Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Jack
The artificial Christmas tree is proving to be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated. It’s barely four in the morning, but I couldn’t sleep, and when I wandered into the living room and saw the box sitting in the corner where I’d hidden it three days ago, I knew what I had to do.
Even if Dad thinks we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas this year. Even if the entire country is under fey occupation and half the population thinks we’re collaborators. Even if my own brain keeps telling me this is ridiculous.
It’s Christmas morning, and by God, we’re going to have a tree.
I’m wrestling with a particularly stubborn branch when I hear soft footsteps behind me.
“What on earth are you doing?”
I turn to find Dyfri standing in the doorway, looking absolutely magnificent in one of his long nightgowns, this one a deep blood-red that makes his skin seem to glow. His hair is mostly loose, tumbling behind his shoulders, the wedding plait visible as a silver thread woven through the dark mass.
“It’s Christmas!” I announce, probably with far too much enthusiasm for four in the morning.
Dyfri blinks slowly. “Christmas?”
“Oh. It’s a human festival...” I start to explain, then catch the slight quirk of his eyebrow. “Right. You probably know that already.”
“I am aware.” His voice is carefully neutral, but there’s something almost amused in his expression. “You wish to celebrate Christmas?”
I nod eagerly, then feel suddenly self-conscious.
“I know it’s silly. Dad said we weren’t going to celebrate it this year, what with the occupation and everything.
But I woke up, and I just could not pretend it was a normal day.
Even with our wedding and everything that’s been going on, Christmas barely crossed my mind until yesterday. ”
A shiver of guilt shudders through me, but I ignore it.
Dad and Mum are at Chequers, discreetly away for the weekend in the prime minister’s country house.
They’ll never know that I’m rebelling and doing Christmas.
And neither will the British public. I’m not flashing my wealth and stability while people are scared and struggling.
It’s just me and my husband, alone in our flat.
Dyfri moves closer, studying the half-assembled tree with the same intense focus he uses for political negotiations.
“And this requires... construction?”
“It’s an artificial tree. Much easier than trying to get a real one with all the restrictions on movement.” I gesture helplessly at the pile of green plastic branches. “Though I’m starting to think ‘easier’ might be relative.”
For a moment, I think he’s going to point out how ridiculous this all is. How we have more important things to worry about than decorating fake trees. How Christmas is a frivolous human custom that serves no practical purpose.
Instead, he sighs and rolls up his sleeves. “Show me what needs to be done.”
The next hour passes in a blur of colour-coded branches and increasingly creative swearing as we attempt to make the tree look like something that might once have been related to actual plant life.
Dyfri approaches the task with the same methodical precision he brings to everything else, though I catch him muttering what sound like Fey curse words when a particularly stubborn branch refuses to cooperate.
“This is remarkably inefficient,” he observes as we step back to survey our handiwork. “Surely it would be simpler to acquire an actual tree.”
“Yes, but then we’d have to water it and clean up fallen needles and dispose of it afterwards. This way, we just pack it back in the box next week.”
“Next week?”
“Christmas decorations usually stay up until New Year’s. Sometimes longer if you’re feeling lazy.”
Dyfri stares at me as if I’ve announced my intention to take up professional dragon wrestling. “You maintain this... display... for over a week?”
“It’s festive!” I defend, then catch sight of his expression and start laughing. “You think we’re completely mad, don’t you?”
“I think,” Dyfri says carefully, “that humans have a remarkable capacity for creating elaborate rituals around the most arbitrary concepts.”
“Fair point.” I head toward the box of decorations I’d managed to scavenge from a storage closet. “Wait until you see the baubles.”
If Dyfri thought the tree construction was bewildering, the decoration process clearly pushes him well beyond the bounds of rational comprehension.
He holds each ornament like it might explode, examining the glittery spheres and miniature angels with the sort of scientific fascination usually reserved for rare specimens.
“And the purpose of these is...?”
“To look pretty. To catch the light. To make people smile when they look at them.” I hang a silver bauble near the top of the tree, pleased with how it catches the morning sunlight streaming through the windows. “Not everything needs a practical purpose, you know.”
“Doesn’t it?” The question is quiet, almost thoughtful.
When I look at him, there’s something vulnerable in his expression that makes my chest tight. As if the concept of doing something purely for beauty, purely for joy, is so foreign to him that he can barely process it.
“No,” I say gently. “Sometimes things can just be... nice. Just because.”
We work in comfortable silence after that, Dyfri gradually relaxing into the rhythm of hanging ornaments and adjusting their placement with an artist’s eye for balance. By the time we’re finished, the tree actually looks quite respectable, twinkling cheerfully in the corner of the room.
“Now what?” Dyfri asks.
“Now we have Christmas breakfast. Then we pull crackers and eat far too much food.” I grin at his increasingly bewildered expression. “Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through it.”
Breakfast is a cheerful affair of Buck’s Fizz and croissants, though I have to keep steering the conversation away from politics when Dyfri tries to bring up Resistance planning.
“It’s Christmas,” I remind him firmly when he starts outlining potential weaknesses in fey communication networks. “We are having the day off.”
“A day off from what, exactly? The occupation? The conspiracy? The imminent threat to both our peoples?”
“Yes.”
Dyfri stares at me. “That’s not how crises work, Jack.”
“It’s how Christmas works.” I refill his champagne glass, noting with amusement how the alcohol is bringing a faint flush to his cheeks. “One day. Twenty-four hours where we don’t think about any of it. Where we just... exist. Together. As a married couple doing normal married-couple things.”
“I’m not entirely certain I know how to do that.”
The admission is so quietly honest that it breaks my heart a little. “Lucky for you, I’m an excellent teacher.”
By afternoon, I’ve managed to coax him into pulling a Christmas cracker, though he flatly refuses to wear the paper crown that falls out. “I am not putting that ridiculous thing on my head, Jack”, and he reads the terrible joke inside with the sort of deadpan delivery that makes it actually funny.
“Why did the turkey cross the road?” he intones. “Because it was the chicken’s day off.”
“That’s terrible,” I laugh.
“It’s also factually incorrect. Turkeys and chickens have entirely different motivational structures.”
“You’re not supposed to analyse the joke, Dyfri. You’re supposed to groan and then tell an even worse one.”
“I don’t know any jokes.”
Of course he doesn’t. The thought makes me want to wrap him in blankets and never let anyone hurt him again.
Dinner is a simple affair. Just the two of us in the smaller dining room, sharing a meal that has nothing to do with diplomacy or politics or the weight of two worlds on our shoulders.
Dyfri seems to relax as the day progresses, the careful guards he usually maintains slipping away until he’s just..
. himself. Witty and intelligent and surprisingly playful when he’s not calculating his every action.
I find myself watching him more than I probably should, cataloguing the way his eyes light up when he’s amused, the graceful gestures he makes when he’s explaining something, the way he unconsciously touches the wedding plait in his hair when he’s thinking.
Dyfri is clever. Brilliantly so. Strategic and politically astute in ways that make my head spin.
He’s gorgeous enough to stop traffic, with that otherworldly beauty that marks him as definitely not human.
And he’s willing to fight for a cause, whatever that cause may be, because I can’t be sure where his loyalty lies.
He could be an unseelie agent plotting seelie downfall.
He could be a misunderstood seelie prince trying to save his people.
Whatever his intention, he is fighting for it. With a fierce determination that’s both inspiring and slightly terrifying.
But more than that, he’s... kind. Underneath all the sarcasm and defensive walls, there’s a fundamental decency to him that shows in the careful way he treats the staff, the genuine concern in his voice when he asks how I’m feeling, the way he listens when I talk like my words actually matter.
When did I fall for him? Because I definitely have, somewhere between the wedding night awkwardness and this moment, watching him attempt to understand the concept of Christmas pudding.
“You set it on fire?” he asks, eyeing the flaming dessert with deep suspicion.
“It’s traditional. Don’t worry, the alcohol burns off.”
“Most of it.”
“Most of it,” I concede.
After dinner, we settle back in the living room, the tree lights twinkling cheerfully in the growing darkness. I retrieve the gift I’d hidden behind the sofa that morning, suddenly nervous in a way that has nothing to do with politics or Resistance movements.
“What’s this?” Dyfri asks when I hand him the wrapped box.
“Your Christmas present.”
He stares at the package as if I’ve handed him something potentially venomous. “My... what?”
“Christmas present. Gift. You know, the thing people give each other to show they care.”
“I...” He looks genuinely lost. “I don’t have anything for you.”
“That’s alright. I wasn’t expecting anything. I just... I wanted to give you something.”
Dyfri turns the box over in his hands, examining the wrapping paper with the same intense focus he’d applied to the Christmas ornaments.
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why you would... why anyone would...” He stops, shakes his head. “I’ve never received a gift before. Not like this. Not one given freely, without expectation of something in return.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Never? In his entire life, no one has ever given him something just because they wanted to make him happy?
“Well,” I manage, my voice slightly rough, “there’s a first time for everything. Open it.”
He unwraps the paper with painstaking care, as if he’s afraid to damage it. When he opens the ornate wooden box and sees the collection of silk ribbons inside, deep blues and rich purples and silver threads that will complement his colouring perfectly, his breath catches audibly.
“They’re for your hair,” I explain unnecessarily. “I noticed you like braids and intricate arrangements, and I thought... well, I thought you might like some new options.”
Dyfri lifts one of the ribbons from the box, a length of midnight blue silk shot through with silver thread that matches the ribbon in his wedding plait perfectly. His hands are trembling slightly as he runs the fabric through his fingers.
“They’re beautiful,” he whispers.
“So are you.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, but I don’t regret them. Because he is beautiful, inside and out, and someone should tell him that. Someone should give him gifts and make him smile and show him that he’s worth caring about.
When he looks up at me, his eyes are bright with unshed tears, and there’s something so vulnerable in his expression that it takes my breath away.
This formidable fey prince, this brilliant political strategist, this creature who could probably level a city block without breaking a sweat…
and underneath it all, he’s just a boy who’s been alone his entire life.
A boy who’s never received a gift. Who doesn’t understand why someone would want to make him happy just because.
“I am grateful,” he says, and his voice breaks slightly on the words.
I want to reach for him, to pull him close and hold him until that lost expression leaves his face. I want to give him a hundred gifts, a thousand, until he stops looking so amazed that someone might care about his happiness.
Instead, I settle for moving closer on the sofa, close enough that our knees touch.
“You’re welcome,” I say softly. “Merry Christmas, Dyfri.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. Then Dyfri carefully places the ribbon back in the box and sets it aside. When he looks at me again, there’s something different in his expression. Something open and trusting and achingly hopeful.
“Merry Christmas, Jack.”
And as we sit there in the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights, his hand finding mine and holding tight, I realise that this is what I want. Not just the Resistance, not just the cause, but this. Him. Us.
Whatever comes next, whatever dangers we’ll face, whatever impossible odds we’ll have to overcome, I want to do it all with him by my side.
I want to keep giving him gifts until he stops being surprised by kindness. I want to hold him when he is sad and make him laugh when he’s being too serious and show him every day that he’s not alone anymore.
I want to love him, completely and hopelessly and forever.
And maybe, just maybe, he might want that too.