Page 56 of Once Upon A Royal Christmas
“The kids are ready for you,” Jaron said.
“Shall we?” Nick waved for Gracie to go in front of him.
The moment they stepped out into the snow, the children squealed so loud that Nick legitimately worried about the risk of an avalanche. The orderly line descended into chaos as the kids rushed forward to crowd around them.
Not them, actually. Gracie was the one they all wanted to see. Children ran straight past him; he might as well have been invisible. A little girl in red snow boots plowed into his knees in her haste to get near Princess Snowflake.
“This way, sweetheart,” Nick said as he took her by her narrow shoulders and steered her toward Gracie.
Then he braced himself for the inevitable coldness that had come over him in the royal box the other night after his half-hearted welcoming ovation—that sinking feeling of irritation laced with just enough humiliation to make him feel like an extra on the set of a Disney princess movie instead of the Crown Prince of a very real kingdom.
Oddly enough, it didn’t come. He was okay with being invisible, it seemed.
“Good morning, snowflakes! Are you all ready to go for a ride in a snow globe this morning?” Gracie said, clasping her hands to her heart.
A ride in a snow globe?
Her gaze flitted toward him, and he winked at her. Cute, Princess. The gondolas were glass on all sides, and each one spun a full three hundred sixty degrees as it made its way across the Alps, affording a breathtaking view of the snowy landscape. It was very much like being inside a snow globe, although Nick had never quite thought of it in that way before.
His mouth quirked into a smile. She had a tendency to do that, didn’t she—make him see the everyday things around him in new and different ways? It had been the same yesterday on the carriage ride when she’d told him she felt like they’d been in the lyrics of a Christmas carol.
“Prince Nicolas, Evan here wants to know why no two snowflakes are alike. Does anyone know the answer?” Gracie touched a graceful fingertip to her chin and looked directly at him, drawing him into her snowy princess act. She fluttered her eyelashes. “Do you know the answer, Prince Nicolas?”
Dozens of pairs of little eyes turned toward Nick, as if noticing him for the very first time.
“Tell us, Prince Nicolas,” the girl in the red boots said in an adorable singsong voice.
He stepped forward, and the children parted for him to make his way to Princess Snowflake’s side.
“Let’s see.” He pretended to ponder the question. “Could it be because snowflakes are made up of molecules and there are an endless number of ways molecules can stack together?”
Gracie let out a gasp of delight, as if he’d just solved the mystery of how Santa could visit every house in the world, all on the same frosty Christmas Eve. Nick knew all of this was part of her sugary-sweet party princess persona.
Pride swelled inside him, all the same. What was wrong with him?
“Prince Nicolas is right. Snowflakes are made of molecules stacked together in thousands of different ways. But also, every snowflake that falls to the ground has its own special journey. That journey eventually determines what they look like. Every snowflake follows its own path, just like people do.” Gracie turned her princess smile on Nick, and darned if his breath didn’t catch in his chest. “Princes and princesses, too.”
He nodded. “Princes and princesses, too.”
Their conversation from the Christmas market replayed in his head, like a favorite song.
This probably won’t make a bit of sense to you at all, but do you ever feel like you’ve gotten so accustomed to playing a role that you sometimes forget where that role ends and the real person begins?
His journey through life was nothing whatsoever like Gracie’s. If they’d been snowflakes, they’d look nothing alike at all. But in some small way, they understood each other—despite all their differences. Maybe even because of them.
And now here they were, worlds apart, but right beside each other. Doing the same work. Serving the people of San Glacera…
Together.
“Thank you for that,” Nick said later when it was just the two of them inside a glass gondola suspended high above a snow-capped glacier. Ice glistened like blue diamonds among the snowy crags. “It meant a lot.”
Gracie tore her gaze from the view below to give him a quizzical look. “Why are you thanking me, exactly?”
“For pulling me into your interaction with the kids,” he said. Snow flurries whirled against the glass behind her. If they’d been inside a real snow globe, it would have been one that had just been given a shake. Nick felt the loss of equilibrium down to his center, and he knew it didn’t have anything to do with the ride itself.
It was her.
“Don’t be silly. You don’t need to thank me. Of course I included you—this is your home.” Her baffled expression morphed into a generous smile. “Anyway, we’re in this together, right?”
