Midsummer

Prologue

Now

It was a sham wedding.

I might as well be honest about that.

I hated Alexei Fairfax. I always had. I always would. Yet, as I traced over the scars on my palm, a permanent reminder of what we’d done together all those years ago, there could be no doubt I loved him more deeply than I ought to. More deeply than this marriage would require.

Our lives were so entangled and chained together that we would never be free of one another. I had stopped trying long ago.

“Ivy?” my sister, Kit, called from the doorway. She gave me a hesitant smile and took a few steps inside, her dark hair twisted up on the back of her head. “Wow, you look stunning. Absolutely stunning.”

She raked her steel eyes over my heavy wedding dress and the lace trailing down my arms. With my hair in soft curls and waves, I looked every bit the American princess my name proclaimed me to be, but it was a lie. Lex wasn’t my Prince Charming, nor was I his one true love. This was politics. We were stuck like mice on one of those poison pads, tempted by the smell of peanut butter but realizing too late there was no way out. Perhaps there had never been.

“You look beautiful, too,” I told her, looking back out the window to the beginnings of the party below. The Potomac River glistened in the afternoon light, and boats littered the channel with paparazzi hoping to get a picture of the Washington-Fairfax wedding.

The event of the season. Of the year.

More photographers and news stations waited downstairs than I wanted to think about, and my stomach churned. This was always the worst part, right before I went on stage. The butterflies. The shaking limbs. The sweaty palms. And that didn’t even take into account everything else that had gone wrong up until now.

“Did he bolt?” I smiled, imagining it.

She laughed. “Not a chance. You know he won’t back down from you. He never has.”

“Tell him I’m planning to murder him in our marital bed.”

Kit hummed an amused noise. “I bet he already suspects that.”

I cleared my throat and looked down at the scars on my palm, right along my lifeline. I traced over a particular grouping as the aching chasm in my heart deepened. Miri wasn’t here. Carter wasn’t here. That hurt the worst. Not that I expected them to come, not after everything that’s happened. It was too unbelievable, and given the danger heading straight for us, I didn’t blame them.

If I could, I would have left myself years ago.

Just me and Lex again. Like always.

“Ivette,” my mother said, waltzing into the room with the confidence and prowess a former president should have. She stopped when she saw the look on my face. “Why so glum? It’s your wedding day. At least pretend like you’re excited.”

Ah, yes. Pretend. Pretend this was my idea. Pretend the relationship between Lex and me had been real from the start. Pretend I wanted any part of this.

I should. Lex was a handsome, powerful man, and we had all the money in the world. Our marriage would be broadcast to over twenty-seven countries, but the sinking hollow feeling in my gut only worsened.

It seemed so trivial now, compared to what we were up against. All of this and all of them, so insignificant.

“Look at me, child,” Evelyn Washington said. I forced my chin up and tried to smile, hoping she couldn’t see the fractures through the duct tape. “You’re making the right decision. You both are.” She straightened her spine. “I know this isn’t what you wanted, but we all have to make choices we don’t like for the good of the country.” She touched my cheek, the way she used to do when I was a little girl, and gave me that pitying smile. “I’ve been where you’re standing, and I wouldn’t change my decision.”

It was the wrong time to compare her and my father to me and Lex, especially since I’d spent the better part of this week discovering the depths to how much she had manipulated my life. Sure, they had a powerhouse political alliance, and the Washington name had become synonymous with America itself. We were royalty in the States. But my parents weren’t in love and never had been. Their hatred for each other might rival that of mine for Lex.

I shouldn’t be marrying him.

It repeated in my head like a mantra.

I shouldn’t be marrying him.

We’re already married.

Both of us…to other people.

My mother gave me a fake peck on the cheek and announced I had fifteen minutes to get downstairs if we wanted to start this thing fashionably late.

All I could think about was them.

All I could hear was the sound of Carter’s laughter and the thrill of Miri’s whisper. All I could see were future versions of Lex and me at each other’s throats, desperate to hurt each other in the worst way possible because we were so sick of the fighting and the grind and the hustle. My parents had beaten each other down relentlessly over the years. I wanted no part of that.

As soon as the door shut behind my mother, I made up my mind.

I knew what I had to do.