One of our staff pounds on the floor at the rear of the ballroom, yanking all attention to the doors as they open.
The energy of the ballroom shifts. That hunter-level intent I usually feel directed at me and Kris is now pinned on a trio of people, trailed by half a dozen of their staff.
An enormous cloud of smoke pours in behind them, a shifting gray-black whorl that dissolves them into nothing more than silhouettes. There are no cries of alarm, so I’m guessing this is all part oftheir entrance and what I can only hope is passive-aggressive retaliation for the way Dad displayed our magic when just the Halloween envoys were here.
My eyes cut to Dad’s profile, and at the sight of his barely suppressed scowl, I don’t even try to hide my smirk.
The smoke undulates and shapeless shadows begin darting in and out of the silhouettes, the barest suggestion of somethingotherlurking in the mist. It would be sufficiently “This Is Halloween,” but then a crackle of lightning skitters through the smoke, flashing sickly yellow light on a face here, a disembodied smile there.
The Christmas crowd jumps, a few people letting loose startled laughter.
Kris is one of the people who jumps, but he doesn’t laugh. “Fucking hell,” he mutters.
I spider-walk my fingers up the back of his arm.
He jumps again before cursing and batting me away.
The smoke fades in graceful corkscrews to reveal the people behind the silhouettes, now halfway into the ballroom.
If we’re clinging to the whole Christmas theme, then they’re clinging to a gothic Halloween vibe. No one in their group has a pop of color among their form-fitting black gowns, their sleek onyx suits.
Except for—
I’d thought about researching the Halloween royal family out of a morbid curiosity to see who my Dad is trying to fake-matchmake Iris with. She said she knew who the prince was, or had seen pictures of him at least, and refused to delve any deeper—but I’d never needed to care about anyone outside of Christmas and the Holidays Dad interacts most with, like Easter and Valentine’s Day. Halloween doesn’t allow paparazzi to the extent we do, lucky bastards, so any research would’ve required a dive into specialized Holiday sites, but every time I sat down to do it, I got super paranoid that Dad would check my browser history. And then I realized that yeah, he definitely has people tracking our browser history when we’re staying at the palace, and that idea was mind-numbingly nauseatingbecause I am, in some iterations of myself, a twenty-two-year-old guy with twenty-two-year-old guy hobbies.
But I really, really should’ve risked it and fucking done even a single fucking minute of fucking research because now I’m standing on this stage and half of my mind is screaming at me to inhale but I legitimately cannot remember what muscles that act uses, and the other half of my mind is ravenously consumed with staring at the Halloween Prince.
The last time I saw him, I had his tongue in my mouth outside a bar in New Haven.
He’d just simplified one of my biggest unanswerable questions and then I kissed him and he vanished and I really had started to think I’d made him up, a fever dream brought on by vodka and regret.
But he’s here, he’sreal,and he’s disastrously hot, wearing a goddamncorset vest.
The satiny black vest has vertical ribs that taper his chest into his waist in the very definition of a perfectV.I want nothing more than to drop to my knees andweep,good lord how I have never seen a corset vest before—I mean, I’ve seen one, but I’ve neverseen one,not on someone whose body looks physically sculpted to fill out this apex of human fashion.
He’s got the only pop of color in the entire group, a scarlet silk button-up under the vest, the color such a deep red that there’s no question it’s meant to symbolize gore and darkness rather than Christmas’s cherry brightness. Tight black pants taper into calf-high combat boots and the tips of his black hair now brush his shoulders, half the strands pulled behind his head, showing—displaying—the blade-edge sharpness of his jaw and cheekbones and the array of piercings up the shell of his left ear. Wide, observant dark eyes rimmed with black liner go from the floor up to my dad and Iris, no emotion at all on his face, but that lack of emotion is reaction enough—I get the distinct feeling he’s pissed to be here. His hands hang at his sides, loosely clenched in fists, most of his fingers set with thick silver rings.
“The royal house of Halloween,” an announcer bellows. “King Ichabod Hallow. Queen Carina Hallow. And their son Prince Hex Hallow.”
His name rebounds in my head, cracking into the parts of my body that have gone immobile, and against every rational thought—I have no rational thoughts, none, not in this moment—I remember how to inhale and I gasp.
Loudly.
Attention swings to me. Dad, glaring; Iris, confused; Kris, like I’ve lost my mind, and I have, because Hex is looking at me now. And he doesn’t seem at all surprised that I’m here, even if there is a beat of recognition; he just emits that same capped fury.
He’s here to fake-compete with me over Iris. And will be staying in Claus Palace until Christmas Eve to keep Halloween appeased until Iris and I can get married. And is at this moment cocking one slender eyebrow and just the contact of his eyes on me yanks forward the memory of his lips beneath mine and fire crawls across my body.
Oh, no.
Oh no nonoooo—
Dad turns back to the Halloween contingent. “Welcome to Christmas,” he booms.
Chapter Five
Headline:Christmas Prince falls into minor coma at sight of guy he kissed one and a half years ago who had the audacity to get even hotter in the interim.
Too wordy. Not sure I care. There’s nothing but a rolling air-raid siren in my head as Dad goes through all the pomp of having a royal family visiting. So glad you’re here, yadda yadda. The Halloween family comes up on stage and they pose with Dad, Iris, and her father, and I think Kris and I should join in, but no one pushes us to, so we step down into the shadows beside the stage and I have a silent panic attack.
