Page 66 of The Winter Princess
“Oh. The Wolffe family heart crypt.”
Our hands are still clasped, and I’m not going to be the first to break contact. I like it too much. “That clears up nothing.”
“You’ve never been? It’s the church where my ancestor’s hearts are interred. You can get in free, though they suggest a fewmarkkeas a donation,” she says, sounding like a tour guide. “There are about four hundred years’ worth.” I must be making a face because she follows up with, “We don’t do it anymore.”
“I work in a museum housing the severed toe of St. Leofdag, but you’ve won a very strange competition. That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“Surely not,” she answers, reclaiming her hand and turning for the door. I miss it. My fingers curl over and run along my cooling palm while I try to think up more bargains we can strike. Freja turns, walking backward a few paces. “Handsel hosts a stark-naked winter solstice swim, but a few hearts are weird?”
“A few?” I sense a rhetorical weasel. “How many?”
She looks down and taps out a tiny rhythm on a table, murmuring, “Fifty-seven.”
“What?”
“Fifty-seven,” she repeats, louder.
“Stacked? I want a visual.”
“Lined up on risers like a school concert, if you must know. Some big urns, most of them small. It’s not that weird.”
“It’s the implication,” I say to her retreating back, allowing myself to appreciate the way she fills out a skirt since she can’t watch me watching her. “Someone had to stand by with a knife, have a bowl to transport the thing, plop it into the jar. Good heavens, the plop. I’ll be up all night,” I call.
“Sweet dreams, courtesy of The House of Wolffe.” Her low laugh echoes down the hall.
The door closes with a sigh, and I stare dumbly. Right. Then I bang my head repeatedly against the nearest post. “A little past Christmas,” I whisper. I just need to make it past Christmas.
I return to my flat at the end of the night, tossing my keys onto the table in the hall. A note from Uncle Timo tells me he left a dish of bakedpescilliniwarming in the oven.
I sort my mail, tossing aside a new issue ofConservator’s Journal, noting an article on German solvents I want to check out. Then I come to an envelope with the national seal on the face addressed toNeerOskar Velasquez. I rip it open, the cellophane window flexing noisily.
It’s just a friendly reminder of my looming citizenship test, the location, and time.
22
Humor Me
FREJA
Smit curls into the crook of my knees, dislodging my book. I right them both and reach for a bracing swallow of coffee. I’ve been thinking of Oskar. It happens when I’m not paying attention–like a car with the alignment out of whack, drifting over the line into oncoming traffic.
Smit lifts his head, and I scratch him behind the ears, a purr rumbling deep in his throat. “He has no business being that good at kissing, not when he doesn’t mean it.”
Never mind what I told my sisters. Oskar’s kiss was good.
Smit arches his back, pink tongue curling from his mouth, and allows me to work undisturbed until I hear the chimes of my mantel clock. Tonight is a Wolffe family dinner.
There’s no special dress code when we gather in the old apartments that used to house all of us together before we began moving out—Noah to Lily Cottage and the rest of us to our private suites. It’s rare that we’re all together without any official duties. Before Mama and Papa began keeping separate quarters, it was a time to relax.
Noah walks in through the French doors wearing an old Army sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, hardly recognizable as the suited and shaved heir to the crown. He chafes his hands together, warming them with his breath.
“Your ears are pink,” Ella points out.
He hooks his arm over her shoulders and kisses her head. She shakes out of his embrace in protest. “You’re freezing,” she protests.
Noah grabs her in a bear hug, rubbing his cold, scratchy face across her cheeks, and Mama commands him to stop tormenting his sister in the same tone he ignored when he was a teenager. Papa throws a pillow. My sisters shout advice to the captive. For a moment, my face hurts from smiling.
Then Noah’s laugh breaks off and he releases Ella abruptly, his expression shifting. It’s not my brother there but the Crown Prince of Sondmark. Ella rubs her face and looks around in confusion–we all do–but it’s only Caroline, hovering a few centimeters inside the door. Her jacket and handbag are over an arm, and her posture is stiff.
