7. Ivy
7
Ivy
“I t nearly killed us to retrieve them,” Finn explained, rubbing a dirty palm over his face. We sat around the living room while they explained what happened, me and my spouses on the longer couch, Siobhan and her companions on the shorter one.
“We had to find a way to get the Fianna out without the king knowing.” Siobhan leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees, the bags under her eyes indicating how war-torn she actually was. Whatever they’d done, it had taken them going somewhere dangerous to accomplish it. When we came up with the plan, Finn had chided that it wouldn’t be getting in that would be hard, it would be getting out. “It was brutal and bloody. We lost good soldiers.”
The three of them made identical hand gestures over their hearts, a swish of the thumb that must have indicated something important.
“We’re here now,” Donnelly added as his features slipped into that stoic hunter’s calm that always unnerved me. “And we kept up our end of the bargain. What about you?”
A dark eyebrow went up his forehead as his cold eyes glanced between us. Lex sat forward and told them the story, how the king had shown up at our wedding and everything that had happened since then. I swallowed down my shame and anger when he mentioned Poppy abducting our family members.
“She turned on us?” Siobhan’s eyes widened as she focused her gaze on Carter. “She turned on you?”
“She took Lizzie and Prince Edward.” Carter’s eyes reddened like he was remembering the memory in detail. I could only imagine how terrifying that must have been. “We don’t know where she is or what she’s done with them. She won’t answer our calls.”
“We believe the king has Jon and Kit,” I added, remembering how Abigail had screamed. I never wanted to hear that sound again. “He took them before I pushed him out of Mount Vernon.”
“How did you do that?” Finn’s emerald-green gaze almost glowed with its intensity.
Lex and I looked at each other before I cleared my throat. “That night we met with you, I connected to the king’s mind. I can see his memories, feel his emotions.”
Donnelly snorted and shook his head. “I fucking knew it. I smelled him on you.”
“What does that mean?” Lex asked, rubbing his eyes, clearly exhausted.
Donnelly’s lips curled into a smirk, but he didn’t answer the question.
“There’s something else.” I scratched my neck, composing myself and straightening to face our fairy friends. “Poppy can travel through time. She took Lex back to see his brother when he was still alive.”
Siobhan didn’t say anything, just pursed her lips and glanced at Finn. He met her gaze with some kind of wordless communication before glancing to Donnelly, who sat motionless, assessing me as I talked. Of the three, he intimidated me the most. Sure, Finn was huge and Siobhan probably knew how we all died, but Donnelly had an eerily stillness that told me he’d seen the worst of his realm and lived to talk about it. Whatever he had to do to get to the Fianna, I figured it was dark and dangerous, something he wouldn’t talk about openly.
“I thought she could hone her skills and use them to our advantage,” Lex confessed. “I only partially accounted for her stabbing us in the back.”
“Well, she hasn’t. Yet,” Siobhan said. “We don’t know why she took Lizzie and Edward. Did she seem upset?”
“Terribly,” Miri said. “She was sobbing.”
“She’s playing her own game,” Donnelly said. “She lied to us when we asked her what she knew.”
That rubbed salt in the wound. I should have seen this coming. I should have listened to Lex when he told us to watch out for her, but I’d been blindsided by my love. Just like the king, Poppy had used my affection against me, and it picked at a scab I didn’t want to examine. I’d spent most of my life protecting my siblings, the urge to provide and protect ran in my molecules. I wouldn’t dampen who I was just because it could be perceived as a weakness.
“There’s more.” Miri shifted uncomfortably in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. “Alberich tricked me. He’s inside my head. He…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He’s warping my memories, doing things to me and making me forget them.”
Carter grabbed one of Miri’s hands and I gripped the other, sending my love through our shared connection. We weren’t complete without her. We needed her the way the sky needed the sun, and I wanted to make sure she knew that. There was no me without her, and there never would be.
Siobhan didn’t say anything for a long moment, just hung her head and pressed her fingers into her eyes. Finn’s hard expression turned even more stony as he cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he finally said. “The king is…mercurial and apparently, he’s getting more aggressive. There’s no sacred boundary he won’t cross.”
Siobhan leaned toward Miri, her deep brown eyes desperate for more information. “What do you mean when you say he’s doing things to you and making you forget them? How so?”
Miri told them what she meant, how she knew that something had been altered because it reminded her of the way he’d tampered with her parents’ deaths. “He can manipulate me, and I can’t trust myself.”
“I told you it needed to be the four of you.” Siobhan sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, obviously reeling from the information we’d dumped in her lap. “You were vulnerable because you were separated.”
“We’re together now,” Lex said, his hazel eyes narrowing. “And we’re all playing on the same team for once. Isn’t that right?” He glanced at me before focusing on Miri, who nodded and curled her arms around herself again.
“What about Poppy?” I asked. “You once told us she was the key to everything. What exactly is she supposed to do?”
“Remember the prophecy, the one that started all this?” Siobhan looked between us as a conversation with her sister, Ashley, came to the forefront. Back when we’d gone to Faerie for Samhain, she had explained the reason Alberich feared Poppy so much had to do with a vision that their seer had about the changeling. According to them, she was the key, the one who would bring peace to the realms by reuniting the humans and the fairies. “Which fairies? Which humans?” Ashley had said, “Prophecies are notoriously vague.” Alberich had thought it meant that she’d destroy the veil, and Faerie would be overwhelmed by humans intent on destroying them. Once he found out what she could do, he wanted her killed.
“It’s coming true,” Siobhan said. “If we reunite the king and the queen, and she contains him, we will have ended the war between them.”
“Or he’ll kill her outright and put our heads on spikes,” Lex said.
“He can’t,” I said, recalling what else Ashley had told us that day. “ One cannot survive without the other. Where she is light, he is dark.” It confirmed what Finn had said about them. “He’d never be able to kill the queen. They’re equals in every way.” They needed each other for balance.
“If he kills her, he’ll end himself, too,” Carter said.
“He’s too narcissistic to do that,” I added.
A long time ago, he’d tried to escape the fairy realm and a powerful fae had cursed him to keep him in Faerie. Lex had believed the queen knew who had done it and perhaps had been there when it happened. After all, she had supposedly been impacted by the same curse, as tied together as they were. Whatever impacted him affected her.
“We need to find the queen,” Siobhan said.
Fuck. In all the catching up, none of us had mentioned the best part. A creak in the stairs alerted us to her presence as Diana descended in a flowing white gown, looking more regal than she had in months. We hadn’t seen her since we zapped her with our magic yesterday, but now she radiated with warmth and vitality. Her long pale hair no longer seemed dull and lifeless, and her cheeks had color to them, like she’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
Finn and Siobhan pushed to their feet while Donnelly remained seated with that same suspicious smirk.
“Oh,” Diana said, giving a warm smile when she came into the dining room before continuing to talk in her unintelligible language.
My heart dropped. I had hoped that whatever we’d done had worked, but other than putting some color back in her cheeks, she still couldn’t communicate with us.
“My lady,” Siobhan muttered, melting into a flabbergasted bow.
“You see,” I said. “We can’t understand her. It’s all jumbled.”
“No, that’s…” Donnelly closed his eyes, shaking his head like he was trying to solve a riddle. “That’s Faero-Gaelic. Old Faero-Gaelic.”
“I haven’t heard that in centuries,” Finn said.
Donnelly grimaced and muttered a few sloppy syllables, wincing at the last bit. Diana’s eyes widened as she gasped, jumping into Donnelly’s arms with a squeal. I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew what she meant. For the first time since we’d found her, someone had said something she could comprehend.
“So, he reset her brain to default?” Lex looked between Finn and Donnelly, hoping for an answer.
“That ruby dust is some heavy-hitting shit,” Siobhan said while Diana rambled at Donnelly, clinging to his arms and regaling her entire life story.
“What’s she saying?” I asked.
“Uh…” Donnelly shook his head. “I don’t understand most of it.”
“She’s explaining that she woke up in the snow and the little girl found her. Since then, she’s been staying with her until the mean guy brought her here.” Finn looked at Lex. “I assume that’s you.”
Lex laughed. “My uncle.”
“She thanks you for your hospitality, but she needs to find the little girl.”
“Is that Poppy?” Siobhan glanced at Carter.
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
Siobhan turned her angry glare on me, her jaw clenched. “You should have led with this.”
“Oh, I’m sorry so much happened while you were dragging your asses to get here,” Lex snarled, jumping to my defense. “We forgot a few important details.”
“Enough,” Finn cut in, shooting Lex a piercing stare before turning to Siobhan. “We have the queen. This is a good thing.”
“Not if she doesn’t remember who she is,” Donnelly murmured, an amused tilt to his lips. “Not if she can’t remember the last two thousand years.”
“We can fix her,” Miri said. “We just need to rest and try again.”
“Fix her?” Siobhan’s gaze narrowed. “This is old magic, stronger than anything I know.”
“So are we.” I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders. “You said the gift you gave us mutated into something ancient and powerful, that it was out of your control.”
“Yes, but?—”
“We already helped her,” I continued. “Yesterday, she looked like death. Today, she’s better. And now that Finn is here to translate?—”
Diana cut in, saying something to Finn while she placed her delicate hand on his arm and took a hesitant step forward. She’d braided her hair and, in that one vulnerable moment, she reminded me of the panicked fairy that had shoved Poppy into Carter’s arms on Samhain. I had seen true fear in her eyes that day, and now, I recognized the panic. Despite not being able to understand us, she seemed to know we’d been freaking out.
“She wants to know what’s going on, what happened to her.”
“Tell her,” I said. “Maybe it’ll help her remember.”
Finn explained it to her, the language eloquent coming from his lips. Diana nodded along, glancing back and forth between us for a long moment, her eyebrows furrowed like she struggled to understand what the other fairy was saying.
“You are the great queen of the fairies. See these marks.” Siobhan held up her arm to show Diana the tattoos winding up her elbow and bicep. “They are a symbol of your lineage.” She matched them to the same marks on Diana’s arm. “They mark my loyalty to you.”
Finn translated while the queen shook her head, clearly not remembering.
“She wants to know about the girl. Where is she?” Finn glanced up at us, green gaze flickering between us.
“We haven’t talked to her in days,” I said. “She won’t answer our calls.”
Diana’s smile widened and she linked her hands in front of her, glancing to me with an encouraging nod.
“Call her again. She’ll answer this time,” Finn said.
I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Carter, skeptical of listening to an ancient fairy queen with magical amnesia. But weirder things had happened, so he reached into his back pocket and retrieved his phone, pressing the number for Poppy’s contact.
She answered on the second ring.