Chapter Two
Snow Place Like Midtown
Ryatt
Idon’t know what I imagined New York City to be like, but I’m one hundred percent positive this isn’t even close to my wildest dreams.
It’s not the noises–although it's deafening–or the smells–which are far from the baked goods and peppermint I’m used to–that throw me off. Although those are obnoxious, especially compared to my life back in Sugarplum Hollow. No, it’s just how small the city makes you feel.
Standing at the base of these skyscrapers, I feel the weight of them pressing down, a reminder that humans have built mountains of steel and glass. Giants towering over the streets while the people below rush past without even glancing up. They live amongst wonders and don’t even notice.
I also wasn’t prepared for what is considered Christmas decorations around here.
From the massive Christmas tree that hundreds of people are taking pictures in front of to the people ice skating in Central Park, I am so far away from what I’ve always considered Christmas.
I guess it’s different when Christmas is your entire life.
We don’t have overly dramatic displays like the one in front of me.
Macy’s, the home to the Macy’s Day Parade, is known for their large Christmas displays. If you are to believe this pamphlet I picked up. The window is wrapped in fake garland wrapped in white twinkling lights with a bright, red display of Santa Claus.
Boy, did they get his look wrong. I’m pretty sure Nick hasn’t looked like that in a very long time. I stare at it, half amused, half offended.
I almost pull out my phone to take a picture, just to show Caspian and Orion when I get back home.
They will get a kick out of what the normies think Nick, aka Santa, looks like.
Normies are non-magical folk who live their lives with no idea of the “others” who exist right along with them.
It’s hilarious when we see how much they worship the “reindeer” with zero idea that we are shifters and have a human side that can stand beside them.
Like I am now.
A gust of wind whips down the street, bringing with it the scent of roasted chestnuts, exhaust, and burning oil.
It’s all wrong. I tuck my hands deeper into my pockets as I sigh.
Keeping my gaze on the overzealous Christmas display, I can’t help wondering—not even for the first time—if leaving home was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
I keep telling myself I left for freedom, for space, for clarity.
But deep down, something else has been nagging at me since before I ever stepped foot in Manhattan.
Something that pulled me here like a string I couldn’t cut, even when I tried.
Did I imagine this so differently that I believed this to be something it wasn’t?
For the first time in my life, Christmas feels…
distant? Even amidst the Christmas songs pouring out of each building, the fake Santa’s ho-ho-hoing while chiming a brass bell, and all the over-the-top displays of Christmas decor, I can’t feel the true magic of Christmas.
This isn’t the biting loneliness of being away from home, something I could fly back to, and easily remedy.
No, this is the distance that lives in your chest and whispers you don’t belong here.
Maybe it’s right. Maybe the only place I belong is on Santa’s team and not being the architect I’ve always dreamed of being.
“Excuse me?”
The nasally voice snaps me out of my self-deprecation.
I look down to find a tall, immaculate blonde woman smiling at me.
Her teeth are far too white, her smile feeling a little too rehearsed.
She’s wearing designer everything, exuding an air of money.
Her lipstick is the perfect shade of mistletoe berries, which is the only thing I like about her so far.
She looks as if she walked right off one of the “Christmas in the City” billboards I saw in Times Square when I first arrived.
“Sorry,” she says, her tone dripping with anything but remorse. “You were standing here, and I thought you looked like you needed a friend…or maybe something more?”
Her voice, tinkling with flirtation, grates against my ears.
Her white-gloved hand brushes back her perfect blonde curls off her shoulder in a carefully calculated movement that I’m sure she’s practiced in the mirror a few times.
Something human women do, but we shifters can spot for what it is.
I won’t say that we are superior, but when your mating comes from fate and nature, everything else feels off?
Not that there’s something wrong with this creature in front of me, but she isn’t my mate.
“I’m good,” I reply, taking a subtly polite step back.
She tilts her head, squinting her eyes in mock offense. “You sure? I could have sworn something whispered to me, you needed a friend.”
I’m certain that nobody whispered to her, and that she has never experienced rejection. She doesn’t look like someone who’s used to the word no.
“Just thinking,” I stare into her bright blue eyes, watching for her reaction. “When did everyone lose the meaning of Christmas?”
She blinks rapidly a few times, processes what I said for maybe a millisecond before she says, “Handsome. Deep. Broody and loves Christmas? Let me guess—you’re an artist of some sort?”
I almost scoff. As if she knows me, as if she can see beyond the handsome exterior that I was gifted with. “Something like that,” I grumble.
What I want to say is that I’m one existential crisis away from becoming the next tabloid headline: Reindeer Prince Destroys Christmas Display, Scaring All the Children.
Her perfume wafts over to me, smelling too strong, too floral, and everything wrong with this scene. It’s jarring. Back home everything smells of fresh pine, fallen snow, and baked goods. Here everything is artificial, overly chemical, or full on smog.
She steps closer…her gloved hand landing on the lapel of my jacket as she blinks her fake eyelashes at me. “Well, if you need a guide…”
That’s when I hear it. I don’t even know how I do over all the other sounds, but I hear the gentle tinkle of a bell as it bobs.
At first, I think it’s my imagination. But then I hear it again, coming closer as it cuts through all the city sounds.
It shouldn’t draw my attention, but it does as my heart beats a little harder.
And that’s when I see her.
The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen burst through the crowd like a comet covered in green felt and glitter.
For the briefest of seconds I see her entire outfit before the crowd swallows her again. Why is there an elf here? Are they here to bring me back to Sugarplum? I thought I’d been careful, covering my tracks the best I could.
I take a slight step towards her as the crowd parts again. Her cheeks are flushed, her amber curls tumbling loose from beneath her elf hat, as she clutches a tray of hot cocoa in her hands as if it holds her very existence.
Her skirt swishes, hugging her waist in the best way, flowing against curves that flex with each determined step.
Those ridiculous rhinestones are catching the light as they attempt to distract me from the muscular legs beneath them.
She’s soft in all the right ways, the kind that I want to feel beneath my hands as I pin her down.
She’s radiant, the kind of woman built for long winter nights, laughter beneath a blanket as we cuddle in front of the fire.
I already know she’s the trouble I want to get into.
The crowd parts for her, well, mostly. She elbows past a jerk in a suit who’s too busy on his phone to see her.
She mutters an apology even though it’s swallowed by the city noise.
Not that I can hear any of it. It’s as though my ears, my entire being, are consumed by this complete stranger.
The bells tinkling from somewhere on her sound as if they are right next to my ear.
The world tilts.
Magic hums in my chest—something old, instinctive, pulls me toward her. My feet move before I can even process what’s happening. It feels close to the magic that drew me out of Sugarplum and onto the loud streets of NYC.
Then, her foot hits the edge of the curb.