Chapter Twenty

Dad summons me the night before Christmas Eve.

It’d been too much to hope that he’d take my word for it, that I wrote the letters and was going to send them and that Iris and I are happily going along with the scramble of wedding plans. But no, of course he’d want to at least read the letters first, and while I’d hoped to milk as much time out of this as possible, stall and stall and scrape us closer to the winter Holidays coming on Christmas Eve, I finally trudge to his office before ten.

“Hey.” Kris prods me. “It’s going to be fine.”

“It’s going be a repeat of what happened in my room.”

“No. It won’t.” Kris loops his arm around my shoulders. “You decided it won’t be. Remember? You decided. So it’ll be better.”

I don’t know how I’d get through this without him. This certainty that Dad’s bluffing is so newly formed, and I’m clinging to it with everything I have, but so many factors are out of my control. And not just out of my control, but fully in my dad’s control, and it’s the most harrowing terror I’ve ever felt, to know that something as simple as whether the next few days will be hopeful or disastrous is based on the whims of someone else.

My lungs are permanently filled with ash at this point. Each breath is a strain.

I miss Hex.

That’s the root of why this is all so deep: love. Love is the most petrifying collision I’ve ever experienced. Loving Hex, loving Christmas, it’s destroying me and I think this is why I resisted my role in Christmas for so long, because I always knew that when I fell, I’d fall with my whole being. Not a gentle slip like falling asleep, but a hurtling, momentum-gaining plummet like a bomb whistling down out of a plane.

The palace is in absolute chaos. Decorations everywhere —fresh holly and ivy; garlands on every door; twinkling lights; Christmas trees all over; ornaments and bows and ribbons. There are things here from all our Houses now, Luminaria, Jacobs, Frost, Caroler and all the little bits that have come together to create them over the years, touches that weave together a subtle yet impactful display of who we are. Staff flurry around in wedding prep and I haven’t seen Iris with how swarmed she is. Under other circumstances I’d be pissed, it’s my wedding too, isn’t it? I have no say? Antiquated bullshit.

But Kris and I get to Dad’s office. The door is open.

I push in first. He’s at his desk, looking through something on a tablet.

He taps an empty space in front of him without looking up. “Letters.”

“I—” My throat is scabbed over. I clear it, wince. “I don’t have them.”

Dad slowly raises his head to look at me. “You don’t have them.” He leans back in his chair, arms folding over his chest. His voice is neutral the way a gray sky is neutral. “Why, exactly?”

Kris steps up beside me. “I was helping him write them.”

“And—” I eye him, pleading. He can come here, support me, but do not draw attention to yourself. “And I’ve been finishing up a few last—”

Wren comes stampeding into the office behind us. “Sir! My apologies.”

I’m used to her being a swirl of energy on tasks for Dad, but she seems extra out of breath now, like she’d sprinted across the palace.

She puts a stack of paper on Dad’s desk. “Invoices to sign. What’s this meeting about?”

My lips part. “I—”

“A matter between my son and me,” Dad says. “Not your concern.”

Wren touches something on her screen. “The letters to a few of the other Holidays, yes?”

Dad flips a look up at her. “Excuse me?”

Her demeanor is cool and calm, nothing changes, but my whole body has gone stiff.

What? How did she know?

Wren sees Dad’s confusion and frowns. “You told me, sir. You asked me to review and send the letters Nicholas was due to write. See?” She shows him something on her tablet. “Invitations rescinded, correct? Everything was in order. They went out yesterday.”

Again, WHAT?

Dad’s eyes swing to mine in question.

And Wren gives me the briefest, fastest look of play along.

What the hell.

“Yeah.” I shrug “Wren read them over. Sent them. Said they were fine. It’s done.”

Dad’s suspicion sharpens, but Wren is already typing away on her tablet again.

“Wedding preparations have thrown everything into tumult. I am happy to remove any other items from your to-do list if needed?”

Dad shakes his head, and I blow out a breath at the look on his face. A look of maybe I did ask her to read those letters. Because if it was a simple cover of rescinding invitations, it would have been something he could have asked her to do. And, more, he trusts Wren.

“Thank you,” he says, still a bit uncertain, but he clears his throat and focuses on the invoices she gave him. “Boys. You may go.”

Kris grabs my wrist and has to haul me out of the office. We get maybe two yards away, enough that Dad can’t see us from his desk, and we swing on each other and simultaneously mouth WHAT THE FUCK.

Kris points back at the open office door. Did you talk to Wren?

No! I mouth back. Did you?

Why would I have?

What the HELL was THAT then?

I DON’T KNOW.

I punch his shoulder. DON’T YELL AT ME.

He hits me back. YOU YELLED FIRST.

All of this is entirely silent until Wren slips out of Dad’s office and we both shut up.

She closes the door and walks towards us, focused on her tablet. “I told you,” she says to the screen. “You are not as alone as you might think.”

And she flashes me a smile.

“Wha— why ?” is all I can get out.

Wren pulls the tablet to her chest, arms folded. She seems to be contemplating something, her eyes scrunching in thought, before she drops her gaze to the side.

“Were you aware that your father arranged for a wedding invitation to be sent to your mother?” she asks.

The mention of her is a sucking absence of oxygen, a sharp, jarring yank in my soul.

With everything else going on, I hadn’t thought of her being invited. This whole wedding was such a farcical thing to begin with. I didn’t stop to think about anyone I’d actually want at my wedding because it’s never been my wedding, it’s a lie.

But she wouldn’t come anyway. She’d rather not come and use it as an excuse to complain about how no one wants her to come to things, but—

It really wouldn’t have occurred to me that she’d be involved in any of this.

Next to me, Kris is motionless. Barely even breathing. I glance at him, blink, and that sharp, jarring soul-yank sends a new crack up my heart.

“Kris. God, tell me you didn’t know she was invited.”

He whirls on me. “I haven’t talked to her since that Merry Christmas text, I swear to god, Coal.” There’s a rawness in his tone that isn’t there when he’s lying, and he exhales a hurt whimper as something dawns on him. “She texted me yesterday, though.”

My widening eyes are all the shocked horror I get out before he shakes his head.

“I haven’t opened it. Fuck, this is what it was about though, wasn’t it?” He looks at Wren, unease mangling with hope. “Is she coming?”

Wren waves her hand. “No, I’m sorry—the emphasis should have been that your father arranged for an invitation to be sent to her. Given the intensity of this wedding being planned covertly alongside the Christmas season, many things have slipped through the cracks and, sadly, her invitation was lost in transit.”

Yeah, Wren doesn’t let things slip through the cracks, so the saccharine apology in her voice makes her invitation was lost in transit sound more like I personally shoved it into one of Renee’s food processors.

A winded laugh huffs out of me. “You’re a bit maniacal, Wren.”

I… don’t know how I should feel about all this.

I should have foreseen that Mom would hear about this wedding and harass Kris over it, but he didn’t mention anything, and he did ignore her himself. Has she texted me? I have all her messages muted and only think to check every few weeks.

I reach out and squeeze Kris’s arm. His lips flicker in a forced smile but he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t look at Wren, just stares at the carpet in sullen thought.

“If she did text you about the wedding,” Wren says, “it was only because she saw news of its announcement in the past few days. But no, she is not coming. Again, I am sorry to not have led with that. My point is that it is incredibly difficult, in a job that requires intense focus on joy, to make room for grief. But grief demands to be felt even when it is buried, and I have watched”—her eyes go to his closed office door—“your father become less and less of the leader we knew him to be as grief manifested into his need for control. I believe, on some level, he is under the impression that if he makes this Holiday fit a certain ideal, he can get her to come back.”

I frown at Wren, something tight and unnamable in my stomach. “He… he’s doing all this because of her?”

I knew he’d changed in reaction to her leaving—but I thought he just got bitter and angry, not that he’s intentionally doing these things in the hope that his actions will make her come back.

My skin goes cold. It’s such an impossibility. If she hasn’t come back already, she won’t.

Dad doesn’t believe that?

Wren shrugs, letting that be confirmation.

“And you know what he’s been doing?” I ask. I have to clear my throat. “To the other winter Holidays?”

“Of course. It’s my job to know.”

I blanch. “You never tried to talk him out of it?”

“It is not my job to have much influence over the reigning Santa beyond frequent insistencies that he redirect his efforts. Which, always, went unheeded. But,” she straightens, “hypothetically, if someone in my position did have an opinion, it would be that this Holiday, any Holiday, has no business inflicting harm, and that what the reigning Santa might hope for has never been a vision shared by the people.” She gives us a kind smile. “Now get some rest. Tomorrow will be a rather large day, for all of us.”

She leaves, her finger pattering on her tablet.

Kris’s chest caves so he hunches over and watches until she rounds a corner. “Should we be mad that Wren excluded Mom without asking us?”

“No. Fuck no,” I say. “I’d be more pissed if Wren had listened to Dad and gotten her here.” A pause. My stomach cramps. “I can’t believe he wants her back.”

Kris makes a noncommittal grunt.

That stomach cramp intensifies.

Kris can believe that Dad wants her back. Because some part of him wants her to come back too.

But Kris’s eyes go glassy when he looks up at me, and he doesn’t respond to that, not really. “Why didn’t I make that connection?” he asks. “You; wedding. She’d be invited. I thought she was texting me about other bullshit, so it was easy to ignore, but it was about this. I didn’t think for one second she’d be here.”

I smile. I smile so big it can only break into a laugh, exhausted and shocked.

Neither of us thought about her being here. Neither of us worried over her or stressed about it. It didn’t take up any space in our heads or our hearts.

It’s a mark of healing, a goalpost of growth we’ve reached.

Which makes it all the more obvious now how all Dad’s bullshit about solidifying Christmas, making it the best, making it last, stemmed from not only her leaving, but from him trying to make this Holiday fit an unreachable vision of perfection.

Love destroyed him too.

Does he know that that’s what happened to him? Does he know she’s part of why he’s doing all this? It doesn’t make anything he’s done okay, not in the vaguest sense. But it explains it.

And it sets a resolve in my heart to not let my own grief swallow me up. I’d promised Kris and myself, weeks ago, that I wouldn’t let the pain our mother caused continue to infect our lives. No matter what happens, I will keep that promise, and I’ll add on to it that no grief, no matter the source, gets to make decisions for us anymore.

But I’ll start by dismantling the product of my father’s grief.

Kris still looks heartbroken, and I hook his neck with my arm.

“You wanna talk about it or be distracted from it?” I ask. “Wallowing in it isn’t an option.”

He grunts. “Jackass.”

“Distracted from it, then.” I haul him off, angling us back for our suites. “I will make you talk about it soon, though.”

He grunts again. After a pause, he goes, “I do know one thing that’d make me feel better.”

“Name it.”

His face is still so pensive and emotional that when he looks up at the ceiling and whispers, “Ball tag,” my brain doesn’t process what he said.

Until he pops his fist down and punches me in the groin.

I plummet to my knees and Kris takes off cackling up the hall.

I have no plans to marry Iris today. But I get dressed when the stylists come calling in the early afternoon—the whole marriage sham is supposed to start before dinner so Dad can be there then slip away to oversee his Christmas Eve Santa duties. Which means he won’t be present for the ball afterwards. Any fallout from the winter Holidays will only stretch until like seven, latest.

So I need to make it to seven without losing my nerve.

I can do that.

And honestly, it isn’t as hard as I thought it would be to find that nerve. I’m oddly calm as the stylists help me into my, ahem, wedding outfit, and by the time they’re putting the final touches on me, the fluttering panic in my gut hasn’t overtaken me.

A navy blue suitcoat is trimmed in gold, with full epaulets on each shoulder, tassels too, and red pants feed into brown leather boots. The stylists slick my curls down—we’ll see how long that lasts—and brush body glitter across my face and neck. And even though I look like a wind-up toy soldier come to life, it’s polished and poised and I don’t hate it.

It isn’t until I see Kris in the hall, dressed similarly but in full navy blue head to toe, that I realize—

“Are we supposed to be nutcrackers?” I tug on the hem of my jacket.

Kris falls in step alongside me, a cavalcade of stylists and staff ushering us to the ballroom. It feels almost… normal. Like we could be where we were a few weeks back, ambivalently heading to the Merry Measure tree decorating.

Except I have Hex’s ring on my thumb.

Kris gives a sad shrug. “That’s the theme.”

“ The Nutcracker ?”

“Yeah.”

“The theme of my wedding to Iris is The Nutcracker . That’s shockingly not too awful.”

Kris gives me a look. “Having second thoughts?”

“Yep. The epaulets cinched it for me. I’m gonna be a married man tonight.”

He rolls his eyes but smiles in mixed pity-relief that I’m back to joking again.

We reach the ballroom. It’s where the guests are mingling before the ceremony, which will be held on a snow-covered lawn beyond the orchestra stage and ceiling-high windows—out there, an aisle waits, surrounded by fancy red-and-blue striped chairs and space heaters disguised in garlands. In the ballroom, the Nutcracker theme runs rampant, red and blue chasing each other around the décor, woven into symmetry by gold and green. The orchestra plays something soothing and light; most of the members of our Houses are talking and milling about the space. Members of the Easter aristocracy are here too, not many; but it isn’t really about Easter, anyway, is it?

I spot a handful of people from a few other Holidays—Valentine’s Day, sans Lily, due to Dad’s insistence that she would remind people of our previous relationship. And… that’s it. It’s a testament to Christmas’s place in the Holiday hierarchy: even with a wedding this monumental, yeah it came together fast, we have no allies in attendance, no actual friends to invite.

Reporters as always line the room. Their presence doesn’t feel as oppressive and invasive as it usually does—I see them, and look away, barely registering their impact anymore.

There’s a cluster of guests off to the left.

A few different groups, all together, all people I don’t recognize. Members of our noble houses are talking to them, not necessarily avoiding them, and why would they? They don’t know that Dad wanted me to uninvite these people.

When Kris and I step through the doors, I press my shoulder to his.

“Once more,” he whispers.

I lean on that. On him. “Unto the breach.”

We don’t get two feet into that ballroom. I’m honestly shocked he let us get this far.

Dad rushes up on us in another wildly expensive red suit, but he’s full-on raging, and he doesn’t for one second try to cover it for the cameras.

“You told me you undid this,” he hisses at me.

The full building swell of everything I’ve wanted to do crashes up on this moment, a wave slamming into a rock, and I let it wash over me, seafoam and salt and refreshing chill.

“I won’t undo Christmas’s future,” I tell him, and it’s my turn to talk while my smile is sickly sweet and performative. “If you’ll excuse me, I should greet my guests.”

I start to push around him.

He grabs my arm.

A few people have noticed us by now. Some in that group of winter Holiday representatives. Photographers.

“We need to speak,” Dad tells me. “In private. Now.”

He spins me around and hauls me out of the ballroom and I’d have to physically tear myself out of his grip to get away.

Kris is booking it to the winter reps.

Dad drags me up the hall and into a sitting room, the same one I pulled Iris into after Dad first announced our potential marriage, another fire lit, burning low, orange and heat.

I rip away from him as soon as I can. “I’m not backing down on this. We are capable of exactly what you want, ensuring Christmas lasts, but together, with other Holidays too. We can grow by sharing success and being a part of something, not the only thing.”

He slams the door shut and starts pacing between the low stuffed chairs.

I’ve never seen him this furious with me.

“You’re going back to Yale,” he says mid-pacing. “Tomorrow. First thing.”

“On Christmas Day?”

“You are stripped of all subsequent duties and appearances. You get out there, marry that Easter Princess, and then you are done, do you hear me? There is nothing left for you—”

“I’m not marrying Iris. I’m not playing this game. And, while we’re at it, I’m not going to grad school. It doesn’t have to be like this! Lying and fighting and manipulation. We don’t have to live this way. It isn’t a mark of failure to support other people, and it isn’t a mark of success to stand alone.”

He’s pacing, pacing.

And then he stops.

Hands behind his back, facing the fire, where a steady flame crackles on sweet-smelling logs.

“You forced me to this, Nicholas,” he says. “You truly are willing to risk the fallout that this would bring? I thought you cared for that Halloween Prince.”

“I do care. Go ahead.”

He whips a look at me. “What?”

“Go ahead. Pin all this on Halloween.” My voice is level and I’ve never felt this swell of certainty before, no tremors, no fear. “See how you keep the love of your people when you start letting it slip that you’ve been holding all sorts of shady-ass mistakes over other Holidays. How long will you be able to keep it under wraps that you’re the source of whatever information you dole out?”

His mouth drops open.

I lurch forward a step, surety soft and calm. “I am done letting you corrupt Christmas the way you have been. I am done standing idly by and letting you control every element of our lives like any amount of perfection will bring Mom back.”

He full-on flinches at that. A slate-wiping shake.

“I am your son,” I take another step, “and I am the heir of Christmas, and I will stand here, between you and Christmas, between you and whoever else you set yourself up against. So go ahead,” I dare him. “How badly do you want this? Because I know how badly I want this. I know how far I’ll go now.”

Dad is half-cocked back from me, brows furrowed, face an unreadable mask of disorienting shock—he didn’t expect me to stand up to him. He doesn’t know what to do now.

The door opens. Kris doesn’t give Dad a chance to say anything—he holds it wide.

And in come all the winter Holiday representatives.

I turn to them and spread my arms. They can likely see how my hands are shaking in the excess of emotion, and I fight to level my breathing, but it’s all welling up on me.

“Welcome to Christmas,” I start. “I—”

Shit, Kris had written something for me to say, and my adrenaline-soaked mind scrambles back for what I remember of it—all those pieces I’d told him about, the truths and carved bits of my soul.

A deep breath in, and I talk.

“Together, your Holidays provide Christmas with more than half of our claimed joy through the tithes my father has demanded from you. That ends now, and nothing will come from whatever threats have been made on Christmas’s behalf in the past.”

The group of about a dozen people gape at me for maybe half a second.

Then one man steps forward, smoothing the edges of his sharp black suit. “What has spurred this change?”

I glance at Dad. Just once.

He’s staring at the fire, jaw slack.

“What’s changed,” I say, “is that there is a path forward for all of us where we instead pool resources so we can use the individual reaches of our Holidays to help each other grow. It is but one small way in which Christmas can begin making up to you for what we have done. If you will remain here for a few days, we will discuss preparations for a collective.”

Hopeful, if not confused, smiles grow when my father stays silent. When he stands there, not interjecting, not countering anything I’ve said.

I twist so I can speak to him and the representatives, but mostly to him. To me too.

“Christmas’s true origins have always been about light during winter; joy during hardship. And now, we will compensate for what has become all too lacking because of our own actions: equality. We are not a Holiday of material goods and staged charity and forced cheer. We are Christmas, and we are joy in the darkness, and we will remember that from this day forward.” I keep my eyes on my dad’s profile. “I swear it.”

Kris, at the back of the room, cups his hands over his mouth and whoops. Someone else does too—Iris. And behind her, the door is open, the hall, what little of it I can see, packed with reporters. Wren, softly smiling. And members of our court.

A clap starts. It grows, rises to applause of agreement.

Dad, though, is oblivious to them, to the chaos of reporters pushing into the room and throwing themselves at the winter Holiday representatives. He hasn’t moved at all.

Even with the winter reps waiting, with the noble House members pushing forward, set on me, I take a step closer to my father.

The part of me that used to be afraid of him just misses him now, I think. Misses what he used to be. Misses what he could have become.

Kris swims through the chaos and pulls up alongside me, Iris in tow, her pink tulle ballgown dragging the floor.

Dad finally looks at me. He’s pale.

Of all the things I expect him to say, I’m not at all prepared for, “I would not have hit you or your brother.”

I exhale in a rush, but he shakes his head.

“You believed I would, though,” he continues. “You believed I had become someone who would do that.”

“I believed—” I stop. Lungs aching. “I believed grief had changed you. And I didn’t know the extent of those changes. But I also know that it doesn’t have to be only negative changes. We can make something good out of this too.”

Joy can come from grief. From pain. From fear.

That’s what I’m choosing.

“Your original idea wasn’t all bad,” I say. “Every corner of the world deserves joy. Christmas can be a part of that. Just not the only part of that. And this way, it allows us to focus on aspects that will resonate in the people who celebrate Christmas. You said you’re doing this for us, for me and Kris. This is what we want. This is our future.”

Dad’s eyelids flutter, attention dipping between Kris and me. He scratches at his beard, and I see a myriad of thoughts rolling through his mind, but I can’t guess at any of them.

Then he walks around us and leaves the room.

Which is okay, honestly. I don’t want his immediate responses. This amount of change doesn’t come easily.

But we’re bringing it. Even if it hurts.