Page 86 of The Winter Princess
I skid to a halt. “Erik, you didn’t upload it to—”
He snatches the phone back and shakes his head, offended. “Itookthe picture. I didn’tpostthe picture.” He taps the screen. “There, I sent it to you. I won’t share it with another human soul.”
I glare at him, but my phone vibrates, and I click to open the attachment. This is not an image of a man suffering another’s presence, happy with being friends, fine if he never kisses me again. It’s Oskar holding onto me like he’s the wreckage of a car I’ll need the jaws of life to escape from.
“Invite me to the wedding,” Erik sings as he skips down the hall, throwing imaginary rose petals in my path.
I return to the palace for a shower and spend the rest of the day helping my sister. Ella ropes me into putting up a small white Christmas tree in her suite and listening to holiday music as we snack on cookies.
“There are more than forty trees scattered all over the palace,” I laugh. “Do you need another?”
“Those aren’t Christmas trees. They’re designated public servants. Here,” she says, plopping a package into my lap. “Help unbox my ornaments.”
“I’m sure the palace has extra. You didn’t need to buy—” I halt. “What’s this?” I hold up a handful of tiny army men.
“The main characters fromAncestors of the Moon.”
“One of your Asian dramas?”
She answers around the peppermint in her cheek, smiling at me. “It’s been a hard year in the palace. I apologize for nothing.”
Further inspection of her packages reveals a dizzying, mismatched assortment of ornaments including a pink octopus, a shopping cart with a tiny old woman in it, a nine-tailed fox, and a miniature claw machine.
I hold up a garland of cable ties. “Do we need to talk?”
She looks up from her task—plunging a full-sized glowing blue sword through the tree while adjusting the angle. “That was a very good show,” she smiles.
I toss her a cookie. “I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
I hold her gaze and the atmosphere shifts. “Mama had Una put up the family tree in her apartment, just like always.”
Ella’s voice is clipped. “I’m an adult. I wanted to do my own thing.”
“It’s more than that.” She hasn’t said so. This is twin intuition leading me.
Ella is as ugly as I am when I cry. Blotchy skin and red eyes. We fight hard to keep from doing it. She clears her throat, fighting now, and I see how angry she is.
“It was fine when we had to act out there,” she points beyond the palace gates, “to perform a role and say our lines. It was fine because in here we got to be real people. That was the deal. We knew it could work because it was working for our parents. Well, it’s not working for them. It’s not working for any of us. We could pretend before Mama and Père—” Her voice is shaking, and she fights for control again.
She smiles, half grimacing, and steps away from the deepest well of emotion with a gusty exhale. “Maybe this is silly,” she says, touching the hilt of the sword. “Maybe it’s not something any other princess would do, but it makes me laugh and heaven knows we could use a laugh.” Her mouth hardens.
“And?”
“And it’s a reminder not to be sucked into the machine. I don’t have to serve up my life’s happiness as an agenda item to be discussed around a conference table.”
Her words play on a loop in my head all night. I haven’t been fighting against the royal way because the royal way bent easily around my wishes. It’s not bending now. I wish for Oskar. The road divides. I choose.
When I make my way to the museum, I find Erik in the admin wing making a face at his computer screen.
“He is the literal worst,” he says.
Prime Minister Torbald is taking questions from parliament, and the crawling text beneath his video feed reads, “In Wake of Seong Crisis, PM Pushes Targeted Immigration Caps.”
“What’s this?” My brother’s closest friend is half-Seongan and flew out for relief work. Most of Ella’s dramas originate from Seongan studios and she made a sizable, anonymous charitable donation from her personal fortune.
“I can’t even.” Erik shakes his head and rolls his eyes, clicking away from the news and pulling up a work document. He reaches for his iced Americano. “Do you need something?”
