would have taken you on tour with me. We could have been safe together.”

“Romeo.” She gave me a soft smile and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “The same reasons we could never be together are still there. You’re you, and I’m me, and that will never change.”

Once upon a time, I’d been a lowly nobody from Chicago and she’d been HRH Princess Miriam, and we’d run away to California together with nothing but our heartbreak and a promise not to hurt each other. If we were ever going to give it a go, just the two of us, that would have been the time. Still, I fought it. If she had just told me what was going on, I would have insisted. I would have figured out how to delay filming or perhaps persuaded them to recast me altogether. I wouldn’t have cared because we both would have been safe.

I took a step closer, pressing against her so I could wrap my arms around her from behind, pulling her closer to me. Resting my chin on the top of her head, I inhaled her deeply, devouring her flowery scent, letting it ease my nerves.

“All we have is us, Juliet,” I said, kissing her crown.

She nodded and relaxed back against me, intertwining her fingers with mine. “I’ll miss nights like this with you, Romeo.” Her lips brushed my knuckles with a warm caress as she kissed each one individually. “When all this is over.”

I thought again about what she’d said in the bath.

“It’s not safe for me to be here. I should go back to England as soon as we figure out how to break this curse.”

This was never going to be over. Siobhan had told us back in March. The bond we’d formed during this ordeal would never go away, not completely. I tried to imagine my life without her in it, without Ivy or Lex, and the thought made me so hollow, I wanted to curl into a ball and die.

I opened my mouth to respond, to tell her she’d never be able to get rid of me, no matter what her stupid grandmother tried to make her do, but something moved near the tree line, startling me enough to push Miri behind me.

“What is that?” I said. “Did you see that?”

She nodded and walked toward the stairs, despite my attempts to grab her arm and stop her. Miri descended a step before blinking up at me with owlish brown eyes and a devilish smile. “They’re here.”

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