Chapter 5
ALEX
The first time the lights flickered, Alex was in the nursery watching her children turn a perfectly respectable armchair into a siege engine.
“Left flank!” Matilda shouted, standing on the seat cushion with a throw pillow raised above her head. “Hyzzie, you’re on reindeer watch. Frank, guard the biscuits. Florence, you’re… the negotiator.”
“I don’t want to negotiate,” Florence said, sitting primly on the armrest with a stuffed corgi on her lap. “I want to be a dragon.”
“Fine,” Matilda said magnanimously. “Florence is the dragon. I’m the captain. Frank is the biscuit knight. Hyzenthlay is… the snow oracle.”
Hyzenthlay looked faintly pleased. “I like that one,” she said, peering out of the window at the falling snow. “The snow says we should prepare for surprises.”
Alexandra sat cross-legged on the rug, leaning back against the base of a bookcase, and let their voices roll over her.
The room was warm, the fire crackling merrily, the smell of hot chocolate from an earlier round of bribery lingering in the air.
A string of fairy lights twinkled haphazardly around the window, despite Vic’s attempts at enforcing “regal symmetry.”
It should have been impossible to think of anything beyond this moment.
Four children. Her children—three of them, at least by birth—and the fourth woven into her heart just as tightly.
Vic hovering, trying to manage them and failing in a way that made Alexandra’s chest ache with fondness.
Julia sitting in an armchair with a folder balanced on her knees, making the occasional dry comment.
And Erin.
Erin was on the far side of the room, crouched by the door with one knee on the floor, her phone in one hand, brow furrowed as she spoke in low tones into her headset. The cords of muscle in her neck shifted as she nodded at something the person on the other end said.
Even in jeans and a jumper, with a smudge of something suspiciously chocolatey on her sleeve from hoisting Frank earlier, she radiated alertness. Her gaze kept flicking to the window, to the fire, to the corridor beyond, measuring.
Alexandra watched her and felt a familiar mix of feelings: gratitude, desire, a flicker of frustration she hated herself for.
Six years in, and she still couldn’t switch it off.
“You’re staring,” Julia murmured.
Alexandra glanced up. Julia was watching her over the top of her papers, eyes sharp, a small smile playing around her mouth.
“Am I?” Alex asked mildly. She hadn’t meant to say that much aloud.
“A little,” Julia said. “Don’t worry, she’s still very much in love with you. I checked.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “You make it sound like you ran her through a diagnostic.”
“I did,” Julia said. “It’s called ‘asking her how she is.’ You should try it. Preferably in a room where no one is trying to catapult themselves onto the curtain rail.”
As if on cue, Matilda and Frank launched themselves from the armchair toward an ottoman, shrieking. Erin’s head snapped around.
“Feet on the floor!” she called.
“But we’re defending the castle,” Matilda protested.
“Castles have stairs, not trampolines,” Erin said automatically.
Alex’s smile tugged wider despite herself. She shifted, tucking one knee under her, and reached for the mug of tea resting on the low table beside her.
The lights cut out for half a second, dropping the room into darkness.
Four small voices inhaled at once. Erin was on her feet before the power snapped back, lamp and fairy lights flickering to life again.
“That,” Vic said, hand over her heart, “was rude.”
Matilda turned in a slow circle, eyes wide. “Did the castle blink?”
“The electrics are just having a little think,” Alexandra said lightly, keeping her voice calm. She was used to power cuts; the palace wasn’t immune to the quirks of Victorian wiring. Balmoral was even older. “Nothing to worry about.”
“It’s the snow,” Hyzenthlay said, as if confirming something it had told her personally. “It’s getting heavier. It wants us to pay attention.”
“The snow would like to mind its own business,” Vic muttered, already reaching for her phone. “I’m going to check with Patel. If the backup generators don’t kick in properly—”
“Vic,” Julia interrupted gently. “It was a flicker, not the apocalypse.”
“You’re all so blasé,” Vic said. “If the lights go out halfway through the triplets’ pageant, I’m holding the national grid personally responsible.”
“You can send them a sternly worded letter,” Alexandra said. “That always terrifies infrastructure.”
She caught Erin’s eye across the room. For a moment, their gazes hooked, an electric connection all their own. The line of Erin’s shoulders eased a millimetre. Alex felt it like a hand on her chest.
Maybe now, she thought. Maybe if they can keep the children all in one room for ten minutes, and Vic is busy threatening the power company, and Julia is here to supervise… maybe now.
She rose to her feet, smoothing her jumper down out of habit. The motion drew Erin’s attention; her wife’s eyes followed the movement, dark and intent.
Alex crossed the room, stepping around scattered toys and a discarded sock.
Vic was pacing near the fireplace, muttering about surge protectors.
Julia was saying something about contingency candles.
The children had apparently decided the flicker was part of a game and were now crawling under furniture “searching for the dragon.”
“My love,” Alexandra said quietly as she reached Erin. “How’s the perimeter?”
Erin’s mouth twitched. “Snowy,” she said. “Cold. Largely uninterested in staging a coup, but I don’t trust it.”
“I’ll have a word with it,” Alex said. “Queen to weather, peer to peer.”
Erin huffed. “Be careful, it’s been listening to Hyz. That kid’s got ideas.”
“Hyzenthlay always has ideas,” Alexandra said. “So do I.”
She let her fingertips brush Erin’s wrist, subtle, easily mistaken for an accident. Erin’s gaze dropped briefly to the point of contact, then back up.
“What kind of ideas?” she asked, voice a shade lower.
Alex tilted her head toward the door. “Hallway inspection,” she said. “You said yourself these old castles are deathtraps.”
“I was talking about health and safety,” Erin said, but her stance shifted, weight sliding subtly toward the corridor. “Not… hallway inspections.”
“A queen must be thorough,” Alexandra said. “Come on. Before Vic drafts you into the emergency illumination committee.”
She didn’t quite take Erin’s hand—Erin liked to have both free when she was in work mode—but she moved close enough that they brushed sides as they slipped out of the nursery and into the corridor beyond.
The door thudded shut behind them. The noise of the room—squeals, Vic’s complaints, the murmur of Julia’s voice—dampened to a muffled hum.
Out here, the castle was quieter.
And colder.
The corridor Alexandra led them into was one of the older ones, a long stretch of stone lined with portraits, running along the outer wall toward one of the less-used staircases.
The heating up here had always been temperamental at best. Right now, the radiator under the narrow window was stone cold, its metal ribs icy to the touch.
Perfect, Alexandra thought. Miserable, heatless… and blessedly empty.
Erin shivered. “This,” she said, “is not where I thought ‘seduction’ would take place.”
“Who said I was seducing you?” Alexandra replied, entirely failing to look innocent. “Maybe I’m genuinely concerned about the antique piping.”
“You tried to take my clothes off in a security cupboard in Westminster,” Erin said. “I’m not falling for this.”
Alex smiled. “You enjoyed that cupboard.”
“I enjoyed you,” Erin said. The words came out quietly, without the banter that usually softened that sort of comment. Alex felt them all the way down her spine.
“Good,” she said. “I’d be terribly offended if you’d been faking it this whole time.”
Erin snorted, the sound bouncing off the stone. Then her expression sobered, and in the dim, unreliable light of the wall sconces, Alex could see the fatigue there. The fine grooves at the corners of her eyes. The way her shoulders didn’t quite relax, even now, even alone.
“Alex…” Erin began. “We shouldn’t be too far from—”
“The nursery is ten metres away,” Alexandra said. “Julia is in there. Vic is in there. Our children are safe. The walls are thick. The doors are heavy. No one will spontaneously combust in the next five minutes.”
“You say that,” Erin said, “but you’ve met our offspring, right?”
Alex stepped closer on her tiptoes, into Erin’s space, until the wall was at Erin’s back and Alexandra could rest one hand on the cold radiator, caging her in.
She watched Erin’s pupils dilate, watched her throat work as she swallowed. For all the tiredness, the lines, the constant vigilance—this part of her still responded. Still wanted.
“Five minutes,” Alex said, softer now. “That’s all I’m asking. Not even for… anything specific. Just… your attention. On me. On us. Before the castle eats us alive again.”
Erin’s mouth quirked. “It is a hungry-looking castle.”
“There,” Alex said. “She smiles. That’s progress.”
She let her hand slide from the radiator to Erin’s shoulder, tracing the familiar slope, the warmth of her even through her jumper. She moved in until their bodies brushed, her own chest pressing lightly against Erin’s.
For a heartbeat, it was like slipping into an old, beloved coat. The shape of them still fit.
“Hey,” she said softly.
Erin’s gaze snagged on her mouth. “Hey,” she echoed.
Alex rose onto the balls of her feet and kissed her.
She hadn’t meant for it to be much at first—a test, a touch, a reminder. Just lips meeting, pressure and warmth and the shared exhale of two people who used to do this without thinking.
But Erin made a sound, low in her throat, that short-circuited her intentions. Her hands came up, gripping Alex’s hips, pulling her closer. The cold air around them seemed to vanish, replaced by an immediate, enveloping heat.