Dad is sending Hex back home. It’s what Hex wants, what I want for him, what he was always meant to do.
But I tear out of my room like a madman.
Chapter Eighteen
Wren is two feet from Hex’s door. Her fist already raised to knock.
“Wren!” I stumble to a halt as she turns.
Her face goes from business to sympathetic. “Prince Nicholas. Your father gave me orders.”
“I know. I know. I—let me tell him. Please. Let me be the one to tell him.”
Wren is one eyeroll away from making me go back to my suite, and I’m that same eyeroll away from dropping to my knees and fully begging her.
But she glances up the hall, to where a staff member is rolling a vacuum out of a guestroom.
And she nods.
I go rigid in her acceptance. “Th-thank you.Thank you.”
Wren steps aside, but not before she puts a hand on my shoulder. “We are quite proud of you, Nicholas.”
“What?” My head snaps back. “Who—why?”
I am not ready to hear the wordproud,not in the wake of all my dad’s shit, and it’s just as surprising to see her looking sympathetic, like she knows what happened. She just knows Hex is being sent home; why would she be looking at me like that?
“The staff, of course.” She pats my shoulder. “Seeing you come into your own has been a hope many of us have shared. Whatever is happening with your father… it is none of my business, of course. But I am sorry.”
“How much do you know?” It’s probably dumb to ask that. If she knew what Dad has been doing, would she be standing here under honor and loyalty like either my dad or I is worthy of those things?
“I know the reigning Santa has… intentions for Christmas,” she says. It’d be detached if not for the tight squeeze she gives me. “It isa mighty burden to be placed on you. You are not so alone here as you and your brother might think.”
Even an hour ago, I would’ve done something with that hint of her being on my side.
Not now. There’s nothing I can do.
Nothing, nothing, that word is sand between my fingers.
I nod absently and turn to Hex’s door.
She hesitates. Then leaves with a soft hum.
I try the knob and it’s unlocked and I push inside, immediately spotting him on the couch.
“Coal?” He rips to his feet. “Coal—what happened?”
He took off his coat. His hair is pulled back at the nape of his neck and he’s in a black vest over a white dress shirt with a simple band collar that gives him a priest energy, but no snarky quips pop to mind because it’s all too fitting, isn’t it? I’ve thought so often about how he drives me to worship and sin and here he is, manifesting that.
I sink against the closed door. “You look stunning. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier.”
He comes around the couch. “You’re scaring me.”
“He found out.”
He stops four feet from me. I count the spaces on the patterned carpet.One-two-three-four.
“What? How? Are you—”
