Page 69 of The Dandelion Princess

“No you don’t.” I think of the Bible verses, committed to memory.Love is patient, love is kind. It is not proud…This is Ella.

“It’s not my job to solve my family.”

“We don’t always get to choose the things destiny lays at our door.” The words sound pompous but I kiss her neck to soften them.

“Destiny? I thought you were a thoroughgoing Lutheran,” Ella says, taking this chance to turn to some less demanding topic.

I was raised Lutheran, my mother a great believer in equipping me with the tools to live in the world I would one day inherit, but I have just enough of a connection to my Seongan heritage to perform the ancestral rites and mean them.

“I can’t dismiss destiny,” I answer. I can’t shrug away the idea of the heavens bending to some foregone destination. Leading me here.

The alarm chimes. Our time is up.

“My family is going to make their own choices,” she says, tapping her phone. I should be leaving the car park by now, coming up the rain-soaked walk on the north side of the palace, but I don’t want to leave Ella, especially now. “My hands are clean when it comes to my family. Their issues have nothing to do with me.”

“I think you’re better than that,” I counter.

She looks deeply into my face. “Do you think I’m being selfish?”

I take a breath. “Your family needs you. With a little mercy, a little grace—”

“The Lutheran has returned.” She shrugs off my arms and scrambles to her feet. “I could be one of those internet weirdos who goes no contact with their parents because they don’t recycle used batteries or Pankedruss lids. But no, my great crime is leaving people alone.”

“Ella—”

“We can’t all be Saint Marcus, loyal liegemen to the crown, Martyr of Lindenholm,” she mutters. The air crackles with hurt and frustration, but she’s also really cute when she goes on a tear.

“Ells.”

She points to the door. “Don’t leave my brother waiting.”

Vede.Noah. I give her a quick kiss and shrug on my jacket. “I’ll text you when I get home,” I say, helpfully unlatching her door mechanism when I pass through. The sound of the slam follows me down the hall and I grin.

22

Ramen and Chill

ELLA

When I’m frustrated with my family, I’m tempted to set up a Rube-Goldburg machine in the ballroom to make my feelings clear. “Actions,” I would thump them each on the head with a long stick as the machine spun and lit on fire and rolled and exploded at each stage, propelled by Newton’s irresistible laws, “have consequences.”

No matter how much power Marc claims I have, I can’t change everything.

He said he would text. Why isn’t he texting? I figure that basketball takes an hour. When it’s over, does he sit in the sauna with Noah and the others and talk about his feelings? Is there a trust circle and a talking stick?

It’s almost midnight when I throw myself into bed. He should be home, thinking up ways to tell me he’s sorry about how he left things. I stare at my phone screen, one of my trash panda stuffies shoved under my head, and begin to type.

Are you home?

Delete.

Ramen and chill?

Delete.

I take a breath and type very slowly.I’m sorry for calling you so many names.I’m sorry for calling him even one. Feelings crowd the back of my throat and I bite back a curse.Stultes es, he always knows what I need to hear.

My finger hovers over the send button when a text bubble pops up on the screen. Marc.I was telling you how to live your life. I know how much you hate that.