“Oh my god!” A girl leans across the table towards me. “You have to vote for the Halloween Prince! Youhaveto!”
“Oh, please!” A guy next to her rolls his eyes. “He’ll never catch up. Obviously our Christmas Prince will win! CHRISTMAS!”
A cheer goes down the table, a small chant,Christmas, Christmas.
Everyone is laughing in good fun, but the mood has thoroughly changed for me.
“You’re voting on who Iris will marry?” I press.
The first woman leans towards me with a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. “It won’treallyaffect the final decision, but it’s fun. Maybe she’ll take our opinions to heart! Who knows how they decide these things.”
Okay, let’s take stock of the good things I know: our people don’t seem to hate us. Check.
But they don’t seem to see us as people either. Voting on who Iris marries in a goddamn tabloid.
Is that any better than what Dad’s doing to us?
“How do—” I catch myself, lick my lips. “What do you think of them? The… royals, I mean.”
I could have asked that less conspicuously, but the woman is thankfully distracted by her granddaughter’s cookie progress.
“They’re lovely, of course—oh, honey! Enough with the chocolate sprinkles—”
“You don’t think all those pictures of them are a bit… forced?”
The woman has turned away, but she shakes her head. The guy and girl across from me catch my question, and I wonder if maybe they’re drunk, because they instantly giggle.
The girl opens up her phone and starts scrolling. “Eh, notforced—I mean, look, those are smiles!” She shows me her screen. It’s a picture on24-Hour Fêtefrom ice skating, Iris and Kris on the rink, and theyare, legitimately, happy. “But yeah”—she pulls her phone back—“I miss the pics we’d get of PrinceCoal’sexploits. He’s mellowed out way too much.”
My gut sinks.
“Donotstart on him again,” the guy says. “It’s a good thing he’s not smearing Christmas’s reputation.”
I hate myself. “Smearing the reputation how?”
The girl flips her hair, whacking Iris in the face, and Iris full-on convulses with the shock of it. “Oh, it’s—he’s never beentrustworthy,you know?” She uses a candy cane cookie as a wand as she talks. “Entertaining, sure. But what’s he gonna do for Christmas? Can he keep up with what his father’s done?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Right. The, um, reigning Santa. He’s a pretty great guy.”
“Great? Ha!” She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “The King!”
Up and down the table, cheers bark out. Genuine cheers.
“You don’t get a reaction likethatbeing merelygreat.He’s done things for Christmas no other Santa has!”
“Such as…?”
My question seems to shake her out of her stupor for a blip. “Oh. Um—joy is up. Like, skyrocketing up.”
“So if the reigning Santa, I don’t know, maybe said, ‘Hey, I’ll get Christmas joy on a global scale, we’ll have endless magic for everyone, but to have that, we’re gonna overtake other Holidays,’ you’d say…”
This is, unsurprisingly, the moment the conversation breaks. From a friendly chat to her realizing I’m after something.
“What is wrong with you?” the girl asks. “Santa would never do that. We’reChristmas.What’s your problem?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’m… visiting from New Year.”
I drop the other name and gauge her reaction.
