Page 25 of The Winter Princess
“You got one, I hope.”
His eyes light. Warmth spirals through me. “I was a poor student on a foreign exchange trip. Themarkkewas down against the dollar.”
“A missed opportunity,” I add, softly.
He bumps away from the column, taking my arm as he goes. Pulling away would be an acknowledgment that it means something. It doesn’t, so I leave it in his gentle grip and suffer the storm of tiny lightning bolts in silence.
“That was the most precious souvenir, after all,” he begins, sounding like the parting lines of a children’s tale. “The lesson that, if I want something bad enough, I shouldn’t let it slip through my fingers.” He punches a complicated code into a touchpad, and I hear a click. Pushing the door open on the chilly autumn night, we follow a path to the staff parking lot where I suspect my security officer has been watching a Dragon’s game on his phone. Freddie hops out of the car and opens the door before I’ve even reached the bottom of the steps.
“This isNeerVelasquez,” I tell him. “He wanted to walk me down.”
“Good thing he did, too, ma’am,” he chides, as though anarchists and assassins are waiting behind every bush. My security needs are light, my routine visits to The Nat needing no extraordinary precautions, but I’m supposed to text Freddie when I’m ready to leave. He would’ve met me at the door.
I look at Oskar and turn the collar up on my soft cashmere coat. “Think about what can be done to get people in the doors of the museum, will you? I’ll announce the deal with the prime minister at the staff meeting tomorrow, and I hate to think of springing it on them without something already in mind.”
“You didn’t hate springing it on me,” he says, hands in pockets.
“You’re different.”
I am a person of pauses, of silences that stretch until someone says, “Well?” like the honk of a horn at a traffic signal to get me moving. Those words spilled out of me, but they are no less true because they haven’t been weighed and measured. Heisdifferent.
Instead of trying to figure out how, I allow Freddie to tuck me into the car. He closes the door with a snap, and I look at Oskar through the glass. He can’t hear the sound of my breath, loud in my ears. When the Mercedes pulls away, he’s frowning.
The trip to the Summer Palace is swift, and on my way to my suite, I halt outside my sister’s door, rapping the wood with my knuckle.
“Ella,” I call.
No answer.
I pull out my phone and text her.
Need to talk.
A mechanized lock slides open, and I push through the door, making my way to her office, a room with tasteful furnishings hidden somewhere underneath the mass of cords and technology.
My twin flips back one of her headphones, her curly red hair bunching on one side. “You look fancy,” she says, swiveling around in her complicated office chair.
“Vintage Dialli,” I murmur. “What’s this?” I take in Ella’s monitors. Various lines of code—I know that much—fill several screens, and a ReadHe thread is open on another. The last is playing a K-pop music video featuring exploding angel wings. I haven’t the faintest idea what she’s working on, but I’m sure it’s impressive.
“Just a side project,” she says. “What brings you to my kingdom?”
“I need your help.”
She peels the headphones away and pushes off the desk, wheeling herself and the chair across the room.
“You never need my help. You never need anyone’s help. What’s the trouble? Man or beast?”
“Both.”
“Oh?”
I shake my head. Ella is going to get ideas.
“Neither. I meant neither,” I correct. “It’s to do with the museum.”
Ella sighs. “It’s not like I don’t appreciate your interests, little sister, but you need to broaden your horizons. The world is bigger than the grounds of The Nat.” She sweeps an arm out.
“Yes,” I nod, gazing over the room, my tone dry. “The thrilling expanse of an airless office with an excellent internet connection is a perfect illustration of your point.” I shake myself out of my coat and slip into a chair. “I really do need your help. Tech help,” I add, hopefully.
