23. Ivy
23
Ivy
S omewhere between my spouses dying and Lex accepting a demented deal with the fairy queen, reality seemed to slow down. By the time I realized Lex had an axe to Poppy’s throat, my feet weren’t moving fast enough. I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t stop whatever he’d done that had brought Carter and Miri back.
This whole thing had been botched from the beginning, and now that we were standing in the center of it, I needed to finish it. My mind raced, all of the information we’d been told coming back to me.
“They can be stopped,” Lex said, holding my gaze. “We have to do this together.”
“The ruby dust didn’t work.” Miri shook her head, grabbing my hand on one side and Lex’s on the other. Carter took the spot next to me, slipping his big palm into my own, and once the four of us were connected… finally connected…the energy flowed between us, bright and magnificent and omnipotent.
Carter’s warmth cascaded up my arm, into my heart, and Miri’s delicate blossoming frost came next, complementing the avalanche of Lex’s ice-coated interior. All of it steamed against my raging inferno of iron turned to steel, radiating out of us in a massive display of emeralds and jades and forest greens, all the colors of the woods at Midsummer.
It reminded me of everything we’d been through together, all the moments when our love had saved us.
“Alberich, please my darling,” Diana roared, the wisps of her magic dwindling as his took over, strangling her energy, dimming its glory. “Please, remember us at our best.”
That sparked a memory. I’d already sent the king away once at my wedding, when I’d claimed Mount Vernon as my own and demanded he leave. I’d been able to connect with his mind and access a part of him that he’d long since forgotten. I closed my eyes and saw it there, shimmering out of the depths of his being.
“ I have an idea,” I said inside my spouses’ heads, shoving my way further into their minds than I’d been before. Lex accepted me immediately, probably because I’d been there so many times, and Miri and Carter relented shortly after that. Their emotions rushed through me like a whirlwind of tangy panic and adrenaline-laced fear, but I used that as fuel.
I willed the green energy around us, the magic of Midsummer that had gifted us with the power to be here in the first place. I imagined the four of us standing inside Miri’s castle walls, our fortress, our safe haven, holding hands with an unbreakable grip. We were wrapped together by more than skin and bone, our magic kept us permanently linked. Nothing and no one could separate us again, and as long as we were together, we were immortal. Alberich’s dark swords couldn’t penetrate our emerald shield or our stony foundation. We were forged in the fires of our love for each other, in the depths of our undeniable vow.
Only once I had Carter’s support and Miri’s acceptance, only once I knew Lex wouldn’t fight me, only then did I lower the shield to the connection I’d forged with the king. His dark fury rushed at me, twisting and obsidian like the mist he threw at the queen, but it bounced off us, disintegrating into nothingness at our feet.
I surged forward.
He resisted, throwing up a thick mental cloud of magic. Its tension weighed us down and suffocated us despite how strong our walls had become. But I pushed through, using all the strength I had to shove inside.
My brain splintered, and a sharp dagger of pressure sliced through the center of my forehead, but I held Carter and Miri’s hands tighter, using the energy they offered to ignore that pain, ignore it all, just keep fighting him, just keep going.
He was weaker than the last time I’d tried to crack through his mind, so the barrier between us vanished much quicker than I remembered, almost like he wanted me there. I didn’t waste the opportunity. I rifled through his memories like a spider, twisting through his timeline faster than I had before.
Walking through the veil, knowing Diana would meet me there ? —
Toying with Ivette’s siblings, entering their minds to make them believe whatever I wanted, planting scenes for them to play out ? —
Meeting with Poppy, going back in time, dark tendrils wrapping around the bow of a sailboat, screams dying in water as Marcus drowned ? —
The ache in my chest echoed in Lex’s, and I gritted my teeth to go deeper, further back, past the time he’d spent in the human realm, past the fight with Diana in the first place. There was something hidden here, something he’d locked away a long time ago. I focused on the queen.
Her white light burst through the darkness, and suddenly, we were catapulted into her memories as well. Back before time and space, back before the war with the humans, back when they were young.
He had been beautiful, his jaw clean shaven, his eyes not yet so angry and soulless. He had once used his magic for creation, for breathing life into the planet and the world around him. Together with Diana, they’d built everything we’d ever known of Faerie. They’d created their community, and eventually, the one that had been destroyed when humans decimated their populations.
In this particular memory, they sat in front of a fireplace inside a small home with stone walls and uneven wooden planks for floors. They’d bathed in the same water we had at Midsummer and drank from the same enchanted wine, letting their most vulnerable emotions run wild between them. And now, they’d returned to their home to celebrate the evening in peace.
“I’ll love you forever, Diana,” he had told her, lifting her hands to his mouth so he could kiss every knuckle.
“I’ll love you, too, Alberich.” She leaned in to connect their mouths, and the flutter in his heart had nearly made him gasp. In all his years wandering this dreaded existence, he had never considered that he might feel this way about someone, that he might find his one true love and feel so completely consumed by her.
“Marry me,” he said, leaning back to meet her gaze. She had looked so much younger then, but still as gorgeous and resplendent as she was today. “Be my queen. Share my magic with me, share my soul.”
She smiled, and her eyes shimmered with tears as she nodded. “Yes. Yes, my love. Yes.”
“Until the end,” he’d whispered.
“Until the end,” she’d replied.
He kissed her, his heart overwhelmed with pure, undiluted joy. He loved her so thoroughly, so deeply, he believed there would never come a moment when they would find themselves on opposite sides of a war, much less over a human child.
Once upon a time, Alberich had been compassionate and loving. He’d been gentle to everything—Diana, humans, other fairies. He had an affectionate heart.
Present-day Alberich balked against the memory, trying to shove us out of his mind by forcing his worst memories to the forefront.
Holding Miri down while she struggled and screamed, manipulating her mind to make her believe she liked it.
Relishing in the sounds of Marcus’s dying gurgle.
Watching as Miri’s parents took their last breaths, knowing he could do something to stop it but choosing not to.
That was all it took to draw out that vengeful side of Miri. I sensed what she planned to do before she did it, and I couldn’t think of a reason to stop her.
“Do it,” Carter said telepathically, confirming luck was on our side.
“Ivette,” Alberich teased, “do you think you can make me sentimental? Do you think I could be that easily fooled?”
Miri pulled on the magic to gather the ruby dust, but I kept my focus on distracting the king, ignoring the shimmy through our bond as it vibrated with resonance, with the same thing that gave us our gifts.
“No,” I said inside his mind, inside all of our minds. “But you are a fool all the same.”
Alberich gasped as the ruby dust hit him in the face, bewildering him, perverting the connection between our minds as I slammed the stone walls back up. I knew then what I had to do, what I should have done from the very second Miri called for the ruby dust. Lex’s ability to identify a lie surged through us, saying the king was bluffing and had been this whole time. Carter’s luck clenched inside our souls, seeming to shout that it was the right moment, that we needed to make our play now. It had taken all four of our gifts to do this. I channeled that energy into my next words.
“ Suffer in solitude, suffer in silence, only then will you know the pain you have caused.”
The spell landed on the king like a sledgehammer, and the storm around us dissipated, drifting away on the wind. Alberich dropped to the earth as the sun shone through the clouds, illuminating the destruction of Faerie in the bright light of midday. Holding onto my spouses, I pulled on their love for me, their love for our love, and I drew that power deep inside me.
The king pushed to his feet and looked up at us with bewilderment in his eyes, his mouth hanging open, his hair windswept around him. Diana lowered to the ground gracefully, her radiance dimmed for how much she had fought, but still holding that intelligence that made her the queen.
She opened her mouth to speak, but I’d heard enough.
This fairy-tale nightmare had to end, and no matter what she had to say, I didn’t care.
“All of Faerie, hear me now.” My voice dropped several octaves as my words echoed over the space, sounding like they came from the depths of my soul. Warm, sticky liquid dribbled down my cheeks and over my lips, tasting like copper, and I realized my eyes and nose were bleeding from the exertion. I pushed harder. “I am Ivette Washington, and the human realm is mine . I claim it as my own, and so long as my blood lives, you are not welcome. Be gone from this realm. Be gone, now, and never return.”
The weight of the spell tore off out of me, potent and overwhelming, sucking the rest of the magic from our connection. It flowed from my molecules in thick emerald waves, pulsing with the rage and fury that had been building inside me for four years. This had been only a game for them, a grand nothing in the vastness of their eons, but for me, it had screwed with every aspect of my life.
This is the sacrifice. Blocking them out would mean losing Siobhan, Finn, and Donnelly. We would never see them again—never see Poppy again. Anyone stuck on that side would forever be in Faerie, and whoever was on the human side would never see Faerie again. But it had to be this way. As I said the words, the rightness of this moment settled in every molecule.
I met Siobhan’s soulful brown eyes, a huge grin on her face. She mouthed the words, “Well done,” before she faded away. Finn and Donnelly soon faded as well, the rest of Faerie dimming while I pulsed with our magic, casting every last bit of it out of us, pushing them into their realm to deal with their mess.
The veil disappeared. It closed permanently.
Then, with the relief that came with winning a long-earned battle, I dropped to my knees, planted my fingers in the dirt, and passed out.