Midsummer

29. Ivy

Iwouldn’t say I healed from my heartbreak so much as I simply got on with my life.

Summer faded into fall, and I started law school. We promised we’d keep in touch. We promised to call every single night. But the minute they went out there, they disconnected their phones or they blocked my number. Either on its own would have been devastating and strange, but they’d done both.

I’d reached out on social media.

I sent them emails.

All of my messages went unsent. When Carter told us to leave them alone, I didn’t want to believe it was him. He wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t. But Lex seemed convinced our parents had nothing to do with it, and when I asked Kit to investigate, she turned up nothing.

“I have no reason to think it wasn’t him.” Kit sat at my computer, typing away on my keyboard while she scoured my phone for evidence of any tampering. “If it was our mother, she hired someone good. Really good.” Kit cleared her throat and tapped ash in the crystal from her joint. “Like, better than me good.”

“Is there such a thing?” Jon sat on my bed and flipped through a college notebook. Only eighteen months younger than me, he still had another two years at Yale before he had to worry about our mother’s grating influence. “I thought you were God’s gift to technology.”

“I am, dill weed.” She glared at him. “But this?” Kit shook her head at me. “I can’t prove it wasn’t them. But Ivy—” My little sister touched my arm in a comforting embrace, telling me she understood my pain like only a sibling could. “I can’t prove it was, either.”

It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to hold on to. I couldn’t believe Carter didn’t want me anymore. I couldn’t believe Miri had abandoned me after all these years. It would hurt more than anything I’d ever been through. We’d promised each other forever. They wouldn’t simply throw it away so easily.

Despite clinging to that notion, those months following their departure were dark and lonely. Had it not been for this tenuous alliance with my archnemesis fiancé, I wouldn’t have made it through. Carter’s laugh echoed through my ears and Miri’s smile flickered behind my eyes. If I let myself linger on the memory for too long, I couldn’t get out of bed. Short of making myself a stalker, I redirected my attention elsewhere.

I refocused on trying to upset my mother’s plans. Part of me wanted to withdraw from Georgetown and disappear into anonymity. Perhaps I’d fly out to LA and track them down. Perhaps I’d hire someone to make me a fake ID and I’d never return. But it would only be a matter of time before my mother found me and brought me back. If I had any hope of winning, I needed to play the great game. For the time being, that meant going along with…whatever this was.

Days faded into weeks, and eventually, six months had passed.

Carter got cast in a popular book-to-TV show adaptation for a premium cable network. Preliminary reviews were outstanding, and critics were already calling for an Emmy nomination for Carter, which was high praise for a relative nobody. As part of her royal duties, Miri eventually returned home to the UK and had been obliged to pick a cause. She’d chosen to save the planet. Her name had started to become synonymous with Danae Enterprises, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainability. It ached as much as it was a relief. I liked knowing they were finding success. It made our mutual misery seem worth it.

I could almost forget I’d married three lovers in the woods in Ireland. That I’d made vows on a midsummer night and lost an entire day of my life to sex-soaked bliss. But every time I looked at my hand, I remembered how it felt to have my oath burned into my skin. Every time I woke up alone in my bed, expecting to see Carter’s smiling face, I remembered how it felt to say goodbye to him. Every time I looked at Lex’s teeth, I remembered what they felt like sinking in to my neck.

The dreams hadn’t gone away. Sometimes I ran in the forest alone, hunting for the ruins, my feet bare on the undergrowth. Sometimes Carter ran with me. Or Miri. Or all four of us. Sometimes Ashley found me and grabbed ahold of my arms, her boney fingers digging into my biceps and her eyes wide and terrifying the way they were in the pub. She wanted to know where the ring was.

“Where’d you drop it?” she’d snarl. “Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” I’d say, sitting up in a cold panic with sweat on my brow and tears streaming down my cheeks.

I wanted to forget about the things that had happened to us there, but even the practical, logical side of me suspected that may never happen.

“What’s going on with you?” Lex asked one morning. He stood across the kitchen island, wearing his boxers and nothing else as he sipped his coffee and smoked a cigarette.

“What do you mean, what’s going on with me?” Sleep didn’t come easily these days. I’d been up since four in the morning, so I was already showered and dressed by the time he’d even come out of his room.

“I can hear you shouting and moaning in your sleep.”

I cleared my throat. “It’s nothing.”

He paused and glanced around to make sure we were alone, bringing his smoke to his lips for a deep inhale. “Is it the ruins?”

“Yeah.” I ran a hand over the back of my neck and sighed, cringing against the memory. “It’s probably some PTSD thing. I obviously need therapy.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else, like maybe he had a similar confession to make, but the door to our apartment opened and my driver announced he was ready to take me to class. I grabbed my stuff, gave Lex one last look that asked for his silence, and left.

I couldn’t deal with whatever was or wasn’t between us. I simply didn’t have the time or the energy anymore. I missed Carter, I missed Miri, and I had to soldier on.

Except…

I should have let it go. It was silly and irrational and no one believed in fairy curses, but on those nights when I woke up in a cold sweat, unable to fall back asleep, I started digging. I went down internet snake pits that led me nowhere, and some that led me to things I’d never be able to unsee. Up until this point, most of what I’d come across was too farfetched to be anything but myth. People being turned into pigs, fairies stealing human children, little winged creatures causing chaos in the enchanted forest.

Then I found an old story about two sets of lovers wandering into the woods after a fire festival on Beltane. They were gone for three days, according to the locals, and when they returned, they claimed they’d only been lost a few hours. They said they’d dined with the fairies and married each other in a great festival of love, burning their vows onto their hands.

The queen of the fairies had given them her blessing, and the king bestowed them with unimaginable fortune.

“They’d been gifted by the faire folk,” the story said. “Eternal life and eternal love. They made a vow. For none could stray from the rest, or they would suffer unknowable ecstasy.”

We’d wandered into the woods after midsummer, but other than that, the story rang a little too close to home. I hung it on the cork board I had in the back of my closet where I’d gathered anything else I thought worthwhile. Articles or whatever I could find about Siobhan and Ashley and Killwater in general. I had different colored yarn connecting the people I thought I’d seen at the festival. I tacked on any fairy lore and ancient myths that came close to what we’d experienced.

But this took the cake. It was the closest I’d come to a story like ours, proof that what happened to us had actually happened. Deciding I’d do more research about this fairy king and queen in the morning, I showered and climbed into bed, hoping for a peaceful night.

The dream came to me like it always did. I ran in the woods, the wind in my hair and the branches hitting me in the face and on the arms. I laughed, finally free, freer than I’d ever felt in my life. Utter joy mixing in my blood, I ran faster and harder, pushing myself and intoxicated by the fresh forest air.

But when I got to the ruins, I stopped short. Standing in front of it with one hand in her pocket and the other holding a cigarette was Siobhan. She looked the same as the last time I’d seen her, her dark brown hair cut short, her matching eyes just as intense and inviting.

“Hello, Ivy,” she said.

“What the fuck?” I said. “I’m dreaming. This is a dream.”

“I think so.” She took a step closer, raising an incredulous eyebrow. “You look more exhausted than the last time I saw you. Tsk tsk tsk.” Siobhan shook her head, disapproval in her stare. “You haven’t been taking care of my gift.”

“I lost it,” I admitted, biting my bottom lip and wringing my hands. “The ring.”

She pursed her lips, leaning into me. “Did you think the ring was the gift?”

Wasn’t it?

“What was it then?” My eyebrows furrowed as I tried to figure it out, my heart pounding, my stomach lurching into knots. “The kiss? The night I don’t remember?”

She stayed frustratingly silent.

“Answer me,” I shouted, clenching my fists. “What did you do to us?”

Siobhan chuckled to herself. “If you have to ask, you haven’t learned the moral of the story.”

“What moral? What are you talking about?”

She pulled her lips into a slow smile and poof…she was gone.

My eyes shot open and I jolted upright, my empty room lit only by the DC skyline and the full moon creeping in through my curtains.

It was only a dream.

Just a dream.

I swung my legs to the side and stood, pausing when something cool fell out of my lap and landed in a soft thud on the floor. The green leaves shimmered in the faint light, and when I picked it up, my heart almost stopped.

A silver ring made of ivy.

* * *

I didn’t tell Lex.

I didn’t know what it meant, so I kept it to myself. I prayed for Siobhan to return to my dreams and elaborate on this whole mess. She never did. The nightmares went away, and Ashley left me alone. Almost as if the ring’s return had flipped a switch in my mind or put a protective bubble around me, keeping the consequences of midsummer at bay.

If the ring wasn’t the gift, then what was?

I’d stare at it for hours, memorizing the shifting light in its emerald leaves and the dazzling craftsmanship of the bent gold, anticipating the moment when it suddenly did a trick.

How had she given this to me? Was she in the room? Had she disappeared before I woke?

The alarms hadn’t been tripped, and the security footage outside the building didn’t pick up anyone matching her description. Suffice to say, I had no good answers. Kit hadn’t found anything about Siobhan despite her months of searching, and my education had started to take up most of my time. What happened to us in Ireland seemed so far away, growing further with each passing second.

I flipped a page in the ancient book outstretched in front of me while Jeopardy played on the TV in the background, twiddling the ring between my fingers. The medieval illustration of the fairy king and queen seemed like something out of an old history text rather than figures from mythology. Expertly done. Fine detailing around the border.

Like Ashley said that first day in Ireland, they weren’t pixies from Disney tales. One light, one dark, they were twin spirits, bound together for all eternity. These myths painted them as mercurial rulers, beloved by their fairy followers and feared by humans. They’d been known to take humans as consorts, inviting them into their fairy court and feeding them the food of the fae to keep them bound to that realm forever. Together, they were the great source of all the magic in the fairy world.

I wondered if the king and queen existed. Did they know what Siobhan had done to us? What would they do to us if they did? Would they even care? Or would my lowly human self not fly high enough for their radar?

My thumb went to the scars on my right hand, tracing over the tiny lines as I remembered the burn from midsummer. The agony had blistered through my drunken haze, and if I thought about it hard enough, I could almost still feel it simmering there, just below the surface.

“Great news for all you Princess Miriam fans,” said the talking head during a commercial. “She’s back in the UK and looking more regal than ever. Find out the whole story, tonight on PuckTV.”

I took a sip of my wine, swallowing down the rising tide of angst that brewed in my chest at seeing her. They showed paparazzi shots of her crossing the street wearing a shimmery blouse and a flowing dress, not a hair out of place. The picture-perfect princess, as always.

My heart pounded, and this sinking feeling turned to cement in my gut, tears welling in the corners of my eyes. I missed her. So fucking much.

“Well, that’s enough of that.” I clicked the TV off and chugged the rest of my wine, wincing as it hit me right in the forehead. I focused my (somewhat blurry) attention on the ring, now sitting on the page in the book. I’d had a stressful day at school, followed by a hectic night at the law firm, and now?

This stupid fucking ring.

Perhaps I’d had more wine than I’d meant to because the longer I looked it, the angrier I got. Like I expected it to reveal its secrets to me or lead the way to fucking Oz. When it didn’t, I clamped my fingers into fists and I slammed them down on the countertop, growling “What the fuck is happening? Goddamn it.”

Even in my drunken haze, twin jolts of agony echoed up my arms and down my spine.

“Ahh, shit!” I waved my hands in front of me, regretting my outburst now that I was sure I’d broken both of my pinky fingers.

That was how Lex found me. The door to our apartment opened, and he walked in carrying Chinese takeout, his tie loosened around his neck and the sleeves of his button-down rolled up to his elbows.

He narrowed his hazel eyes as he froze and assessed me, his skeptical gaze going up and down. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just being an idiot.”

He sat the plastic bag on the kitchen island before grabbing my wrists to examine whatever I was clutching.

“I’m fine.” I whipped my hands away from him, and he rolled his eyes, going back to the food.

“You don’t sound fine.” He unloaded white plastic containers as I tried and failed to get my shit together. Head swimming, I went to the cabinet with the plates and grabbed two so we could eat, but when I turned back around, he’d frozen with his eyes locked on the ring. “Is that what I think is?”

Shit.

I opened my mouth. Shut it again. I didn’t know what to tell him.

“I thought you’d lost it.”

“I did.” I put the plates down, wishing like hell I could suddenly be sober. Two glasses of wine on an empty stomach had made me foolish and careless.

“You found it?” Narrowing his eyes, he came around the island, tracing his fingertips down the white marble as he walked. That gaze settled on me, the one that meant he knew I was hiding something. He could smell it, and now he was on the hunt.

My hand went to the X on my neck, but he shoved it away.

“Not exactly.” I held his stare, refusing to back down from this. In my drunken state, I’d be no match for a sober Lex, but I didn’t think about that. I forced myself not to tremble when he took another step.

“X, what the fuck is going on?”

Everything in me wanted to resist, to fight him, to tell him to fuck off and mind his own goddamn business.

But where had that gotten us last time?

Where had that ever gotten us?

“She came to me in my dreams. Siobhan.” I told him everything—how she met me at the ruins, how she told me I wasn’t taking care of her gift. All of it. “When I woke up, there it was.”

His eyes shifted between mine while he processed this new information. “When did this happen?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“Weeks?” His eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “So much for honesty. When the fuck were you planning on telling me?”

“I don’t know, Lex.” I clenched my hands into fists as I geared up to defend myself. “Do I have to tell you everything now?”

“When it comes to whatever’s going on with us, yes. It affects us both.”

“Not like this.” I shook my head at him. “I’m the one having the nightmares. They gave this gift to me. I have to figure out how to break it.”

He balked. “Is that what you think? We’re in this together.”

I took a deep breath, trying to control my racing heart. If we were in this together, then why did it feel like I was the only one doing anything about it? Why did it feel like he hadn’t thought about it…about them…since we’d left?

No, he’d gone through this magnificent experience with me and then pulled away when it mattered most, just like he did about everything else in his life.

“I promised you.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice and brushing a piece of hair behind my ear. “When we got home, I’d help you figure out what was going on. I’d help you fight this. I meant it.”

I searched his face for signs of trickery.

Why was he being so sweet?

Why was he being nice?

It didn’t make sense. No, he was doing this to fuck with me. Six months home and he’d reverted to his old self, the guy who lived to get under my skin.

“Don’t tease me.” I shoved at his shoulders to stop him from crowding me up against the counter, but he grabbed my wrist, yanking me forward. My other hand went to his chest to keep my balance.

Then something happened.

The connection between us burned. Everywhere our skin touched vibrated with a power I didn’t recognize, but it resonated with familiarity all at once.

Then everything went white like I’d been blinded. Visions danced in front of me, clips from a movie on a projector screen.

No, not clips.

Memories.

Lex’s memories.

I saw myself as a ten-year-old child, red in the face, my hair in pigtails and my dress in tatters as I beat at Lex’s head with my fists backstage behind our parents’ inauguration. Rage and passion swelled in my heart, but it wasn’t my rage and passion. It came from the visions, like they’d invoked that response in me because of the way it had made Lex feel at the time.

I saw myself the moment he kissed me on the banks of the Potomac at Marcus’s funeral, the zing of the slap slicing through his face as I hit him. His shame and guilt and awe of me struck somewhere in my gut, and I almost toppled over.

Then the images sped up. One of us at Mount Oberon, arguing with each other on the debate team. At TWU, me standing across the fire and insinuating that I’d slept with his girlfriend. A drunken night in my apartment sophomore year where I’d been laughing at something Carter said and Lex watched us from across the room with this yearning deep in his heart.

All the emotions from those experiences hit next. The stinging heat of jealousy and the icy burn of longing.

Years and years of it. Years of our friendship. Years of his complicated torment for me. For Carter. For Miri. Years of pushing it down, pushing aside, just…pushing.

It should have been me, he thought when Marcus’s face appeared. It should have been me.

My chest caved in on itself, and I sobbed.

Then the connection stopped. The line went dead like the plug on my projector screen had been ripped right out of the wall.

I blinked, coming back to reality—one where I stood in my kitchen with my fiancé and my cold takeout and the awkward what-the-fuck-was-that between us.

I didn’t know what to say. Had I just seen his memories? Had I been able to get into his head? And if so…did he think that way about himself? Had he been hanging on to that all this time?

All this time.

“Lex,” I finally murmured.

He took a long, slow breath through his nose, his jaw tightening and his body going rigid. His normally piercing eyes turned frightening with their intensity and the betrayal, confusion lurking behind them.

For six months, we had been living around each other. We had tried and failed to find that burning bright thing we kindled in Ireland. But there, in that kitchen, with the weight of what I’d witnessed between us, it flamed to life again.

Nowhere near as powerful as it used to be, but definitely there.

A heartbeat passed. A slow exhale coasted over his lips.

And then I pushed up on my toes, bringing my mouth to his in a crushing embrace. How could he ever have wished he’d died? How could he ever have wanted it to be him? And God, all those things he felt for me. All those complicated emotions.

When he put his arms around my waist and hugged me tighter, I sagged into his hold.

This wasn’t the passionate fury we’d found in that alcove at Killwater nor was it the newly discovered drunken desire at the beer pong game.

This meant something different.

A partnership, perhaps. An understanding.

He broke the kiss with his hands on my shoulders, gently pushing me back so he could cup my jaw and rest his forehead on mine.

“Tell me the truth. What’s going on with you?”

A powerful twist hit my gut, magic clinging to the air between us like suffocating humidity. The words came out of my mouth, even though I tried to stop them. I wanted to bite them back but couldn’t.

“I think I read your mind,” I said. “I saw our life together.”

Wait…What?

Why the fuck did I tell him that?

I’d never had any problem lying to him before.

“Is that a new party trick?” Lex reached for his cigarettes, biting one between his teeth to light it. “Or have you been a better actress your whole life than I’ve given you credit for?”

I ignored his cruelty. There were bigger issues to deal with here. “How did you make me tell you that?”

Lex cleared his throat and inhaled deeply, blowing out the smoke before saying, “Remember when I said our parents didn’t have anything to do with Carter and Miri? That’s how I knew.”

The puzzle pieces slid together in my mind faster than I could put them together. “This is what she meant. She told me she gave me a gift. This is what she meant.” Wait…our parents? “How long have you known?”

Lex cleared his throat. “A few weeks.”

I put my hands on my hips and glared at him, mocking his earlier tone when I said, “So much for honesty, right?”

He rolled his eyes and refocused his attention on our dinner. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“What? This changes everything.”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re still a stuck-up law school student, and I’m still a tattooed fuckup. These are our roles.”

“That’s bullshit.”

He snorted out a laugh. “I agree. But what exactly are you going to do? Call Carter and Miri to tell them? Good luck getting in touch with them. Even if you do, what if they’re not experiencing it? Or better yet, what if they are? Do you think that will make Carter leave Hollywood?”

The harshness in his tone made me wince.

“Do you think Miri will leave the royal family? Do you think—” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat before pausing to get his composure back. “Do you think that will make them change their minds? Come play house with two political nightmares?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, steeling my gaze against his onslaught before I whispered a solemn, “No.”

“No.” Lex turned to me, taking another hit on the cigarette before stabbing it out. “Then this stays between us.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll help you figure out what’s going on. I’ll do whatever research you want. I’ll even help you get us out of this mess. I promised I would. But we tell no one.”

“More secrets, Lucifer?”

He sighed and gave me a sarcastic smile. “It’s what makes a good marriage, right?”

I rolled my eyes, but he closed the distance between us, cupping the side of my face and sliding his hand down until it rested over my X. He traced the mark with his thumb, and that delicate touch zigzagged all the way down my legs and back up again.

“We’re in this together, X,” he said. “Always.”

I grabbed his wrists and rested my forehead against his, a small weight lifting off my chest at the confession.

Together again.

Since the beginning.

Until the end.