Page 80 of The Midnight Princess

I don’t know much about tools, but I’ve been on enough factory floors—wearing protective hair nets and unnaturally clean overalls—to know this is not the time for a surprise. I perch on a stool and wait until the machine comes to a rest. He reaches for a caliper, taking a measurement, but when his hands drop to his hips, I ask, “How did you get here?”

He’s wearing a quilted flannel coat that has seen better days over a t-shirt and jeans. He looks like a professional woodworker, but I also see a crown prince. The outlines of each blur together in the warm light.

Jacob turns down the radio. “You found me.”

I think I’ll always find him.

He leans back against his bench and crosses his ankles. “A carpenter returns to his natural habitat.” This comes with one of his grins.

Vorburg is lucky to have him for the rest of his life.

“What are you making?” I ask.

He turns, his arms braced along the workbench, and gives me a nod, inviting me to inspect. I crowd into him, almost touching. Not quite.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks, turning his head nearly into mine. We take a breath. His gaze shifts.

“Some kind of lathe?”

He nods. “Can you tell what I’m turning?”

The palace has a number of projects going at any one time, and I attempt to place the small piece of wood in the context of a massive royal residence. It looks like a decorative matchstick.

I run a light finger over the wood, feeling the ridges. “Wait.” I twist my head, getting a vertical orientation, inadvertently bumping him aside with my hip. My eyes close for a brief second while I mark time, waiting for the sensation to roll through me and recede.

There are thermal springs in Sondmark, places where groundwater comes into contact with magma-heated rock. Pools that steam all winter long and keep the snow at bay are natural wonders in these cold northern latitudes. Touching him is like finding one of those after a frigid, wind-scoured hike.

“Are these spindles?” Under the precisely turned piece of wood lies a graveyard of splintered attempts.

Despite the blazing light, it’s so cold I can see our breath. I hold mine, trying not to give myself away. I feel a jumble of words—Sondish and English and French and German and Spanish and Pavian and Seongan—wrestle in my brain. “Oh. These are the spindles from the staircase in the dollhouse.”

So many failed attempts.

“Alma—”

Vede. His gaze roves across my face and I stumble backward, red-faced and awkward. I perch on a stool. Maybe I can breathe if he stays exactly where he is. Maybe I can pretend that this is a friendly gesture.

“It’s nice of you to think of replacing them.” Nice. It isn’t nice. Nice is a bottle of wine and a scented candle for your hostess. This is time and thought and talent. I’ve never received a gift like this.

“I’ll have to show it to my mother. She’ll appreciate it.” She won’t. Mama has probably forgotten we ever owned a dollhouse. “Maybe she’ll even set it up in one of the public rooms for display.” With every word, I create distance between me and the dollhouse, dismissing the years I loved it. Waving aside all the times I crouched in front of it, unable to bring myself to unwrap the pieces because I believed the brokenness would only travel in one direction. To more brokenness. Never to repair.

His hand closes on the spindle, and he nods.

“We just had a family meeting,” I say, reaching for some way to erase the solemn, guarded look on his face.

“Oh?”

It’s on my tongue to tell him everything, but he sorts his tools, sweeping away the mess. I have to remember myself.

“Freja’s having a house party. I can bring anyone I want.”

“Pietor?”

I wasn’t thinking of Pietor. I never think of Pietor.

“He has business in Himmelstein.” It might be true. “I thought this would be a good opportunity to take your clothes for a test drive.”

He holds his paint-daubed flannel coat open. “These?”