Page 77 of The Midnight Princess

“You can be upset. I don’t mind.”

She closes her eyes, her breath hitches, and she drops her head. Maybe she needed permission.

“Hey.” I kneel at her side, and run long passes between her shoulder blades. “Just breathe.”

She stills under my hand.

“The initial skirmish in the War of the Amber Cross was just the crown prince’s personal guard attacking his wife’s kidnappers on the route back to Handsel,” I say, already knowing how she’ll respond to the word choice.

“You can’t call them kidnappers,” she corrects. “Sondmark considers it a rescue. Don’t make that mistake into a hot mic.”

“All right. The princess barely...escaped with her life.”

The Vorburg account is raw, full of grief and rage and, being Vorburg, full of specific ways to enact vengeance. The crown prince writing to his father about how the princess had been stolen in the forest near their castle isn’t a polite, distant read full of “My lady wife” this and “We were beset upon” that. It’s all, “I will tear the flesh from their bones with my teeth. Blood will rain down their fortress walls until the return of my woman.”

“How did they get from a few soldiers to Leif SobeIsen charging through the East Gate with more mounted cavalry than the world has ever witnessed?” I ask.

Alma whispers. “He couldn’t let her go.”

The phone continues to vibrate. She tenses, and I turn it off, silencing the notifications.

“Do you know how amber is harvested in Vorburg?” I ask. She accepts this digression as a natural consequence of trying to teach me anything. “Storms come, churning up the petrified forests under the North Sea, and you go down to the seashore in bright orange rain gear and stand in the howling wind and pounding surf with a wide shrimp net, scooping through the breaking waves, looking for treasure, tossing back the dregs. The worst storms give the best rewards.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?” Her voice levels out, and her muscles relax under my hand.

“Is it working?” I grin, kneading the tendons in her neck. I won’t be here always. She’ll have Pietor and the royal apparatus to fall back on.

What should be a comforting thought isn’t. Other than her sisters, I haven’t seen any support for Alma as a human being, only for her position. Dozens of people are wearing themselves out today to make sure the palace looks good.

Alma worries about me—about how I might fall on my face as soon as I assume my public role. In the beginning, everything she taught was about protecting me from that humiliation. But somewhere in the last few weeks, I sense a shift. Now she wants to protect me from being hurt.

It’s my turn to be worried about her.

“Do you know what else about amber?” I ask.

“Hmm?”

“It’s full of twigs, bugs, moss.” I lift my hand until it hovers above her hair. She won’t feel this. “It’s a mess and I love it.”

22

Turning Spindles

ALMA

Freja slips into her chair at the long conference table as though she hasn’t shaken the very core of the monarchy. She’s wearing a vintage wrap dress and a satisfied look on her face. Even her skin has a faint tan. Freja regrets nothing.

I kiss her cheek as I pass, and she squeezes the hand I rest on her shoulder. Noah is early, as he always is.

“Welcome home,” he tells her. “You look well.”

Caroline takes Freja’s heavy coat, bearing it off to a cloakroom, and I watch Noah’s hand cup the back of his neck. His eyes slide away from our sister, idly following the secretary as she departs. Freja has unsettled us all.

When Caroline returns, she lays agendas at each place, reaching around us as she goes. Noah frowns as Caroline leans over his shoulder, straightening the packet with a snap, and allowing for her quick retreat.

Okay?I ask.

It’s nothing.His eyes scan my face.You?