Page 8 of Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance #2)

We’re pulling into the drive for Castle Patrick when Loch, Finn, and Siobhán all get alerts on their phones.

It takes me until that moment to realize I haven’t checked mine. I grab it out of the seatback pocket and see about twenty missed texts. The latest few are Coal chastising me because he saw the press shots so TEXT ME BACK YOU MORON why did you have bandages in those pics??

Wren also messaged me. There are a few links to recent tabloid articles; Loch intervening in the fight at the finish line has overshadowed my injuries. A few reports speculate that Loch caused the fight, while others saw him using magic in an attempt to stop it.

Anger spikes at the assholes who’re trying to lay more blame on Loch.

Which is… weird. Feeling angry on his behalf rather than at him.

None of that is Wren’s concern, though; she asks if I’m okay, and wants to verify what happened, in case Christmas needs to make a statement.

Before I can respond to anything, Loch grumbles, “ Shite. ”

He says it with such a punch of horror that I throw a look at him.

He does not look at me. “Siobhán?” he asks.

She’s staring at her screen. “ Fucker. ”

“What?” Finn finishes parking and wrestles her phone out.

“What happened?” I ask.

Siobhán frowns when Loch doesn’t answer.

“Text from Colm,” Siobhán explains. “Our uncle is paying us a visit.”

“Ah hell,” Finn curses.

My eyes widen. “When?”

“Now.” Loch pops open the door and launches from the car.

I haul myself out and hobble after Loch into the castle, pretending my injuries don’t hurt as much as they do.

By the time I stumble into the foyer, Loch is talking with Colm.

When Loch’s eyes slide to me, he looks, briefly, ashamed.

“Thanks, Colm.” Loch pats his shoulder and hurries down the hall.

He’s trying to avoid me.

Fuck that.

I limp after him, biting back a wince, and just about match his pace. For a few halls.

“I almost got a concussion today,” I call to his back, several paces ahead of me. “Stop making me run, jackass.”

He staggers to a halt at the base of the stairs. There’s a beat where I’m shuffling closer to him and I think he’s going to bolt again, but he stays, shoulders drooping in resignation while his hands stay fisted.

I almost, almost say good boy. But my throat, thankfully, refuses to let those words out.

Face flushed, I come up alongside him. He’s glaring at the steps.

“So?” I press when he stays quiet.

His jaw’s going to fracture at the rate he clenches it. “So?”

“Your uncle?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“How do ya figure that now?” he asks the stairs.

“I’m here as an ambassador from my Holiday and haven’t met the King of St. Patrick’s Day. So it’s mildly my concern.” And I want to see this fucker for myself. “Are you going to talk to him now? Where is he? I’m coming with you.”

Loch finally does look at me. But he must see the logic in my reasoning, because his nostrils flare. “He’s in his office. Told Colm to get a supper ready for us all to have, as a family, but that’s sure as fuck na happening. I’m showering then I’m gonna talk to him. If you are so invested in meeting him, be outside your room in twenty minutes.”

The girls come up the hall behind us. “Loch?” Siobhán calls.

“Twenty minutes,” I say to him, and I don’t give him a chance to renege. I dart-hobble past him up the stairs.

“And take some pain tablets,” he shouts after me. Then adds, muffled by the stones, “Gobshite.”

I shove into my room and yank out normal clothes while texting my brother.

COAL

Sorry. I’m alive. Everything’s fine. I tripped like a dumbass. I’ll call you tonight.

COAL

HE LIVES!!

kris. KRIS. surely you have five minutes to text back your king and brother

KRISTOPHER

pretty sure this is treason

I take a second to assure Wren I’m fine too—and tell her that Christmas should, in fact, make a statement.

I quickly tell her about my fall, how Loch helped me. I tell her how he was intervening to stop the fight—I don’t mention his magic use, since that seems to be a touchy subject, per Siobhán. Basically, I write an impromptu press release via text so Wren knows to spread the truth of what happened regarding both events.

That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? To make his reputation better. This is my job. One of my jobs, at least.

Wren responds with a thumbs-up, so it’s as good as done.

I take the world’s fastest shower. A blue sweater, jeans, and those brown shoes from the first day, nothing snarky or irreverent, not for this. My bandages survived the shower, so I leave them and throw my wet hair into a topknot, and I’m back outside my room with minutes to spare.

Loch’s already walking towards me from up the hall. His frantic clean-up has produced shower-slicked hair set off like a flame by a black turtleneck sweater and tight black pants tucked into boots.

He sighs heavily. “Dinna change your mind?”

His whole demeanor is stiff and alert, survival mode coupled with a deep, pulsing inner fury, and a little fear.

He looks how I know I do when my father is around.

“No. I didn’t change my mind,” I tell him.

Loch sighs again and keeps walking. He leads me a few halls over, past half a dozen closed doors, to one that’s more nondescript reddish-brown wood.

He doesn’t knock. Just swings the door open.

The office is a sprawling testament to the overall medieval style of the castle, with a mahogany desk in the center and heavy, dense navy curtains pulled back to show the late afternoon landscape. Bookshelves cover every wall, old antique things more for ornamentation than use, their shelves holding leather-wrapped tombs with gilded edgings, framed photographs, and other decorative knickknacks.

Behind the desk sits the guy I saw in Wren’s profiles.

Malachy Patrick.

He looks like a Wallstreet prick who talks in finances and hedge funds and investments. His suit is probably more expensive than most cars, his pale skin bronzed in a fake tan, his gray hair perfectly coiffed.

Loch stops across the desk from him, hands against his spine. “Uncle.”

Malachy glances up from a tablet in his lap. “I told Colm I’d be seeing you at—”

His focus pivots to me.

One dark brow curves over deep-set eyes, an intentional shift of both his attention and attitude.

“Ah. Our esteemed guest,” he says mildly. His accent is softer, almost English, like he’s forcing it to not be thick.

I don’t step forward for any formal introduction. I should. But I hate him, the feeling growing more potent with the way Loch’s fists are knotted behind his back.

Malachy sets his tablet on the desktop, rises, and buttons his pinstripe suit coat. Every move is gradual, taking charge of the room by making even mundane acts look calculated.

“How are you finding your time in Ireland, Prince Kristopher?” He props his hands on hips. “Is Lochlann being an attentive host?”

I only see Loch twitch because I keep him in front of me so I can watch both him and Malachy.

“Yes.” I stare at the side of Loch’s face.

He doesn’t turn away from his uncle.

But he subtly shifts to the left. Between me and Malachy.

“Did you invite him to accompany you when meeting with me, Lochlann?” Malachy asks. “Keeping him close, are you?”

Malachy holds Loch’s eyes for one second. Two.

He wouldn’t like that his nephew is trying to correct a negative press assumption about him. Is he pissed that I’m here, helping Loch?

Good.

“I’m here as a representative of my Holiday,” I try. “There’s nothing to—”

“Oh, I know very well why you are here.” That intent gaze oozes back to me. “To prove that my nephew is something he is not. Or maybe to prove that he is exactly who the press thinks him to be.”

I frown. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t—” Loch starts, but Malachy clicks his tongue.

There’s something in the way Malachy looks at Loch. Like he’s holding a leash, and I have a sinking feeling that if he tugs even a little, Loch will go from a firestorm of stubbornness and personality to acquiescent and beaten.

I almost reach for Loch. To—what? I want that connection severed. Want that leash broken.

But Loch ignores all of this. “Why are you here, Uncle?”

Malachy flicks his hand dismissively towards the door before unbuttoning his suit coat and sitting back down. “As I said, I will see you tonight at supper.”

“No. You can talk to me now. What do you want?”

Malachy’s eyes go from his nephew to me with a shitty smirk. “In mixed company? Are you quite certain?”

Loch says nothing, an internal war waging.

Malachy’s face hardens. He doesn’t even look at me when he says, “You are dismissed, Prince Kristopher.”

How many times in my life has my dad said that to me? Ejected me from conversations, situations, events, press shots, and I went, letting Coal handle it all. Dad’s mask of congeniality was always more convincing; Malachy doesn’t even pretend to not be toying with us.

My lip curls. “No. I’m good.”

The contemptuous glare Malachy gave Loch is now pinned on me.

Loch places himself directly in Malachy’s line of sight. “Kris. You do na—”

“I’m not just here because of the press situation.” I push around him, in front of Malachy. “Christmas has been removed from many Holidays for too long and we’re seeking to start conversations. To discuss what we all have in common and pool ways to fix issues that involve things like organization. Politics. Joy.”

Malachy nods. “Yes, let us talk about joy. ”

My heart kicks. But his amusement is a warning light.

Malachy angles his tablet towards us, swiping through screenshots of paparazzi nonsense. My arrival here. My apology. Photos of the race.

He stops on shots of Loch in the crowd during the fight, calming everyone down.

Air hisses out of Loch next to me. A pained grunt.

“Kris,” he whispers. “Leave. Please.”

I whip a look back at him. His eyes are wide.

I haven’t heard him plead before.

It’s wrong, seeing him like this, posture bowed, submissive.

I’m stunned enough that I nod before I can summon energy to argue.

One more second of watching his eyes. Of waiting for his posture to change, a flicker of an opening I’d use to stand my ground.

But there’s nothing. Just— this.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, King Malachy,” I say numbly, facing Loch.

When I do turn, Malachy’s analyzing this interaction, and his amusement seems to deepen. I don’t know what we gave him, but it feels significant.

Self-hatred roils in my chest. I spin on my heel and leave the room, even with half of me screaming to not let Loch be here alone.

All I can see is every fight Coal and I had with our father, every moment Coal took the impact of his anger, the worst of his focus—and that time when Coal thought Dad was going to hit me.

It’s impossible for me to go far. I don’t even close the office door all the way, just hold it in the seam, knob twisted, ready, waiting.

Loch must suspect I’m still nearby, because he switches into Irish. He doesn’t want me to listen.

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work.

I haven’t used Christmas’s magic at all since I’ve been here, but I tug on the constant connection I have to it that I’ve wholly taken for granted.

“—broke up a fight,” Loch is saying. “I don’t know what you think—”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Malachy snaps in Irish too, all pretense dropped. “You used magic. We had an agreement, you selfish piece of shit.”

The hair rises on the back of my neck. I damn near stomp back in there, held at bay only by Loch’s immediate “I did what I had to do.” A flicker of his usual confidence returns. “What you are supposed to do.”

“And I cut you off. I let you and your sisters stay in this castle. I even let you carry on with these little events, and I fund much of them—”

Yeah, so he can slap ads for his distillery everywhere. Real altruism right there.

“—yet you repay all that by stealing from me— again? Did you not learn your lesson last year?”

“You want to save face, don’t you?” Loch’s voice is remarkably calm. But calm in a way that’s holding back dread. “If things go like this too long, attitudes unmonitored and our people forgotten, the court will get suspicious. It isn’t enough to run events half-assed this way. We can’t—”

“Stop accessing my magic. If I catch you in more situations like this”—there’s a smack, and my vision goes white before I realize Malachy’s tapping the tablet’s screen—“you’ll see how fast I throw the three of you out on your asses. You’ll be begging for my forgiveness.”

“You’re the King, ” Loch implores. “How long do you think you can sustain this? Do you even realize what you’re destroying—what our people lose year by year that we allow—”

“I thought you’d realized how kind I’ve been to you, Lochlann. I thought you’d realized how much more you have to lose. Do not mess with me, you ungrateful little fucker.”

“You’re the King,” Loch says again, breathless. “ Act like the King .”

“This is your only warning.”

Silence hangs.

I feel the absence of threat along with the sizzle of transportation magic, and I realize—Malachy is gone.

My hand is so tightly clenched around the knob that when Loch pulls on the door from the other side, I don’t let go, don’t bother trying to hide that I was here the whole time.

I shove it open and he flinches back.

His face is red, eyes glassy. Behind him, the room is empty—

Except for a small bunch of clovers next to the desk, growing out of the carpet.

I freeze.

That wasn’t there before. Remnants of St. Patrick’s Day’s transportation magic?

Like the one left in Christmas.

If they know clovers get left behind when they use transportation magic, then they know they left at least one when they fled Christmas after installing the device on our Merry Measure.

So whoever it was—Loch or Malachy—they know they left a clue behind.

It was hidden, and no one noticed it until I did, so maybe they took that risk. Or maybe they tried to cover their tracks when they left, but missed one clover… just bad luck.

I yank my eyes away from the clover patch, but Loch hasn’t noticed my fixation on it.

He grunts in exasperation. “I told you to leave,” he says, back in English.

“I left the room,” I say. In Irish.

His eyes go wide, round and horrified.

“I wanted to know if he…” I switch back to English, then fumble. “If I needed to come back in.”

I watch his mind work, rolling through the conversation, trying to figure out if he said anything I shouldn’t have heard. But I stay in the doorway and I’m only livid for him and he seems to realize that with a shattering, slow blink.

“Why would you’ve come back in?” he asks.

“To help you,” I answer stupidly.

Loch’s wonder goes to suspicion. “You do na seem surprised by what you heard. Siobhán. She told you about Malachy?”

“Don’t be mad at her for it. But yes.”

Loch cups his hands over his face and scrubs, hard, trying to wipe away the past few minutes.

“Are you gonna move?” He waves at how I’m taking up the whole doorway.

I step out into the hall.

Loch doesn’t leave, though. He studies my face. Looks up at the ceiling with another sigh, but this one seems self-deprecating.

“Get drunk with me,” he orders the space above my head.

My mouth pops open. “I—”

He cuts around me to head up the hall.

I watch him get a few feet ahead. Tautness is strung through his shoulders.

“That was na a question, Coffee Shop,” he calls back.

I follow.