Chapter Nine

I head back through the library. Kris sees me, bolts up from his chair, but I give one solid shake of my head.

This is between me and Dad.

I rush through the palace to his office, knowing he’ll be there. Hoping he’ll be there. I don’t know how long this anger hurricane will carry me before I hit a wall of exhaustion.

It was bad enough that I didn’t know who Hex was at the bar. That I didn’t recognize him, because why would Prince Coal, irresponsible wild child, need to worry about shit like the monarchs of a Holiday he’d never interact with? I left all that stuff to Dad.

Because the one time I tried to do anything real, I messed up to epic proportions.

But now. Not knowing the real reason Hex is here because I left all this stuff to Dad, again —

When I do get involved, shit blows up. When I don’t get involved, shit blows up. So what the fuck is the solution? I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’m going, and that’s the only choice I can see right now.

My heart is bruised from rocking against my ribs, each breath feeling like knives in my chest. I reach Dad’s office, a few doors down from the Merry Measure, which is locked up tight now behind thick doors and a wall of protective magic. Dad’s office, on the other hand, has the door cracked open, a light on within, and I shove inside without pretense.

It’s a nice office. Homey and cozy, woodsy and warm, hung with holly and ivy and the same fa?ade of Christmas cheer that makes me woozy now. Especially when I see him at his huge mahogany desk, bent over a stack of papers, glasses on the tip of his nose like he’s the embodiment of the visage we’re both supposed to live up to.

“He’s our prisoner ?” My voice cuts through the crackling of the fire in the far wall.

Dad lifts his head, peeking at me over the rim of his glasses. “Nicholas?”

I slam the door behind me and stomp into the middle of the room, pulse flurrying in my wrists, my neck.

I can still taste Hex.

Still feel his spine under my fingers.

“Our Halloween guest,” I say. “You’re not keeping him here on the promise of an alliance with Easter; you’re keeping him here under threat of hurting his Holiday. We—”

“Who told you that?” Dad’s eyes narrow.

Oh.

Oh, that was dumb.

Hex told me that in confidence, and what do I do? Immediately run to my dad and shatter that confidence with a sledgehammer.

“I—” Lie, fucking lie, through my teeth, through my ears, through every fucking orifice. “I overheard him talking on the phone. To his parents, I think. Did I hear wrong? Because it sure as hell sounded like we have a prisoner .” Don’t just lie; deflect. Put this all on Dad, where it should be. “How many other prisoners do we have? Is there a dungeon somewhere I should know about?”

Dad rolls his eyes, like that’s crossing the line, but he buys my explanation and I stifle relief as he tosses his glasses onto his desk. “The Halloween Prince will be sent home after you and Iris are finalized. I am surprised by your reaction—his presence here is largely unchanged from the story you know. This is the reality of our position. Of your position, someday. We have to keep certain people in line.”

I’m coming to really, really hate that phrase.

But then my gut bottoms out. “Certain people? Who else?”

The question feels like a door opening. All of this evening has been a door opening, honestly, a door that opened and I stepped through and there’s no going back now.

Dad considers for a moment. Then he stands.

“Are you ready to ask that question? I’m not sure you are.”

A well of resolve gushes through me, and I draw on the pieces of me still reeling over what happened in the library.

I’ve been passive for way too long. But my version of stepping up is disastrous— this is disastrous, though, too. So maybe that’s exactly what we need, my version of disastrous to break whatever is happening.

I look at the floor. The red-patterned rug.

When I face my father again, my gaze is level, echoing his calm.

“I messed up,” I start. “With New Koah. With so many other things. I know I messed up, but if I’m going to do this someday, then I should know how to, more than staged training for press shots. I should know what you’re doing there”—I point at whatever papers he’s going over—“and I should know how Christmas’s inner workings operate and what you’re planning so I can help it move forward rather than hinder it. I want to be a part of it.”

It isn’t a lie. It’s so very much not a lie that I have to grit my teeth, hard, to keep from gasping, these words like a cork zooming off a bottle and here come all the desires I’ve been suppressing. How I want to be worthy of this legacy, the original legacy, an overexcited seven-year-old boy who thought his father wanted him to help bring joy to the world. How I want to improve this legacy, for what we do to mean something more than small fleeting moments, something lasting and real and—

Dad gives me a look of honest surprise. For once, I don’t try to hide the truth, don’t make a joke before someone else can.

Holding back makes my chest ache; I’m stripped raw.

Silently, Dad moves to a filing cabinet next to his desk. He shuffles through it for a second and pulls out a manila folder before he faces me, one more cursory stare.

“This is a test.”

“Yes.”

“You have failed far too many tests. The trainings I have arranged for you. Every opportunity to step up during events. Everything I’ve given you.”

“I know.”

“Do not abuse the knowledge I share with you. Hopefully, through seeing this, you will come to understand the full breadth of what Christmas can be.”

That small part of me springs up with hope again. That stupid, childish hope that he’ll prove himself better. That he’ll reveal some master plan that makes everything he’s done okay, and he’ll be Santa, like he should be, like I thought he was once.

He extends the folder to me. I take it, flip it open, and start scanning through the handful of pages within. There are entries dated in the past decade or so, percentages, and the word Tithe, over and over, next to repeating names. The list of those names grows, until I shift to the latest entries.

Yule.

Thanksgiving.

New Year.

And more, more Holidays I recognize as happening in and around Christmas. All next to the word Tithe, and percentages, and those percentages fluctuate sometimes, larger some years, growing—10 percent, to 15, to 30 and 40.

“What is this?” I ask, tongue dry.

“Joy tithes. These Holidays send a percentage of their accumulated joy to Christmas in exchange for being under Christmas’s umbrella.”

Our umbrella? But—“These are massive percentages. What kind of umbrella would be worth this? Why would they agree to these amounts?”

Dad gives a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “It is a sad reality of any successful enterprise to have to, as I said, keep certain people in line so events unfold to the betterment of all. These Holidays were… persuaded to sign contracts with us for their own best interests.”

If all these Holidays—and there are more than a dozen—were brought on under whatever the fuck persuasion means. Then…

My mind scrambles, fighting through the math.

Christmas gets more than three-quarters of our joy from other Holidays.

All the joy we claim to have. All the happiness we claim to spread to the world—we’re stealing it from other winter Holidays. And then using it to spread Christmas’s influence further, so it touches more areas of the world than any other Holiday.

Well, no shit we can go further than any other Holiday.

“And after you marry Iris.” Dad slides a paper onto the folder in my hands. It’s a chart showing Easter’s joy, how it will fit in with Christmas’s.

My eyes climb to his.

He’s smiling.

“Why?” I hear myself ask.

“Why? Why.” Dad chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “You yourself pointed out the way Christmas is currently viewed—cheap trinkets, I believe you said? That is an unfortunate side effect of needing to ration our magic for expansion, but it was once our whole reputation. Gifts, nothing more. Greed. We are capable of more than that. Every Holiday is. Celebrations worldwide have become so commodified as to be degrading, and the joy we bring is the joy that the world needs. Christmas is, at its core, a Holiday of family and belonging, and that is the magic we will foster once we have solidified our global hold.”

I stare at him, willing this to congeal. Because I agree with him, don’t I? We want the same thing.

But not like this.

My shocked silence must come off as encouragement, because Dad carries on.

“All the Holidays who tithe to us are on their way out,” he says, nodding at the file. “Their joy decreasing steadily, their offerings cheapened and broken down by capitalism. They are slipping into the obscurity that has come for far too many Holidays in the past. I saw the same happening to Christmas, and rather than let this shift whittle away at us, I took action. These other Holidays now contribute their fading joy to keep Christmas going rather than let their demise happen senselessly, and we will use their tithed joy to give the world a type of Holiday that has been missing for far too long.”

Holidays come and go. That’s a reality of our world. Traditions change, and what was once a celebration of a god becomes a celebration of a harvest, evolving with the ways people grow; or forcibly, with colonization. And while the Holidays listed in Dad’s file have waned, they aren’t in any way slipping into obscurity, and neither is Christmas, not by a long shot.

They’re failing now, though, because of Dad’s demanded tithes.

Holidays fade over time.

But they fade through natural human changes, not another Holiday overtaking them.

I wondered once what it would take for that little bit of childish hope inside of me, the belief that my dad once cared about Christmas bringing true happiness, to finally die.

I know now.

All my muscles lock up, thoughts scattered and slippery. “Why—” My voice croaks. “Why would any of these Holidays agree to this?”

“We may all be based in joy, but at the core, each Holiday is a business. And those businesses run, sometimes, on things like information. You know well how important Christmas’s reputation is. We are not the only Holiday with something we are willing to go to great lengths to keep balanced.”

“You’ve been blackmailing them,” I say. It’s a fist slamming into my gut, a burst of air popping between my lips. “You’ve got dirt on them, and you’re demanding joy in exchange for keeping whatever it is under wraps.”

“Hardly. These are business arrangements. Contracts. A trade in all of our best interests.”

Except for the Holidays who will eventually be bled dry by Dad’s best interests.

But there’s something I’m not seeing. A piece not connecting, and I let myself frown, concern breaking through my unease. “How does Halloween factor into this?”

Oh no. He wants to branch out from manipulating only winter Holidays. He wants Halloween too.

“They had their chance to be a part of our progression,” Dad says. “They chose to step aside. To their detriment—they will see they chose wrong.”

“Wait. You had considered merging—acquiring—whatever, with Halloween ? When?”

Dad gives me an even look, analytic and calm, and after a minute of considering, he inhales with a decisive nod. “Years back. It was not made public as it barely made it past a preliminary inquiry from them, but they were also the ones who rapidly backed out once they learned that their autumn allies were vehemently opposed to a union with Christmas. They have been kept docile by the mere threat of news of that clandestine deal becoming public with their allies, and at the time, we had other Holiday arrangements to firm up”—he waves at the list—“so we did not pursue them in their indecisiveness, and they do not find themselves in quite the same boat of decreasing joy as these Holidays.”

In other words, they were too big to take on, so Dad let them continue unmolested.

“But we have solidified our position among the winter Holidays now,” he continues, “and it is time we begin branching out. We chose to focus on Easter, as—”

“Oh my god.” A shudder runs up through my body. I manage to stop myself from exploding at the last moment, a tight, painful swallow, until all that comes out is, “You persuaded Easter too?”

Dad gets my meaning and gives my slip of emotion a tight look. “No, Nicholas. Easter did not need to be persuaded; they have always been among our friends. The arrangement with them is mutually agreed upon. They entered into it willingly. It was Halloween’s vocal objection to that union that had to be met with action.”

“With action. With a threat, you mean.”

“Halloween is the one who moved first. Their autumn allies would see it as an immeasurable breach of trust that they had ever considered joining with us, and they would pull their support. You act as though this arrangement I have with the winter Holidays is unique and heartless; Holidays have been trading joy for centuries. Halloween is no different with their own allies.”

I stare at him, recalling the conversation I had with Hex before the sleigh race, where he’d talked about Halloween meeting with other autumn Holidays. No part of what he said had sounded at all like Dad’s single-minded rampage for joy, and I cannot get what I’ve seen of Hex so far to fit in with someone who’d be okay taking magic so backhandedly.

“That Halloween felt they could have any say in Christmas’s business without repercussion could not go unaddressed,” Dad says. “The situation as you know it is to remind Halloween that they chose to upset the balance. I could easily let news of our prior negotiations spread to their allies—but instead I made sure that the stories being printed paint Christmas as having conceded to Halloween in their objections, and playing host to their prince as he courts Princess Iris is a mark of our public apology. Even at the end, when we still win the Easter alliance, they will get to run back to their allies the victim, solidified in distrusting us, but heroes for attempting to swipe Easter out from under us. We will have the Christmas-Easter union, unopposed. Everyone will have what they want.”

My head throbs with fighting to see through all Dad’s political doublespeak to get to the root of what he actually did .

That was why he was so weird when the Halloween envoys arrived at the palace a while back. He was intentionally groveling to them—or as close to groveling as he ever gets—in front of the press in order to start laying the groundwork for this lie.

When he sent his real threat later, that Halloween would be kept in line, they had no choice, did they? They could have refused, but then it would have looked like they were the ones being assholes when Christmas had more or less bowed to what Halloween wanted; but refusing would also have given Dad permission to let slip this dirt he has on them.

It wasn’t enough that he threaten them into silence again with his blackmail shit; he wanted to punish them. To make sure they know not to mess with Christmas.

My jaw cracks as I pry it open. “And the only way to do all this is to have a live person trapped in our palace?”

“He is not trapped, Nicholas. He is free to come and go as he wishes. But he came here willingly, and his court agreed to this knowing it was a faux-engagement from the start.”

“Because the alternative was you leaking the previous Christmas-Halloween negotiations to their allies. That’s blackmail .”

I say the word like a plea. Don’t be like this. Please.

Dad yanks the folder out of my hands. His face darkens, and the temperature of the room goes frigid, my breath suddenly a visible cloud on the air. I fight to keep from backing up a step.

“That is the reality of managing the largest Holiday in the world,” he says. “You do not yet understand the things that must be done, the decisions that must be made. This may seem cruel, but the alternative is to allow us to fade away, and that I will not permit.” He points at me, and I can’t help it; I flinch. “Do not act on this information. Do not speak of this information. You will sit on it, absorb it, and process what it means before I give you any role in this. I am trusting you, Nicholas, trusting you when you have only ever proven that you are unworthy of that trust. What you do with the things I have told you will determine the kind of Santa you will be.”

He’s never said anything truer in my life.

In the place where that childish hope once lived is just emptiness now. It’s empty and hollow but aching, and I didn’t think this conversation would leave me feeling so alone.

Dad sits back down at his desk. “And clean that paint off your nails before the next event.”

The black and orange nails. I’d forgotten about them. Hadn’t tried to hide them.

Nausea squirms down my stomach. Hex and I… is that something Dad would use against Halloween too? But it would counteract the plot that makes Christmas look like they’re bowing to Halloween.

Still. The fact that I have to ask myself that question— would my dad resort to blackmailing the guy I was kissing? —has my vision going spotty.

“I do want to be good at this,” I hear myself say. It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted that aloud, to myself, to anyone. I’ve bared my soul more in the past ten minutes than I have maybe ever, and to my father, of all people.

And the fact that he seems to understand has me on edge. He isn’t rolling his eyes at me, isn’t brushing off my attempts as hopeless. As if he thinks I could actually do this.

But his version of this is… intolerable.

“I want you to be good at this as well,” Dad says. “And I want this to be good for you. For you and Kristopher both. For the thousands of employees who depend on Christmas’s success. For the people who will benefit from the joy that we bring. We have such potential to do good in this world.”

We do have potential. We do. That’s what’s choking me. I don’t know how to harness it, and Dad sees it too, but this isn’t the way to harness it either, so where does that put us?

“Sleep on it, Nicholas.” He waves at the door. “We can speak more after you’ve had time to process what I’ve told you. At the next events, be attentive to Iris and play your part.”

One last flip of his eyes up at me. One last, intense look.

“Do not disappoint our family,” he says.

The words sink into the ache in my chest. They’re the source of that ache, the ever-present knot fueling my rigidity these past years. Don’t be a disappointment. Don’t hurt anyone.

I nod, stiff, and leave the office.

Then take off sprinting through the palace.

I make it back to my suite, get the door shut, and collapse against it, sliding to the floor in a lead-like heap.

Here I’ve been worried about how we’re not bringing real joy to the world, and my father’s been plotting a global Christmas takeover and blackmailing other Holidays.

The room is dark and cool but it’s suddenly closing in, crushing me, I’m sweating and shaking and can’t catch my breath.

How am I supposed to fix any of this?