She felt the vibration of his voice where she curled into him, but the words were lost on her as her mind spun in dizzying circles. Ivy tried to remember ever hearing about her brother or seeing any evidence at all that he'd been part of her life.
They were twins. Shouldn't she feel like part of her was incomplete?
How anyone could be so desperate to have a child, that she would willingly carry two, and sacrifice one for the other?
By the time she calmed down enough to see and think straight, Ivy realized she was no longer sitting out in the sunshine, but curled up in Uriah's lap on the living room couch, and shadows of twilight shimmered through the windows.
“Did I fall asleep?”
Uriah gave her a snuggle and dropped a kiss on her hair. “No, honey. You checked out for a while. The girls stuck around long enough to put up some different protection spells around the house, Fae proof, and took off after I told them you needed some time. How're you feeling?”
Ivy blinked her dry, scratchy eyes and tried to summon up some cohesive thoughts, but all she could focus on was that last picture.
“I have a brother.”
“Older than you by seven whole minutes,” Uriah answered, a smile evident in his tone.
With her cheek pressed to his chest, Ivy listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, struggling to focus on it and nothing else. “I don't understand.”
Uriah settled deeper into the couch, one hand kneading at her hair, the other roamed up and down her back. “Rowena read the next entry; your mom wrote it two weeks after you were born. It sounded like it took her that much time to let what happened really sink in.
“She said the Green Man showed up at the house only a few hours after the birth and barely spared you more than a glance. He wanted your brother.
“She wrote that she tried to make a new deal, to keep both of you, but the Green Man made it clear his gift of life could easily be taken away. He didn't even give her time enough to tell him the baby's name before taking him.”
For a long time, Ivy said nothing. She couldn't. Her body felt like a clogged pipe, unable to process the thoughts and emotions filling up her mind like a sink, filled with murky water that had nowhere to go. Eventually, she was able to focus on a singular thought, her voice sounding numb and dull.
“Did you know, Ilex is the traditional name for holly?”
Uriah brushed a sweet kiss across her temple. “I did not know that.”
“Holly and Ivy have been used all the way back to ancient times as representations of the male and female. Two of the many sacred plants present in traditional Beltane rituals.”
“That's telling,” he commented.
“Is it?”
“Mmhm. She could have gone with generic, popular baby names, but instead named you both after something sacred, which says to me you were both the most precious things in her whole world.
“From what little you told me about it, your people aren't big on love matches. They pair up according to who can reproduce the strongest offspring for the betterment of the species. The pressure your mom felt to have a child, only to learn she was physically incapable? I imagine you have some understanding of how alone and rejected she must have felt.”
Uriah said it gently, and Ivy found herself nodding, curling her fingers into a fist on his chest.
“She disobeyed the rules back then. It didn't matter to her what the consequences were, she wanted a baby for herself, and she paid a steep price. Unfortunately, history is rife with deals childless women have made with the Fae that went wrong.”
Ivy tipped her head back and frowned up at him in confusion. “Your bear can read?”
“The bear is me, honey,” he told her with a chuckle, drawing his fingertip along her hairline. “I don't lose my human mind unless I let him take over completely.”
“Do you think he knows about me? My brother.” Uriah didn't answer her immediately, his smile turning a little brittle around the edges while he visibly hesitated. Alarm jangled through her, and she pushed up on one arm to look down at him, studying the nuances of his expression. “What?”
Slowly, Uriah nodded and said, “I think he does.”
“And?” she prompted, wondering why her heart was suddenly beating so hard.
“And... I think maybe he was the one at the garden shop asking about you. Tall, red hair, made Sandy almost have an orgasm just talking about him.”
“She didn't!” Ivy guffawed.
Uriah's brows climbed up into his hair with a knowing nod. “She did. She has excellent control over herself, but the arousal pumping off her was intense. She probably wouldn't have remembered him at all, except she was wearing a pendant made out of what looked like antique horseshoe nails. Iron.”
Her stomach twisted now for a whole new reason, her hands going cold and clammy. “You think he might be involved with the Silver Wives massacre and the death of my Headmistress?”
“I think it's a possibility we shouldn't rule out.” His answer was tactful, his tone as neutral as it could possibly get, but it still made her feel sick to her stomach.
Her immediate reaction was to vehemently protest. To say that was impossible, that her brother wouldn't do that, but how could she make that claim without sounding like an idiot? She hadn't even known she had a brother until today.
Not once in her nine months of journaling had Ivy's mom mentioned the Green Man coming back to check on her, which told Ivy he could have cared less about her health or the child he didn’t want.
Ivy had no idea what kind of life her brother might have led, raised by a fairy creature who'd taken advantage of their mother, left her pregnant, bruised and unconscious on the forest floor, and snatched Ilex as a baby only hours after he'd been born.
With that saddening thought, Ivy slung her leg over Uriah's hip and settled back into his embrace, needing the incredible heat he put off to soothe the chills permeating her. “Sandy didn't say if he was alone or not.”
“No, she didn't. I think the best thing we can do right now is keep on, business as usual.”
Ivy nodded, sure she should have had some kind of feminine objection to him taking charge and telling her what to do, but she couldn't find it in her right now to make a fuss.
For all her failures and feelings of insecurity and displacement, she led a terribly sheltered life. Not one time had she gone to bed fearing what the dawn might bring. She never had to worry about the people she cared about being hurt. She’d never had to worry about being kidnapped by her father.
She’d been safe because of her mother’s sacrifices.
“You didn't eat lunch. Do you think you could stomach some broth from yesterday's roast and some bread? You need something in your tummy before we turn in.”
Ivy closed her eyes, wondering why that one question hit her so hard. Uriah's desire to feed and care for her wasn't a secret, but for some reason, now, in what felt like her most vulnerable moment, he proved he was everything she could have possibly hoped for.
Witches weren't big on promoting love matches, and despite all the lies and mysteries swirling around her, Uriah was steady and open about his feelings for her.
That sensation of being stopped up and clogged with all the murky thoughts and feelings drained away. Her mate's love a veritable plunger that forced everything else aside but how he made her feel.