Chapter 5 #2
Alex opened to her, the kiss deepening, years of muscle memory guiding them. Erin’s mouth was familiar and new all at once; the same shape, the same taste of tea and winter air, but there was a kind of hunger there now, threaded through with hesitation.
She’d missed this. God, she’d missed this.
Not just the physical—the slide of Erin’s tongue against hers, the way their bodies slotted together—but the way the rest of the world fell away when they did it properly. No titles. No cameras. No staff. Just Erin and Alex and the solid reassurance of stone at her back.
Alex pressed closer, fingers curling into the wool at Erin’s shoulder, nails scraping lightly through the jumper. Erin’s breath hitched. One hand slid up to cup the back of Alexandra’s head, thumb stroking the tiny hairs at her nape, the way she knew Alex liked.
Heat coiled low in Alex’s abdomen, a slow-burning ache that had been banked for months.
Six years of love, she thought. And recently we’ve been living on scraps.
She kissed her harder, chasing that feeling, that connection. Erin responded, but there was still that faint, maddening sense of restraint, like a car with the handbrake half on.
Alex wanted to fling it off. To remind her: You’re allowed to be here with me. You’re allowed to let go.
She started to angle her hips, a subtle, instinctive movement to align them more closely, to press the length of her thigh between Erin’s. Erin’s fingers tightened on her waist—
—and the lights went out.
Properly, this time.
The sconces died. The faint glow from the nursery under the door behind them disappeared.
The corridor was plunged into darkness.
For one suspended second, they stayed exactly as they were, lips still touching, breath mingling, the world narrowed to the warmth between their bodies and the sudden, shocking black.
Then Erin froze.
Alex felt it—every muscle going taut at once, like an animal catching a scent.
“Shit,” Erin breathed against her mouth.
Alex swallowed a groan that had nothing to do with desire. “Really?” she whispered. “Right now?”
“Power’s gone,” Erin said, already pulling back. Her hands shifted from Alex’s hips to her arms, gently but firmly creating space. “The backup didn’t kick in. I need to check—”
“You need,” Alex said, trying very hard to keep the edge out of her voice, “to remember that there are at least three highly qualified people dealing with this already who are not you.”
“Four,” Erin corrected automatically. “If you count Patel. And the electricians. But I’m the lead on—”
“On most things,” Alex cut in. “Yes. I know. It’s one of your many, many charms. But for the next five minutes, I think the castle can survive without you poking at its fuses.”
She heard Erin inhale. In the dark, she couldn’t see her expression, but she could feel the tension thrumming through her.
“It’s not just fuses,” Erin said quietly. “It’s emergency lighting. It’s the gates. It’s the heating for the elderly staff in the back wing. It’s… my job.”
The last part came out sharper than she probably intended. A line drawn in the dark between them.
Alex flinched.
There it was, then. The thing she’d been trying not to look at directly. The sense of… competition, almost. Between her and the job. Between her and the version of Erin who was more comfortable monitoring CCTV than lying still.
She stepped back fully, crossing her arms against the chill that had nothing to do with the corridor’s temperature.
“Right,” she said softly. “Of course.”
Erin cursed under her breath. “Alex. That’s not—I didn’t mean—”
Something thudded down the corridor.
Both of them jerked instinctively toward the sound. Erin’s hand came up to Alex’s arm again, not intimate now but protective. A soft, scampering noise followed. Whispering. The quiet, rapid breathing of small creatures trying very hard to be stealthy.
“Okay,” Alex said. “That is either a herd of rats or our children.”
“I’d prefer hostile rodents,” Erin muttered. “We have protocols for that. There’s no protocol for four under-sixes in the dark.”
“REINDEER!” a voice shrieked from the direction of the stairs. “THERE’S A REINDEER!”
Alex closed her eyes briefly. “Ah,” she said. “The cavalry.”
Tiny feet pounded toward them. A second later, something latched onto her leg with the force of a small meteor.
“Mummy Alex!” Matilda yelled, voice echoing down the stone. “There’s a deer outside! A huge one! With ANTLERS.”
“It was definitely a monster,” Frank said, slightly out of breath. “I saw it with my actual eyeballs.”
“There was a shadow,” Florence contributed. “And it moved. And it was stompy.”
Hyzenthlay’s voice floated in more calmly. “It was probably a branch,” she said. “The wind is very excitable.”
“In this family,” Vic’s voice added from further back, “the wind is not the only one.”
“Where are the lights?” Matilda demanded. “Did the castle forget to pay the bill?”
“No one’s getting cut off,” Alex said, steadying herself with one hand on the wall. Under the barrage of small bodies, she felt oddly anchored. “The power’s just gone on a brief holiday.”
“I hate the power,” Frank announced. “It’s mean.”
“It’s doing its best,” Hyz said. “Sometimes things get overwhelmed.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” Vic muttered. “Does that mean I can go out too?”
“You’re staying right there,” Julia said, her tone slicing through the chaos like a well-sharpened knife. She emerged from the gloom, phone held up like a makeshift torch, its pale glow casting strange shadows across the corridor. “No one is going anywhere until we know what’s going on.”
Alexandra watched Erin tilt her head slightly, listening. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the thick walls, she could just make out another sound joining the muffled hush of the snow: the low grumble of a generator trying, and failing, to cough itself awake.
Erin swore under her breath again. “That’s not good,” she said. “Back-up should have kicked in by now.”
“Patel’s on it,” Julia said. “He’s already texted. They’re checking the panel. Emergency lanterns are being lit in main corridors. The kitchen has gas. Mrs. MacLeod says, and I quote, ‘over my dead body will these people eat cold sandwiches on Christmas Eve.’”
Even in the dark, Alex could see the flicker of relief cross Erin’s features. Not because the power situation was particularly better, but because someone else had, as Julia had said earlier, taken point.
“We should still check the kids’ wing,” Erin said. “Make sure none of the older staff are—”
“Our children,” Alex said firmly, “are right here.”
She shifted her weight and swept a quick mental headcount, mother-queen hybrid scan.
Matilda: plastered to her leg. Frank: attempting to climb the radiator. Florence: holding the hem of Erin’s jumper, voice tiny but steady. Hyzenthlay: hovering slightly apart, watching everything with eerie calm.
“Everyone else,” Alex continued, “is being handled. That’s why you trained them so well. Delegation, my love.”
She heard the catch in Erin’s inhale. In the faint glow from Julia’s phone, she could see the conflict written plain on her face—duty, instinct, desire, all tangled.
“Look,” Alex said, gentler now. “This is why we came up early. Why Vic planned herself into a spreadsheet coma. So that when things like this happen—and they always do—we’re not alone. You don’t have to be at every metaphorical fuse box.”
“I know,” Erin said quietly. Then, in a smaller voice that made Alex’s heart twist: “I don’t know how not to be.”
It was the most honest thing she’d heard from her in weeks.
Before Alex could find words to respond, the children loudly derailed the moment.
“Show us the reindeer,” Frank demanded. “We need to catch it.”
“We are absolutely not catching any wildlife,” Erin said, seizing gratefully on the distraction. “We are going to look calmly and quietly out of the window like civilised human beings.”
“I’m a dragon,” Florence reminded her.
“Like civilised dragons,” Erin amended.
They shuffled down the corridor, a shambolic procession of adults and offspring. Julia’s phone torch bobbed ahead. Somewhere, someone had lit a lantern; a warmer glow leaked from the far end of the hallway, where a side table had been co-opted for emergency candle duty.
They reached the narrow window halfway along the wall. Outside, the snow was a thick, shifting curtain, blown by the wind. The grounds beyond were barely visible—just the vague darker shapes of trees and one of the smaller outbuildings.
“There!” Matilda shouted, jabbing a finger. “It moved!”
“That was the tree,” Hyz said. “The snow is very heavy on that branch.”
“It had antlers,” Frank insisted.
“It had twigs,” Hyz countered.
Alex peered more closely, pressing her hand to the cold glass. A branch did sway, casting a shadow that, if you were five and predisposed to magic, could absolutely look like something with antlers.
She smiled. “I think the snow is playing tricks on you,” she said. “Reindeer don’t usually come this close to the house without an invitation.”
“We invited them,” Matilda said indignantly. “We made food.”
“You threw oats all over the front steps,” Julia said. “Which Mrs. MacLeod will have words about when she sees.”
“Reindeer like oats,” Frank said.
“So do mice,” Julia said. “And staff. It’s a multi-species buffet.”
“Look,” Florence whispered suddenly.
Everyone quieted, more at her tone than the actual word. Florence rarely insisted.
They followed her gaze.
For a moment, Alex saw it too: a darker movement against the drifting white, beyond the nearest clump of trees. Big. Four-legged. A flicker of antler-like shapes.
Then the generator coughed again, sending a ripple through the lights in the courtyard below. The movement vanished.
“That,” Vic said, “was either a deer or my imagination having a nervous breakdown.”
“It might have been a deer,” Hyz allowed. “Not a reindeer. But a deer. The snow says some things will come closer than usual.”
“Why is the snow talking to you?” Vic asked. “Should we be worried?”