Page 2 of Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance #2)

I text Coal I’m coming and, ten minutes later, I bolt into the foyer of Claus Palace and nearly tackle Wren to the floor.

No other staff are around. It’s our off-season, so most everyone is taking a much needed break, but the woodsy entrance to the palace is done out in our perpetual theme: draping greenery, lit candles that scent the air with cinnamon and cloves, jolly red ribbons hanging from the banisters of the two massive mahogany staircases that twist up either side of the room.

Wren rocks backwards, clutching her tablet to her chest. She’s impeccably dressed in a sharp black pantsuit, her gray hair pulled into her usual severe bun. The only crack in her armor is the slight flush to her face from being startled. “Kristopher!”

“I’m sorry—I just—Coal—”

Wren nods, an irritatingly professional storm wall against my thrashing anxiety hurricane. “I was waiting for you. Follow me.”

She heads off, and I fall in step alongside her.

“Where are they?” I ask, not needing to specify.

“The Merry Measure.”

“And Dad’s really…”

She shrugs one shoulder and her jaw twitches, but she’s frustratingly locked down. “So it would seem.”

Our father, the one who was so stubborn and prideful that he kept all kinds of disastrous secrets from us in an attempt to secure our Holiday for you boys —his words—is now… giving up entirely?

I want to ask if she talked him into it. She’s been Dad’s assistant longer than I’ve been alive, but she’s always been exactly this, steady and competent and pulling the strings behind the scenes. She’s never had much luck convincing Dad to do anything he didn’t want to do, especially during the whole winter Holidays debacle. So it’s unlikely she’s the one who got him to give up his control of Christmas.

“He’s really doing this?” I ask again, a quaking whisper.

Wren puts a hand on my forearm as we walk. She smiles at me, a break of reassurance through her formal mask.

“They’re waiting.” She squeezes my arm. “Come on.”

We get to the massive gold and marble room that houses Christmas’s joy meter. The Merry Measure is a monstrous steampunk machine of copper piping and brass fixtures that harvests the joy generated due to Christmas and transforms that joy into magic. And, until recently, more than half the joy stored here came from entirely separate Holidays, thanks to my dad.

Tubes lead out of the room, funneling to various departments—not so much used right now, but during the later parts of the year, this place is buzzing.

Dad stands in front of the Merry Measure, talking with Marta, the woman who oversees it. My gaze cuts around—and I clock Coal leaning against the inside of the door.

There’s no greater representation of how much has changed these past few weeks than my brother. His whole bearing is different. More like… well, like our father, but not in a way that’s bad, just commanding. His auburn curls are always neatly set now, and he relents to Wren’s team of stylists so he’s rarely ever a disheveled mess. Like now, at about eight thirty in the morning, he’s in a suit, muted red with accents of green.

And I’m in sweats that smell faintly of caramel mocha because I accidentally put my coffee-doused shirt in a clean laundry pile.

Coal pushes away from the wall when he sees me. My insides twist, eyes darting back to Dad, then to Coal.

“Did he already… do it?” I try not to look uncomfortable. This is a good thing. Right?

Another good thing. Another good change.

One side of Coal’s lips cocks up. “No—he wanted to do it last night, but I made him wait for you to get here. You text me all the time about aimless shit like study room wars, but when something actually happens, where are you to be found?”

Yeah, I don’t offer daily to come home at all. “Us mere mortals call it sleeping.”

But my chest warms with relief so potent I have trouble catching my breath. He waited for me to do this.

My hands flex. “Shouldn’t this be a big event?” I eye Wren, still standing next to us.

She sighs, and I get the distinct impression that yes, if she had any say in it, this would be a big event. “Your father insisted it be done as quickly as possible.”

I glance at the Merry Measure again, where Dad and Marta wait silently, Dad looking at the piping above.

“Why?” I ask.

Coal throws an arm around my shoulders. “I’m not questioning it.”

But I don’t move when he tries to pull me deeper into the room. “Wait, isn’t Hex—”

“Hello, Kris.”

I am not proud of the high-pitched shriek I make as the Halloween Prince manifests right in front of me, a swirl of shadowy Halloween magic dissipating around him.

He’s as put together as Coal in his usual black on black, and maybe that’s what’s rubbing off on my brother, too—his very postured, very collected boyfriend.

Hex’s big eyes do a good impression of innocence despite their demonic glimmer of amusement.

“You asshole.” I smack his shoulder.

Coal pops me on the back of the head. “Don’t hit my boyfriend.”

“He gets off on torturing me! You’re not going to defend your one and only brother?”

“No.”

Hex steps over to take Coal’s hand. But he gives me one more appraising look, and as my heart finally settles from that jump-scare, I roll my eyes at him to hide my smile.

Okay, it was a good distraction. Gave me a chance to reset.

My graceful shriek drew the attention of Dad and Marta. Dad faces us, and I stiffen, taking stock of his body language in one quick swoop. But he doesn’t look upset—his shoulders are relaxed, hands in his pockets, and he smiles, a soft, wide smile I haven’t seen in… fuck, years.

“Boys!” Dad flings his arms out like he always does, like we’re going to run to him.

The three of us, Wren in tow, cross the huge room and stop a few paces back from him. If Dad barely acknowledges me, he’s outright ignoring Hex, eyes fixed on Coal.

Dad drops his arms. “Are we ready now? I want to get this finished before I leave.”

My head jerks.

“Leave?” Coal asks. “What? You’re leaving?”

“Oh.” Dad bats his hand idly. “I’m off to the island in a few hours. I just wanted to solidify this transfer before I go.”

The Merry Measure moves. No— it doesn’t move; I move. I take a step back, but I catch myself against a violent urge to run from the room.

Island.

He can’t mean—

“You—what?” Coal asks Wren, like she’ll have a better explanation than whatever’s coming out of Dad’s mouth.

But Wren is just as confused, her narrow eyes on our father.

The way he looks at Coal is, for once in our lives, candid. His eyes glisten with sorrow but he sniffs hard, breaking the emotion as soon as it congeals.

“It’s high time I took charge of my family,” he says. “Starting with this transfer of power, and continuing with my wife.”

All the air sucks out of my lungs.

My fingers tingle, numbness that crawls up my arms, makes my vision go to black-and-white fuzz.

I was six. I’d gone to our parents’ room. Dad was usually up already so I would climb into bed with her and cuddle until breakfast, only she wasn’t there. The suite was empty. I looked and looked, the bathroom, the closet—her clothes were gone; that was weird, was she getting them cleaned?—then I sat on the bed, holding the edge of the comforter, until Wren found me.

No note. No word.

She was just… gone.

Until she texted Dad a few weeks later to let us know she was living in the Caribbean if we ever wanted to come visit. Like she was off on vacation and we should join her, not like she’d let us wake up with no clue where she was.

Coal laughs, fragile and frantic. Hex shifts closer to him.

“You’re not serious,” Coal says. “You’re going to see Mom?”

Dad nods. “As I said, it’s time I took charge of things. What’s important is family. This family.” He looks at me, and I realize that’s the first time he has since we came into the room. “I let too much fall by the wayside, your mother most of all.”

No.

She left us. She walked out on us when Coal and I were kids. Nothing fell by the wayside; she chose everything she did to us.

But none of those words come out, clogging my throat until the sounds of the room muffle behind my ragged exhales.

Coal glances at me, his expression shuttering as he grabs my forearm. “Kris. Breathe,” he whispers.

I am. I’m fine. I am breathing, so why are my hands numb?

“Marta.” Dad approaches the head of the Merry Measure as though nothing’s wrong. “If you will.”

Coal’s worried gaze swings between them and me until I feel another touch on my arm—Hex.

“Go,” he tells Coal, then positions himself right against my side, his long fingers wrapped around my hand. “Kris,” is all he says, and he takes a deep breath in, slowly lets it out.

The oddity of him being this close has me echoing him unconsciously. In, deep; out, long.

“Fuck,” Coal mutters but he turns to our dad. “Fine. Yeah. Let’s do this.”

Hex keeps taking deep breaths next to me, my body copying him.

Slowly, my fingers stop tingling, sensation inching over my limbs.

I hear Coal’s words again. Let’s do this.

Do this—?

Make him Santa. Give him full control of Christmas, no performative shit at meetings, no pretending to get Dad’s approval for the changes he wants to make.

I straighten, but I don’t try to pull out of Hex’s grip and he doesn’t move away.

Coal approaches Dad and Marta. “What do we need to do?”

Marta is messing with something on the Merry Measure. When she backs away, a flat panel of frosted white glass pops horizontally out of the wall of gauges.

“Both the current leader and the heir place their hands on this screen,” Marta explains, her eyes averted—the tension in the room is sky-high, and I wouldn’t blame her for racing away to less emotional ground. I almost did. “Magic is based in joy, so the transfer must be joyful. As long as the controlling leader is willing and eager, the transfer will be instant.”

Coal walks up to the screen and plants his hand on one side. His eyes snap to Dad, ready to argue, ready for Dad to rescind this whole thing—

Dad is as fast as Coal. He crosses to the screen and places his hand on it.

Nothing outward happens.

But Coal wheezes like he stepped into the freezing tundra without a coat. He yanks his hand back, fingers curling into his palm, eyes flickering over our father. “You actually did it.”

Dad grins. I’ve never seen him like this before, giddy, and it creeps agitation up and down my spine.

He claps once. “On that note, I’m off. You boys enjoy your New Year.”

Like this is totally normal. Like we aren’t—like I’m not—submerged in murky, inescapable anxiety.

He leaves, patting my shoulder as he goes. I flinch, bumping into Hex, who presses back to keep me from teetering too far.

We’re left in the rubble of our shock, Coal flexing his fingers like it might help him wake up from this weird-ass dream.

“Well,” he says, eyes going to me, down to Hex, “I guess I’m Santa now.”

Hex squeezes my hand and releases me to cross to Coal, cupping my brother’s face and pulling him down, forehead to forehead. It’s such an abruptly tender moment that I shift away.

Wren is already working on her tablet again, but frantically now; this transfer of power no doubt shifted a lot of shit, and she’s a woman on a mission, clicking and typing and scowling.

Marta is checking the Merry Measure, also scowling, studying a gauge like glaring at it will make it unleash an answer she’s after.

Did that just happen?

Dad ceded our entire Holiday to Coal.

Last Christmas, he claimed he was blackmailing the winter Holidays to make Christmas more secure for us. Maybe… maybe he does care about us, on some level?

Doesn’t explain how he can go see the woman who abandoned his children. I know he kept trying to reach out to Mom after she left, kept inviting her to Christmas functions and leaving that door open. But if he did care about us, he wouldn’t want anything to do with her.

Then why do I keep responding to her messages?

Why does a little part of me whisper, You should go with him, maybe the both of you can convince her to come back ?

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

I rub the back of my neck and twist to the side of the room, wondering if I can slip away before Coal makes me talk about all this Dad-Mom crap—

Something green catches my eye at the base of the Merry Measure.

I cock my head. A tiny box is fixed to the bottom of the machine, blending in with the steampunk style, except for an indicator light that glows green. That’s what caught my eye, something green. But it wasn’t glowing—

I squat down, one hand on the floor for balance, and there— that’s what I saw.

“What the hell?” I crawl forward and pluck the thing out of a crack between the Merry Measure and the marble floor.

Coal and Hex have noticed me now.

“Is that a—” Coal squints. “A clover?”

It is. Four perfect rounded leaves, bright, vivacious green.

“What the hell?” I ask again and look at the little box it was next to.

Marta follows my line of sight and whirls to Wren with a puzzled chirp.

“Did you authorize that?” she asks.

Wren drags her attention away from her tablet. When she sees what we’re all gathered around, her frown deepens. “No. Nicholas?”

Coal shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

I stand up from my crouch, holding the clover. “What is going on?”

“That”—Coal points at the box—“looks like one of the devices that Dad sent to the other winter Holidays when he made them funnel some of their joy to us. It’s what allowed him to drain their magic into our Merry Measure.” He points higher, to a row of similar devices plugged in across the top. “We still have those connected to the other Holidays because we’re working out who gets what joy, and we’ll eventually use those devices to share a joy pool, but— that one? That’s not one of those. Is it?”

Marta whirls back to the main screen with a horrified gasp, clicking on a few keys, shaking her head in tight, frantic jerks. “No, oh no—”

Coal, Hex, Wren, and I watch her through an invisible rising tide of warning.

“Our joy levels have been lowering.” Marta feverishly works controls. “What with us sending joy back to the Holidays we took it from. My team has been tracking it all, and recently, there were discrepancies I couldn’t account for. I attributed it to magic being used to wrap up Christmas, or to bringing the other winter Holiday leaders here, or a dozen other things—I was going to do a deeper trace once things slowed down, and I…”

Marta stops, reads the screen for a beat, and her face pales.

She turns shame-filled eyes on Coal.

“It’s that device. It’s been draining small bits of magic. I—I should have seen it. It wasn’t there during my weekly check of the machine last Monday. But I should have investigated this as soon as the discrepancies emerged. I’m sorry, Prince Nicholas, I’m so—”

“Woah, woah.” Coal holds up his hand. “Just—hang on. No one’s blaming you, Marta.”

She wilts.

“So… someone tapped our joy meter?” My eyebrows tug together. The peace we’re working towards among the other winter Holidays is so new, so fragile—if one of them moved against us, we couldn’t exactly blame them for it, but it wouldn’t do anything to help us structure a fairer, more even spread of support.

Coal plants his hands on his hips and chuckles in a way that isn’t at all funny. “Fuck me running. Someone’s stealing Christmas’s magic. Isn’t that just karma?”

After some chaos, where Marta calls in the rest of her team to descend on the Merry Measure in a full top-to-bottom systems check, Coal, Hex, Wren, and I gather in the main office.

A fireplace and warm, dark wood accents make it cozy and atmospheric, but it’s only felt like those things since Coal took over. Now, he crosses the room and drops to sit behind the desk with ease, not realizing the monumentality of this moment, how this is his first time being in the office as the Santa.

To be fair, we’re all distracted.

And yes, it is terrible that someone’s stealing our Holiday’s magic, but I’m selfishly relieved that this incident is superseding Dad’s well, boys, I’m off to visit your mother scheme.

“Ever since we figured out this whole mess last Christmas”—Coal scrolls over a report on a tablet—“Marta’s team has been working to break down the joy we have. Obviously, we don’t have all the joy we stole from other Holidays because we’ve been using it over the years, so we can’t pay everyone back one big lump sum.”

Which is one of the things Coal’s been working on in negotiations, how much each Holiday is okay with being paid back and over how long.

I nod, but he’s focused on the tablet, one hand dragging absently across his forehead.

“We’re basing the joy distribution on the original percentages Dad required from everyone,” Coal says. “So, the most recent tally was about sixty… three? Yeah, sixty-three percent of our total joy came from other Holidays, so we’ve been treating what we had in our Merry Measure after Christmas as if sixty-three percent was already spoken for, to be divided up and given back to other Holidays. The remaining thirty-seven percent is ours, and about twenty-five of that is needed for general Christmas functioning, so that leaves twelve percent extra. But we’re planning a reimbursement system to pay back the amounts we’ve stolen in the past, and I was going to make the first payments from that full outstanding twelve percent as a goodwill gesture. Now, though, the amount that’s been stolen from us this past week has taken up—”

He clicks through to a new screen.

And tosses the tablet onto his desk with a huff, fixing an exasperated glare on Hex.

“Math is evil,” he grunts.

I don’t take one of the chairs across from Coal, opting to stand, while Wren hisses into her phone off to the side.

“How much has been stolen?” I lay the clover on his desk. We left the device plugged in until we can figure out what’s going on, so we don’t arouse suspicion from whoever the guilty party is. But it means they can keep siphoning off our magic whenever they want.

“It hasn’t been consistent. Marta’s team has so far highlighted three instances that aren’t attributed to our magic use: one big pull at the start of last week, then two smaller ones over the past few days. But rather than paying back the winter Holidays in a split from our outstanding twelve percent, now they’ll get… eight.”

Guilt over my errant use of magic to make tinsel rushes through me, and I almost apologize, but bigger picture: self-pity won’t fix this theft.

“That is…” I scowl. “Not ideal.”

“It’s insulting, is what it is.” Coal’s jaw tightens. “I’ve already told the other Holiday leaders we’ll set up a repayment schedule. I’m being open with what we have so they know there’s no more funny business. When I come to them now, not only will we have less to repay them with, but we’ll point fingers at another Holiday for stealing from us with one of the devices Dad forced on other Holidays in the first place? Yeah, that’ll look good and trustworthy.”

Hex goes around the desk and puts a hand on Coal’s shoulder. “We will figure this out,” he says, all calm confidence, and Coal relaxes under his touch. “Let’s start with the who. ”

Hex nudges the clover.

Coal sighs. “A by-product, you think?”

“By-product?” I ask.

“It happens occasionally,” Hex explains, “with the way magic evolves based on the origins of our joy.”

I squint. “Like magical traces?”

“It does not happen with every Holiday, I’ve found,” Hex says. “Again, it is dependent on how the customs of a Holiday evolve.”

Hex’s eyes go to Coal.

Who grins.

It should be a jarring contrast, sudden joy against his obvious stress, but the shift in attitude is so welcome. All the chaos of our lives these past months, and he hasn’t lost his ability to twist any situation into something happy.

“Do it. Do it.” Coal bounces up and crowds in on Hex. “Kris needs a demonstration. Don’t you, Kris?” He turns that grin on me.

“I’m not even sure what’s being demonstrated.”

“See?” Coal bumps Hex. “Do it. For science.”

Hex fixes Coal with a look of bemused annoyance. “Only because I relish the rare opportunity to say you can be a delightful pain in my ass.”

I rock backwards. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you cuss. ”

There’s a sizzle in the air. The spark of magic.

Then a black cat appears on the desk.

Hex groans. “Oh. I hate when it’s a creature.”

“Oh my god ! She’s so cute!” Coal lunges for it.

The cat, justifiably, hisses, back arching, and bolts off the desk.

Wren leaps aside with an alarmed squawk as it bounds between her legs, but the door is shut, so it rockets back across the room and lodges itself under a bookcase.

I gape at Hex. “What. The fuck? ”

“How the traditions of Holidays evolve throughout the world affects our magic. And cursing, in relation to Halloween, has come to do…” He waves at the cat. Beady eyes glint from under the shelf. “Similar, I suspect, to this. ” And he motions at the clover.

Not a clover.

A shamrock.

“So. Wait.” I wave my hands, mind reeling. “You’re saying someone from St. Patrick’s Day is stealing our joy?”

Coal sits on the edge of his desk. His levity dips. “Quite possibly.”

“Have we interacted with St. Patrick’s Day? Like ever ?”

“No,” Coal says. “And I’d know. I’ve been eating, sleeping, and breathing Christmas’s records for the past two months. We don’t have anything to do with them.”

“Do you think they know they left a shamrock?” I ask. “Or did they intentionally leave it, to taunt us?”

Hex nudges it with his finger. “I am not overly familiar with the attitudes prevalent in St. Patrick’s Day, whether they would do such a thing with calculation—”

Someone knocks on the door.

Coal directs a cringe of apology at me before he spins to Wren. “My god, woman, you are fast. ”

Wren’s still expertly juggling being in a heated phone conversation while typing on her tablet, but she breaks long enough to give my brother an absent smile.

“Fast?” I eye the door, then Coal. “What—”

“As we were finishing up with the Merry Measure, I asked Wren to invite… well. St. Patrick’s Day is a spring Holiday— Easter is a spring Holiday—it’s business. I thought it best not to tell you since you’re still acting so weird around her.”

“Around—? Oh my god. I hate you.”

So not only did Coal covertly get Wren to bring Iris here ASAP, he figured out it was St. Patrick’s Day the moment he saw this shamrock. In retrospect, duh; but to be fair, I didn’t know magic by-products were a thing, and I’m unsettled from Dad’s bombshells, and fuck, Coal’s good at this.

Wren opens the door.

All that building strain pulling on my lungs drops into my stomach.

I take a breath, school my expression, and look back at Iris.

It really is no wonder I thought I was in love with her. She’s stunning, inside and out, one of those rare people who glows with natural kindness. The first time I laid eyes on her, back when we were kids, she hit me with an awe that still lingers in the base of my chest. All the people I’ve been with have given me that same feeling, now that I think about it. Not that there’s a wide assortment of people to take a sample from; I committed to my I’m in love with Iris Lentora identity to the point of only having two brief romantic encounters outside of her, and she wasn’t even a full romantic encounter.

But all three people I could feasibly consider my exes gave me the same feeling of gentleness and comfort. Coal and Iris have never been shy about their bisexualities, but I’ve always been more fluid with any labels. It’s a feeling I’m after rather than a type of person, the one Iris first ignited in me. This is right. This is safe.

Unprompted, the study room guy pops into my head. Nothing I felt towards him was gentle. So whatever that was had to have been base-ass lust.

… poor choice of words.

It was straight-up lust.

Still a bad descriptor.

It was lust, plain and simple. He was hot, emotions were heightened, and I haven’t gotten laid in a long time.

This is not the train of thought I need to be riding right now.

Iris adds even more decorum to this room, wearing heels and a sleek purple dress that hangs to her knees, and I feel the grunge of my sweats all over again, made even worse by the fact that this is the first time I’ve seen her in person since everything imploded. And she, of course, looks perfect, while I look like I woke up, got a panicked text from my brother, and barely gave myself time to brush my teeth before I came here.

She stops next to me, across from Coal at his desk.

“Hi,” I manage.

Iris’s smile is tentative. “Hi. How are—”

The cat chooses that moment to launch itself out from under the bookcase and make a mad dash for the door Wren is closing.

Iris jumps about a foot in the air.

I spasm. “Fucking hell—”

Wren shrieks.

Coal cries out, “Catch her!”

And Hex snaps his fingers.

The cat vanishes mid-leap.

Coal whirls on him. “What’d you do? Where’d she go?”

Hex studies Coal’s growing alarm. “It was created with Halloween’s magic. It wasn’t real, Coal. It was magic. ”

“Don’t talk about our baby that way, sweetheart.”

Hex’s eyes bulge. “Our what ?”

“I was already thinking of names.”

Hex massages his temple with a long-suffering sigh. “Again, it was not a real cat.”

“You killed our child. So heartlessly. I’m not sure I like this side of you.”

“I have no idea what I’ve walked in on,” Iris starts, “but this feels about right. Random magic. Coal being dramatic. What else have I missed?”

Coal drops into the chair behind his desk. Now I see it hit him, that he’s at this desk as the official leader of Christmas.

His jaw tenses, his persistent happiness wobbling.

And, true to my brother, he yanks up a beaming smile after half a millisecond and plunges onward. “First of all, I’m Santa now, so show some respect, Lentora.”

Iris’s eyes flare. “The fuck?”

Coal launches into a recap of everything that’s happened this morning.

At the end of it, he looks at me, and I can see him remembering my reaction to Dad’s news, how we haven’t gotten to talk about that yet. I give him my best don’t do it now silent plea, and he rolls his eyes with a fine, but later.

Iris is staring at Coal’s desk, cradling her jaw in one palm.

“Shit,” she grumbles. “And I thought my morning was busy.”

Coal’s brows dip. “Easter prep? I didn’t mean to drag you away from—”

“It’s fine. I’m not the only one in Easter with responsibilities.” But I know both Coal and I clock her strain.

Coal had extended a special invitation for Easter to join the winter Holidays collective after all the shit went down with Dad. We’d thought King Neo had been sucked along by Dad’s lies like most people, and he was, but not enough to jump onboard Coal’s New and Improved Christmas plan. Instead, Neo used the excuse of not being a winter Holiday and pulled back from his former heavy associations with Christmas, throwing himself into preparations for the upcoming Easter season. Meanwhile, Coal’s been relaying to me what little Iris tells him about how the different factions within Easter’s court are grumbling over Neo’s weakness in letting our dad manipulate him, how Iris was unable to lock down Prince Nicholas, and other such fuckery that’s all an excuse to slowly force out her family.

All the stuff she’s trying to keep afloat is why she switched to online classes, why I don’t see her around university anymore—and why I wanted so badly to give her a happy ending too. She deserves it, deserves it so deeply my chest aches. I hate that I not only couldn’t give it to her, but that I messed up our friendship in the process.

It wasn’t entirely selfish on my part, wanting us to be together.

Iris doesn’t linger on the knowing stares both Coal and I give her, and I can’t help the weird mix of gallows’ humor camaraderie. What would Iris and I even have to talk about if we were still talking? She doesn’t want to talk about the political shit in Easter. I refuse to talk about my parents or anything that happened with her or my waffling position in Christmas. So, that leaves… the weather?

Iris’s lips float up in a real smile. “Congratulations, Coal. Really.”

He beams. “Yeah. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I gotta say, this theft is inconvenient to the massive party I would have immediately thrown.”

His tone counters his words the same way his hands do, thumbs flicking at each other in a nervous tic. Hex catches it too and threads his fingers into Coal’s.

“There will be a celebration,” Wren adds, phone pinched between her cheek and shoulder. “We will need to show everyone that a sudden transfer of power is in no way a sign of weakened leadership, but proof that Christmas is moving in the right direction. Particularly if news of this joy theft gets out.”

I didn’t realize it was a possibility that people might see these developments with Christmas and cry that we’re fucking things up. Everyone’s been supportive of Coal’s plans. None of our court has voiced displeasure.

But the joy theft on top of Dad taking off…

Coal hums. “That sounds like a problem for Tomorrow Coal. Hell, maybe Next Month Coal—for now, Iris? What do you know about St. Patrick’s Day?”

Iris straightens. “My father met their king once or twice, but no negotiations ever developed. He’s a pompous ass, so I’m honestly shocked he didn’t get along better with Easter and Christmas.”

“They haven’t reached out since Easter’s rather public parting from Christmas?” Coal asks.

Iris’s face screws up in part humor, part exhaustion. “While the autumn and winter Holidays may be in neat little collectives now, the spring Holidays are content in being independent. So says my father. The most we interact with is Valentine’s Day because of Lily’s impending wedding drama, and they’re not even spring, really, are they? But no, we don’t check up on one another.”

Coal leans around Iris. “Wren, can you pull up profiles for the reigning family of St. Patrick’s Day? I’ve got an idea.”

“Of course.” She ends her phone call and attacks her tablet.

“Okay. So.” Coal pops his tongue. “Christmas is going through all kinds of changes. We’re evolving. So it wouldn’t be too unusual for us to suddenly be interested in visiting another Holiday, start dialogue through outreach . Yeah?”

I smirk. “Aw, your Yale is showing.”

“Shut up. But say I go to St. Patrick’s Day. Say I’m there to foster support, yadda yadda—while secretly investigating why that Holiday is trying to screw us over. I find proof that they did it, confront them, and get them to give us back the joy they stole before it becomes an issue with the winter Holidays collective.”

“You don’t think they’d be suspicious?” I ask. “ They know they’re screwing us over. And suddenly Christmas comes calling, wanting to be friends?”

“And I know that I don’t give a flying fuck if they know we know.” Coal takes the tablet Wren hands him and flips through what looks like dossiers. “Let them be awkward and uncertain about our intentions. Maybe they’ll slip up. It’s good that they’d be a little on edge.”

“You could visit other Holidays as well, to serve as a cover,” Hex says, but he doesn’t hide his reservation.

“There we go. This is a totally normal leader thing to do, right? A goodwill tour.”

But Wren, lingering by the desk, clears her throat. “As the reigning Santa, and still leading the ongoing meetings with the winter Holidays collective, when would you propose such a tour?”

Coal’s jaw dips open. “Ah. Shit.”

My heart kicks up, the familiar relief of finding something I can do that’s beneficial. All the other tasks I’ve managed to glob onto have been measly and paper thin. But this? It’ll matter, and the part of me that’s always two stressors away from a tension headache relaxes a smidge.

“I’ll do it.”

The room looks at me.

“I’ll be an ambassador,” I expand. “My term at school is almost over; I can finish up my courses early. I’ll visit a few Holidays.”

I’m still a part of Christmas. I’m not just moping along the edges, the spare gravitating around the heir.

My own callousness makes me recoil. I hide it by running a hand through my hair, but my eyes catch on Iris, who’s watching me maybe too closely.

Coal grins. “Perfect! Look at us. Diplomats. We’re so mature.”

He passes me Wren’s tablet.

“Here—study up on their family,” Coal says. “We’ll figure out some other Holidays to ship you off to as a cover, and we’ll research them too. We won’t go in unprepared like when Halloween came calling.”

“Oh, but your face when you saw me in the ballroom was priceless,” Hex tells Coal with a teasing smirk.

“I’m pretty sure I haven’t unknowingly kissed anyone from St. Patrick’s Day.” I look at the first profile, one for St. Patrick’s Day’s king. Around Dad’s age, Malachy Patrick looks like a standard white businessman. It says he was the younger brother of the former king who died five years ago; the crown should’ve passed to that guy’s son, but it was decided that the heir wasn’t ready to handle the responsibilities. Malachy was originally an entrepreneur who owned—still owns—one of the largest whiskey manufacturers in Ireland, Green Hills Distillery. He’s unmarried, no kids, so on and so forth.

“You never know.” Coal waggles his eyebrows at me. “But you don’t have my level of decorum. You wouldn’t handle such a shock to the system with nearly the same level of grace.”

“Ha. Sure. We both know, of the two of us, that you’re the more level-headed”—I swipe to the next profile, the heir—“ holy flipping fuck. ”

I convulse like I got electrocuted, head to toe.

“What?” Coal tries to lean over the desk to see what I’m looking at.

My breath dissolves in lungs gone to stone. It’s all I can do to gape up at Wren.

“Who is this?” I point at the screen. The screen that clearly says Lochlann Patrick, Crown Prince of St. Patrick’s Day over a picture, but horror is rising, rising up my throat so I can’t stop myself from going, again, “Wren, who the fuck is this?”

She blinks in veiled offense. “Pardon me?”

“Sorry. Sorry. I—Wren— who is this guy ?”

“That’s their crown prince, Lochlann Patrick.”

“No,” I tell her.

“No?”

“No.”

“Kristopher, I’m quite certain—”

“No. No, you see, that cannot be their crown prince. He cannot be their crown prince. ”

I laugh. It isn’t funny. And I drop the tablet onto the desk so the room can see the image.

Red hair. No beanie, the strands pushed back across his head in a slick wave. Pale skin, freckles, gray eyes. He’s smiling now, not glowering, which accentuates the shit out of his cheekbones, and it’s a headshot but he’s in a suit, not a tank top.

He’s also not covered in Cambridge blue tinsel.

Coal, Hex, and Iris are all staring at me like I was the one who spontaneously created a black cat in midair.

“Kris.” Coal leers. “ Did you kiss someone from St. Patrick’s Day?”