Chapter Five

Headline: Christmas Prince falls into minor coma at sight of guy he kissed one and a half years ago who had the audacity to get even hotter in the interim.

Too wordy. Not sure I care. There’s nothing but a rolling air-raid siren in my head as Dad goes through all the pomp of having a royal family visiting. So glad you’re here, yadda yadda. The Halloween family comes up on stage and they pose with Dad, Iris, and her father, and I think Kris and I should join in, but no one pushes us to, so we step down into the shadows beside the stage and I have a silent panic attack.

Kris chuckles. “You’re pale. And sweating. You feel like an ass for mocking my jumpiness over their Halloween woo-woo spooky shit now, don’t you?”

“I—what? No, I’m not—that’s him.”

He gives me a puzzled look. “Him? The Halloween Prince? You—”

“No. No.” I pinch the skin over my nose. “That’s him. The guy I kissed in the alley. At the bar. After the New Koah screwup. That guy.”

Kris swings in front of me, trying to block me from any stray pictures. “Woah, woah—wait, really?”

“Yes. Yes. Holy shit—”

“Look, I love you, Coal, don’t take this the wrong way—but I was on Iris’s side in the whole is this guy real camp. It was dark, you were hammered and stressed. Maybe the Halloween prince sort of looks like the guy you thought—”

“ That’s the guy !” I hiss, thank god, but I want to shout. “The guy I thought was someone normal and he’s—he’s the fucking Prince of Halloween. ”

Kris lifts his hands like he can contain my freak-out. “Breathe. You’re hyperventilating.”

“How is this possible? Why was he even at that bar? Christmas and Halloween don’t interact.”

“Clearly.”

“Shut up. This is serious. Did he target me? No. No, that’s insane, right?”

Did Hex know who I was? I couldn’t pick him or his family out of a lineup, so why would he have recognized me? What would have been the point ? Nothing negative came of it, no leaked stories to the press or repercussions at all, so much so that Iris and Kris don’t believe it happened.

But it did. Fuck, did it, because I’ve thought about that guy and that kiss way more than I’d ever admit to anyone. Even myself.

… foundations aren’t ever one thing, they’re many little things interlocked together.

In all the moments since then when I’ve asked myself what I should do instead of acting on impulse, that conversation would flash through my mind. The stranger—Hex—had known so easily what I don’t let myself admit I want. Foundation, solidity, happiness. And he was a stranger, the longer time went on and nothing popped up and I couldn’t find him afterwards, so I let the fantasy of him roil to embarrassing proportions because what did it matter, I’d never see him again.

Until now, apparently, because fuck my life.

“It was like years ago,” Kris says. “Nothing bad came of it, not from Halloween, at least. I’ll give you that it’s weird, but I think you might be overreacting. Just a tad.”

Oh great. “Cover for me.”

I ease away and race to the bathroom where I consider dunking my head under the faucet but decide against it and pat my cheeks with cold water. The iciness washes a spurt of calm through me, and I rock forward, forehead hitting the mirror.

Kris is right. I am overreacting. It was a weird coincidence almost two years ago that didn’t result in any fallout so I have no reason to be losing my ever-loving mind.

I will not mess this up. My dad has done a fine enough job of that himself, and I’m firmly on Iris’s side— when this blows up, it will not be because of anything I do. Not again. I am a changed person, goddamn it, no matter what wayward fantasies I’ve been reliving like some lovestruck schoolboy.

Fantasies that have been, apparently, about the heir of Halloween.

I shove back and glare at my reflection.

“You will go back out there and be a perfect Christmas Prince,” I hiss at myself. “You will pull yourself together, you pathetic asshole. He’s just a guy.” My intensity wanes. “Just a guy in a corset vest.” I deflate more. “Why did it have to be a corset vest .”

By the time I get back into the ballroom, everyone is mingling. I spot Iris and Hex across the room, Iris talking politely with someone from House Caroler while Hex stares down into a mug like he’s trying to will it to transform into something less Christmassy. Maybe he’s using Halloween’s magic to do that; cocoa into… what’s a Halloween drink? Apple cider? Goat blood?

Kris sidles up next to me. “You all right now? Freak-out over?”

I take a glass of eggnog from a passing server. “Of course. What could I possibly have to freak out about?”

“Oh, let me count the reasons.” Kris’s gaze trails to Iris and his levity dips.

“Are you all right?” I push back at him.

For a second, he shows me how not all right he is, but then a camera flashes, and he forces a smile.

“Shit.” I take a gulp of the eggnog. It’s not spiked. I can’t win tonight.

Kris and I rotate around the room, expertly ducking any attempts at small talk until we haul up at a high-top table that gives a perfect view of where Iris and Hex hold court with rotating members of the Christmas noble houses. Dad, Neo, and the Halloween King and Queen stay with them for a bit, eventually getting pulled into other groups and conversations, but it gives me a chance to study Hex’s parents. He definitely takes after his dad, a taller, older, and somehow paler and leaner version of Hex, with less adornments and a sullen expression befitting someone who might’ve just levitated out of a coffin. His mom is a little taller than Hex is, with intense dark eyes that mirror his initial stifled anger. She’s got a wide necklace of small pearly skulls across her collarbone, and they catch the light in sharp flashes.

Kris grabs a handful of appetizers from a passing waiter and dumps them between us. Bacon-wrapped dates. Score.

I pop one into my mouth and definitely do not stare at the side of Hex’s face. The way his jaw is bundled in tension.

It’s not a big deal that he’s here. That he’s that guy. It’s totally normal to know what your best friend’s fake new potential fiancé tastes like.

See? I’m fine.

“We’ll do this all one day,” I say. Desperately needing to talk about literally anything the fuck else.

“Do what?” Kris asks.

“ This .” I wave at the room. “The parties. The food. Christmas. It’ll be ours.”

“Yours, you mean.”

“Like I’d leave you out in the cold.”

What I want to say is, Don’t let me do this alone, for fuck’s sake.

Kris seizes a stack of crackers. “Do you even want to be Santa?”

“What kind of question is that?”

There’s something on his face I’m not reading correctly. Something he hides behind a dismissive shrug.

“Exactly as it is,” he says. “What do you want to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“International Relations. Obviously. Boyhood dream of mine, really.”

“Oh yeah, of course. But that’s not what you want to do. You want to be a writer, right? God, not a journalist, I beg of you.”

His lips slant in amusement. “No. Not a journalist. But I asked you that question first.”

I prop my chin in my hands and bat my eyes at him and mimic intense listening.

He shakes his head, exasperated, but he’s grinning. “You’re such an ass.”

I hold. Listening. Very, very intent listening.

Kris sighs. “I don’t know. I try not to think about it. I have another year and a half left”—he winces, but recovers with a head shake—“and I’m the spare.”

My instinct is to slap anyone who calls my brother that, but he’s the one who said it. I punch his shoulder anyway. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Dad’s never had me involved in any kind of training. I expect he’ll slot me in somewhere once I’ve graduated to keep me in reserve.”

“ Slot you in ? Keep you in reserve ? That shouldn’t be the attitude you have for not only what you’ll be doing with the rest of your life, but for something that’s supposed to bring joy to the world.”

His eyebrow cocks as he takes a sip of cocoa. “And your attitude is different how?”

“I—” Well, shit. “You have a choice.”

He sputters. “Yeah. Sure. I could choose to run off to become a reclusive author in a cabin somewhere, and Dad would be a-okay with that.”

“An author?” I home in on that word. “Is that really what you’d choose to do?”

Kris stiffens, watching me, before he shakes his head and decides against something. “Eat the fucking crackers. I think they have bits of dried apricot in them.”

The appetizers are suddenly sitting like rocks in my stomach. Not because Kris has that option, to leave—but because he might take it. He had that bit about being a reclusive author a little too at the ready. And not only would that mean he’d be somewhere else, but that’d also mean he’d leave me alone, with all of this, the head of an empire that has a death grip on one of the biggest Holidays in the world, with no real ability to do anything other than keep chunking out plastic baubles.

If that’s what he wants to do, though, of course I’d help him make it happen.

But him leaving would break my fucking heart.

So I do what I usually do when my emotions skew too dark: I torment my brother.

“Tell me what you wanna be when you grow up. Kris. Kris.” I poke his cheek. “ Kriiiiiis. Kristopher Kringleeeee. ”

He hates when I use his middle name.

So he snaps right back with, “Shut up, Niiiiick, Nicholas No?lllll .”

I laugh. I laugh and eat the stupid crackers and Kris smiles at me.

“You’re not the spare to me,” I tell him. My smile slips. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, Coal,” Kris says. “I know that.”

“And when we— we —inherit this grand realm”—I wave my hand around again in mockery, but honestly, it is pretty grand—“I still want you to do what you want to do. Even if that isn’t being part of this.”

Kris stares at me for a long moment. His lips quirk slightly. “I’ll stick around if you will.”

The tension in my chest releases. A little.

“Safety in numbers, right?” I pop another cracker and go, “Buddy system,” only, with my full mouth, it comes out “Buddy fyst’m,” and crumbs spray everywhere.

Kris’s stare is deadpan as he flicks a crumb off his sleeve. “Can I choose a different buddy?”

“Nope. You’re stuck with me.”

“Damn.”

“Blame genetics, bitch.”

Dad catches my eye as he makes his way towards us, his brows raised in intent before he even gets to the table.

I paste a pleasant smile on my face when he approaches. “Father.”

“Why aren’t you over there?” Dad nods at where it’s now just Hex and Iris against a seemingly endless parade of Christmas nobles.

“Over—?”

“The Halloween Prince has had ample time alone with her,” Dad hisses, angling close. “You must play into this competition. Go over there. Stake your claim.”

“ Stake my claim ? What, should I stick a flag in her?”

Kris snorts next to me.

“Nicholas.” Dad’s look goes from a glare to a performative smile as someone passes by our table. They leave, and he bends back in. “Make it look like you are trying to win her. That is, after all, the story we are promoting. Go .”

An argument winds up in me. How I never agreed to any of this—

But my eyes dip behind Dad, to a clock across the room. It’s past 1 A.M.

Fuck. I let this whole event go long enough without doing something unforgivably unsettling, but I’ve been too busy wallowing.

“Fine,” I say between clenched teeth, giving a sweet smile. “Consider my stake claimed.”

I grab Kris and haul him away with me before Dad can protest.

Kris frowns. “Are you really going to—”

“God no. It’s just time to save Iris.”

“Ah. You escort her away, I’ll cover for you both?”

Our usual play. But—

“Nah,” I hear myself say. “You take her. Tell her how perfect she looks.”

“Bite me.”

“I think you mean bite her .”

“I—what?”

I rub the skin over my nose. “Halloween. Vampires. Werebunnies. It’s where my head went. Let’s go.”

Kris laughs, confused, as I drag us across the room.

A member of House Luminaria is fawning over Iris while giving furtive, distrustful glances at the Halloween prince.

I lurch between the Luminaria duke and Hex.

“We have bacon-wrapped dates,” I say to the duke, and I hear the hardness in my voice, but I can’t figure how to stop it, and it sounds mildly hilarious to say bacon-wrapped dates with the same inflection that someone might say go screw yourself.

I point across the room.

The duke gives me a strange frown. “Uh—thank you, Prince Nicholas. Princess.” He bows his head at Iris.

There’s a pause.

Then he looks at Hex. “Prince Hex.”

But he doesn’t bow, and it’s a good thing he leaves. My hand is in a fist.

There’s a general sense of distrust in Christmas regarding Holidays we don’t often interact with—Dad’s whole philosophy of Christmas being better means most other Holidays are lesser. And putting me in direct competition with the Halloween Prince just reinforces all of that, so the duke’s reaction isn’t unusual. But why is it pissing me off so much? I have no reason to feel protective over Hex.

Oh god. Is that what this is? Feeling protective of him?

Kris sweeps past me. “Princess—you’re needed straightaway.”

She physically wilts, but turns to Hex and gives him a smile that surprisingly isn’t fake. “Prince Hex,” she says with a curtsy.

He bows at the waist—that waist, god, stop staring at his waist —and straightens. “Princess.”

Oh, save me from his voice. Why would it have changed? It hasn’t, still rich and heavy and doing completely furious things to my stomach.

Iris lets Kris guide her away, but not before I catch her hiss at him, “Took you long enough.”

“Sorry—ow!” Kris rubs his side. “Did you pinch me?”

Hex and I are on the side of the room. And I must be giving off some serious back the fuck up vibes, because no more Christmas aristocracy come forward for pleasantries, so we are, effectively, alone.

I go stock-still. Hex stands there too, being this insanely attractive mash-up of a pirate and a vampire and Loki from that one scene in Thor: Ragnarok when he’s in New York and first had me realizing that I was, in fact, deeply attracted to dudes in addition to girls. Both Iris and Kris thought I was nuts when, according to them, “ Chris Hemsworth is right there .” We mended this falling-out in our friendship by bonding over the great sexuality equalizer: Cate Blanchett in leather.

Never let it be said that I have no self-control, because even as the silence stretches between me and Hex, I do not talk about any of these internal pirate/vampire/Loki/leather thoughts.

It’s Hex who breaks the never-ending nothingness when his face goes from patiently studying me to tight in exasperation.

“We are rivals, it seems.” He pockets his hands.

It drags a laugh out of me. Rivals. That’s how Dad wants me to react to Hex. But I can’t summon up any scrap of fake offense, can’t get myself to stop following the rim of his eyeliner around his still very attractive eyes.

Eyes that are crooked in annoyance.

Not in surprise.

“You’re not surprised to see me.” It pops out before I can stop it.

“The Christmas Prince, at the Christmas palace?” His voice is steel. “Hardly.”

“No, I mean— me .”

Glasses clink around us. Someone laughs across the room. And Hex keeps giving me that unimpressed stare.

He probably wasn’t an absolute idiot and researched Christmas before coming here, so he knew we’d see each other again—

But then he says, “I was wondering if the infamous Prince Nicholas would remember.”

And something in his tone makes my whole brain overturn.

“You—you knew, back then, who I was.” I say each word purposefully, making sure I’m getting this because what the fuck. “You knew .”

“Of course.” A pause, and his eyes narrow. “Are you saying you did not know who I was?”

“No! I mean, yes, I didn’t know who you were. How—how were you there ?” I angle closer, whisper-hissing my shock down at him. “You just—you happened to be at my bar, and you happened to come out into that alley, and—”

His face contorts like he’s seeing that night through a new lens, but a foggy lens, one that doesn’t make anything clearer. “You expect me to believe you did not have the slightest idea who I was?” He blinks and points to the stage. “And you did not realize it until that moment ?”

His tone of are you a moron is deserved, but still stings.

“I thought you were like a bartender or something.” Heat wells in my chest, making my ribs feel brittle and unable to expand enough. “I’ve spent a year and a half thinking you were either some normal guy that I’d never be able to find again or a very vivid figment of my imagination.”

He arches one brow. “You’ve spent the past year and a half thinking about me?”

Well fuck. “I—” Nope, let’s just lean into it. “You thought I’d forget you?”

“I thought Prince Nicholas had enough dalliances that one kiss would be quickly overlooked.”

It wasn’t just a kiss. I mean, the kiss was great, but it was everything else too, how he’d let me dump all my shit out and he’d listened and said exactly what I needed to hear.

I almost tell him all of that. How much that single interaction meant to me. But I’m already way too close to humiliating myself.

“I don’t have dalliances, ” I hook on instead.

It’s not a far jump from stupid pranks and irresponsibility to sleeping around, and the tabloids have warped every person I’ve dated the past few years into some kind of scandalous relationship or one-night stand. Some of them were. But still. I’m a hellion, but I’m not heartless.

Hex’s stare is full of incredulity. “Ah. My apologies. You are, of course, madly in love with Princess Iris.”

There’s something baited in his voice, but I don’t want to talk about Iris, can’t, not with all the unanswered questions welling up in me and the still-potent fact that he’s here. He’s that guy, and he’s here, in front of me, and instead of flirting my ass off to make up for being a drunk idiot last time, I’m scrambling to find sense in the senseless.

“Wait.” I flare my hands. “You thought I knew who you were at the bar and that I was trying to, what, make you a feather in my cap?” Which probably got cemented when I never contacted him or reached out afterwards.

He shrugs, and I’m temporarily derailed by what should be a small, mundane movement. His shoulders are thin, bony, as sharp as his eyebrows and that cutting look in his gaze, everything about him is filed to a knifepoint and I suddenly want nothing more than for him to make me bleed.

I shake my head. Squish my eyes closed. Maybe if I talk to him with my eyes shut, it’ll make this easier? Creepier, but easier.

“How else was I meant to interpret your intentions?” he asks.

My eyes open reluctantly and I grunt. “What the fuck part of our conversation came across as me picking you up ? Is that how mating dances normally go in Halloween—one person is blackout drunk and word-vomits nonsensically over the other?”

Hex’s unamused stare flickers ever so slightly. I think he’d chuckle if he wasn’t so set on being offended by my continued existence.

I press on anyway. “And that doesn’t explain why you were at that bar or what you got out of that interaction, because—” All my racing thoughts crash to a halt and I almost bounce up and down at a realization. “Because you came after me out into that alley. I didn’t pursue you. ”

For a beat, Hex’s fa?ade cracks, and I see all the emotions he’s been suppressing this evening—uncertainty, wariness, a caravan of things that slams the brakes on any desire of mine to come out of this conversation with some kind of moral victory. This isn’t a game, and whatever we had wasn’t some frivolous bar hookup because neither of our positions allows for any of this to be simple.

His attention slips past me and catches on his parents, across the room in the crowd. They hit him with a very obvious look of Need us to intervene?

I don’t relax until he shakes his head at them.

Okay. He’s not trying to escape. That’s good, right?

“I did follow you into that alley.” He shrugs again, arms folding over his chest. “The tabloids made no secret of your preference for that bar, and I was in the area. I was… let’s say curious to see what kind of person you were.”

“What?” I shake my head again, hoping it’ll jostle sense into everything. “Why?”

Hex’s face falls in the smallest, the barest flicker of something di rected inward—shame, maybe? He runs his thumb across his bottom lip, wiping it away.

My focus whittles to that contact. His thumb on his lip. He has a ring on that finger, a silver skull, and before I can realize what a presumptuous thing it is to do, my gaze stays on his mouth.

It is utterly selfish, the relief I feel at knowing I didn’t imagine how full his lips are. But the dark light of the alley hid the color, a roseate flush I see clearly now, and I’m overwhelmed by the taste-memory of him, the feel of those soft lips moving under mine.

My mouth waters, stomach tightening.

What am I doing.

I pop my gaze back up, braced for his offended fury.

But Hex’s eyes snag on mine, widen slightly, and he doesn’t call me on very obviously ogling him. He doesn’t scoff or put space between us or do anything at all to imply that my attention was unwanted.

The faintest hue of pink blooms on his cheeks. Two perfect circles against his pale skin.

It could be from the heat in here, from the exertion of the night.

My swallow abrades my throat, sand and beaten stones.

“Why what?” he asks, a quick feather of breath across my face.

“Why were you curious about what kind of person I was?” I repeat the question.

A question he’d forgotten.

While blushing.

I grip my hands into fists so hard one of my thumbs cracks.

Hex looks away, gathers himself, and when he meets my eyes again, he holds, waiting. When I nod, prodding him along, he cocks his head.

He’d thought I would say something. Something I didn’t say, and the way he’s looking at me now is all shock. “Why wouldn’t I be interested in what the Christmas Prince is like?” is all he finally says, a bit mockingly.

“What is going on?” My voice is only low because I can’t get in a full breath. “How are you so calm about this?”

The answer comes in a blow of clarity: because that night didn’t matter as much to him. Because he knew who I was before we kissed, and me being here isn’t shocking to him, and he probably hasn’t thought about that night until now, and he’s got way bigger things to worry about than a one-off bar alley kiss.

I vehemently ignore the ache in my chest. Everything I’ve been feeling in regard to that night was a fantasy. I know that. It’s dumb to feel rejected over shit I built up in my head. His blush could have been uneasiness because he’s here to romance someone else, someone who I also am supposed to be romancing .

“It was a long time ago,” he says stiffly. Like he’s upset, maybe disgusted, and I pull back and wipe a hand over my mouth and I’ve never felt so slimy in my life.

“This is overdue, then,” I say.

Hex frowns. “What is overdue?”

“Apologizing. I told you I owed you one that night, but I never actually did it. So—I’m sorry I made you feel that you were some conquest. I shouldn’t have kissed you without at least asking your name first. I can assure you, nothing like that will happen again.”

Hex watches me stumble through the apology. I can feel every sweep of his eyes on my face, like he’s reading my thoughts beyond my words.

Nothing in his posture changes, but I’m hit with the feeling that I need to go quiet, to let him work out whatever he wants to say.

“You don’t need to…” He fingers the sleeve of his scarlet shirt, the only outward hint at his discomfort, and it forces all the blood out of my limbs when he doesn’t look back up at me. “You don’t need to apologize for that kiss. You weren’t the one who initiated it.”

I wouldn’t be able to move if the whole room started to shake. “Excuse me?”

But he walks away.

He walks away and leaves me there, running those words through my head until their edges soften and bend.

You weren’t the one who initiated it.

WHAT

THE

FUCK?

Baby It’s Coal-d Outside

IRIS

coal—kris told me our Halloween prince was that guy from the bar??

HE’S REAL?? holy shit!!

what did you guys talk about? you looked petrified when you left the ballroom.

also stop renaming the group chat

Iris named the conversation “Iris and the Claus Boys”

nothing.

and he’s not OUR halloween prince. he’s just YOURS.

and i wasn’t petrified

Coal named the conversation “When I Think About You I Touch My Elf”

IRIS

nothing? liar.

and i meant the Royal We, like all of ours, not just yours and mine, so it’s really telling that that’s where your mind went.

oh god coal

Iris named the conversation “Iris and the Claus Boys, Coal Don’t Change It”

KRIS

All of ours? I don’t remember ordering a goth prince.

But, Coal, you were for sure petrified.

What’d he say to you?

Did you try to kiss him again?

yep right in the middle of the ballroom

cuz you know me, raging pervert

can’t keep it in my pants

i mean mouth. tongue in mouth.

nothing came out of my pants

or mouth

i’m going to bed

KRIS

Dude, you’re a trainwreck.

Coal named the conversation “Not Just the Stockings are Hung”

IRIS

coal!! gross

Iris named the conversation “Coal Is Overcompensating for His Tiny Candy Cane”

i beg your fucking pardon peep

did you just dick joke me

iris

iris just dick joked me kris

IRIS

you started it

KRIS

I know, I witnessed the whole thing.

As a completely innocent third party bystander, I’m declaring her the winner.

Kris named the conversation “Peep, Mini Candy Cane, and the Best Claus”

Conversation Name Locked

YOU CAN LOCK IT??

KRIS

OPEN IT BACK UP

KRIS

Tell us what you and Hex talked about.

IRIS

ooooo i see how you brought it back around like that kris, bravo, bravo, he only responds to blackmail

you guys suck

me and my perfectly adequate candy cane are going to bed