Epilogue
Boxing Day evening at Balmoral was always softer than Christmas.
Christmas demanded things. Appearances, timings, traditions. Boxing Day… exhaled. The air itself seemed looser, slouching into twilight with a satisfied sigh, as if the castle had run a marathon of festivity and now finally had permission to sit.
Outside, snow lay thick and undisturbed across the grounds, soft as wool.
The sky was a deep, velvety blue, stars pricking through at the edges.
In the great sitting room—the family room, as Alex stubbornly called it, despite the antique portraits and priceless rugs—a fire crackled steadily in the wide stone hearth, sending flickers of golden light dancing over familiar faces.
Everyone had gravitated there, as they always did.
The dogs, of course, found the prime spots first. Bran and Sorcha had claimed the rug nearest the fire, stretched out long and content. Juno, the ever-overexcited cocker, alternated between pacing and collapsing in strange, boneless heaps against whichever human limb presented itself.
On the floor in front of the hearth, a nest of cushions and blankets formed an untidy ring around a low wooden table.
The table itself was buried under the remnants of dinner—crumbs, a half-finished cheese board, abandoned satsuma peels—and the battered box of a party game that had clearly seen several Christmases already.
The children sat closest to the table, cross-legged or sprawled in various stages of post-holiday exhaustion and revived energy.
Matilda cross-legged and upright, tinsel still somehow wound into her plaited blonde hair.
Frank half on his side, one sock missing, dark brown eyes bright with the unwavering commitment of someone who fully intended to win.
Florence outstretched on her stomach, chin in hands, taking it all in with quiet delight.
Hyzenthlay perched on a cushion with a notebook balanced on her knees, a pencil poised, expression serious and curious all at once.
Behind them, on the sagging sofa that had hosted generations of royal backsides, Alexandra sat curled into the corner, her legs tucked under her, blanket over her knees.
Erin sat beside her, back comfortably leaned against the armrest, one arm draped along the top of the sofa in a way that made it extremely easy—and entirely unconscious—to rest her fingers against the nape of Alex’s neck.
On another sofa to their left sat Vic and Julia.
Vic’s clipboard was nowhere in sight. It lay, for once, abandoned on a sideboard, closed, its corners safely out of reach of the present moment.
Right now she was wrapped in a cardigan too big for her, wavy brown hair pulled into a loose bun that had surrendered hours ago.
One of her legs was stretched out; the other was drawn beneath her.
She looked… soft. Not an adjective many people used for Vic, but one that fit perfectly tonight.
Julia had one arm along the back of the sofa, her hand resting lightly on Vic’s shoulder. She looked every bit as composed as always, but there was an undeniable looseness to her posture too—something easier in the face and eyes. Like a bowstring that had finally been allowed to slacken.
Mrs. MacLeod had been coaxed—bullied, really—into a chair by the fire, a mug of something strong in hand. She refused to play the party game on principle but made no move to leave the room, pretending she was merely “supervising the fire.” The fire did not believe her. Neither did anyone else.
On the hearth-side sideboard, a small stereo played a quiet medley of christmas songs, turned low enough to fade into the background hum of crackling logs and small, excited voices.
“Right,” Vic declared, with the gravitas of a general announcing battle plans. “We are going to play a game.”
“Is it a boring game?” Frank asked immediately, narrowing his eyes with deep suspicion.
“Yes,” Vic said. “It’s dreadfully educational. You’ll hate it.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Good.”
Alex watched them all from her spot on the sofa, heart so full it ached.
Balmoral had always been a place of complicated memories for her—childhood joy mixed with grief, tradition mixed with duty. But tonight the shadows felt gentler. The ghosts, if they remained, had taken a respectful step back to make room for the living.
Her gaze slid sideways to Erin.
Erin, who looked—finally, properly—rested.
Not fully, no; parenting three children under six ensured true rest remained somewhat theoretical.
But there was colour in her cheeks again, laughter ready to spring more easily.
The deep furrow that had etched itself between her brows over the past months had smoothed.
Right now, Erin’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she watched Vic shepherd the children.
“What’s it called again?” Matilda asked, peering at the tattered box.
“‘Who Am I?’” Vic said. “We did it last year, remember? You put a card on your forehead and ask questions until you guess who you are.”
“Like detective work,” Hyz said thoughtfully.
“Exactly,” Vic said. “Only with more shouting.”
“I like shouting,” Frank said.
“We have noticed,” Julia murmured.
Alex laughed quietly. She felt Erin’s fingers shift against her neck—just the smallest movement, a bare stroke of thumb along warm skin. The contact sent a pleasant shiver down her spine, even now, after everything. Or perhaps especially now.
Last night had been many things—late, tender, hungry, overwhelming—but above all it had been an anchor dropped back into the middle of their lives. Today, they’d moved around each other with more ease, more glances that lingered, more brushings of hands that didn’t feel like accidents.
Alex no longer felt that hollow ache whenever she thought of their bed. She looked at Erin and felt… steady. Reconnected.
She suspected Erin sensed the same. Every now and then, Alex would catch her looking over in that quiet way of hers, as if checking that Alex was still there, not out of fear but out of habit.
Alex liked being looked at that way.
“Can you read us the rules, Auntie Vic?” Florence asked, collapsing into a pile of cushion and blanket in front of Vic.
“Absolutely not,” Vic said. “The rules are an oppressive construct that stifle creativity. We’ll make it up as we go along.”
Julia hid a smile behind her mug. Alex caught it. Erin did too.
“Some people at this table love rules,” Julia said.
“And some people,” Vic shot back, “need to be kissed more often.”
Julia choked politely on her drink. Erin snorted. The children, mercifully oblivious to tone and subtext, moved on.
“I want to go first,” Frank declared.
Matilda folded her arms. “You went first last time.”
“How do you know?” he argued. “You don’t remember last time.”
“You cried at the end,” she said. “You always cry when you go first.”
“I do not—”
“Children,” Alex said mildly. “Don’t make me invoke Royal Authority.”
“Can you do that?” Florence asked, eyes wide.
“Yes,” Alex said solemnly. “But only when it comes to board games and bedtime.”
Erin leaned in, murmured, “And occasionally minority government crises.”
“Less fun,” Alex murmured back.
In the armchair, Mrs. MacLeod rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Just pick someone and stick a card on them. We’ll all be collecting a pension before we get through a single round at this rate.”
So they did.
Vic shuffled the little stack of cards with exaggerated flourish. “Right. Eyes closed, all of you.”
The children squeezed their eyes shut, some more convincingly than others. Erin watched them through half-shut lids, ready to intervene if anyone cheated too brazenly. Old habits.
Vic plucked a card, stepped behind Frank, and stuck it to his forehead with a bit of blu-tack. She repeated the process for Matilda, Florence, and Hyz, then paused.
“Do the grownups get to play?” Matilda asked.
“Absolutely,” Alex said.
Erin blinked. “Do we?”
“We’re terrible at saying no to you lot,” Alex replied.
“It’s your greatest weakness,” Hyz said kindly.
Vic gave Alex a card, then one to Erin, one to Julia, and finally, with theatrical reluctance, stuck one to her own forehead.
“We’re all ridiculous now,” she said. “Excellent.”
The game began.
Frank was a snowman.
He did not take this well.
“Am I a superhero?” he demanded, ten questions in.
“No,” chorused the circle.
“A dragon?”
“No.”
“A racing car driver?”
“Ask something that isn’t about explosions,” Matilda said, exasperated.
Florence, who was Father Christmas, took precisely three questions to guess herself.
“Do I wear red?” she asked.
“Yes,” said everyone.
“Do I bring presents?”
“Yes.”
“Am I Father Christmas?”
“Yes.”
She beamed, visibly taller for it.
Matilda, whose card said “penguin,” became deeply offended at the suggestion that penguins were not regular visitors to Balmoral. “They could be,” she argued. “Maybe they don’t have the right coats.”
Hyzenthlay approached the game like a thesis. Her card read “snowflake.” Her questions ran along the lines of: “Am I a naturally occurring phenomenon?” and “Would I be affected by a sudden rise in global temperatures?”
The adults exchanged looks.
“You might be,” Vic said carefully.
Erin, watching her goddaughter’s furrowed brows, thought—with a mix of amusement and awe—that the world would either be saved or conquered by this child one day.
Alex’s card—“reindeer”—took her longer than she would ever publicly admit. She was distracted by watching everyone else, by the way the light of the fire softened Vic’s face, by the way Julia’s hand never strayed far from her wife’s. By the steady warmth of Erin’s thigh pressed against hers.
When she finally guessed it, Vic cheered so loudly one of the dogs woke up and barked for a full thirty seconds.
“You did get actual reindeer,” Alex reminded her. “You deserve tonight’s win.”
“I do,” Vic said. “And tomorrow, I will win at Scrabble.”
“You will not,” Julia said.