Chapter 11 Family Menace
Family Menace
ELLA
I hold my breath as he passes and grip the door. It resists me when I move to slam it because of the automatic mechanism that I, in my great wisdom, installed. I jump for the metal latch on the top of the jamb but my fingers brush the air. I jump again.
When Marc laughs in my face, it will be what I deserve.
He doesn’t laugh. He brushes my hand aside and presses the release, his breath stirring my hair. When he goes, he’ll deliver a final lecture, getting in a parting shot, and I’ll just have to stand here and take it.
He drops his arm and the air thickens between us, the narrow space crowded with memories and desires. I hate how much I always want him. In a panic, I push him out of my suite. I grab the door and swing hard, the sound of the slam echoing in my chest.
Vede, that was satisfying.
But the longer I stare at the raised panels, the more blurry my vision becomes. I bite my cheek. Tears are for people without a plan, saints on their pyres, and love-tossed sisters. They are not for me.
I sink onto the arm of the sofa, the heels of my hands pressed into my eyes.
Why didn’t I change when I had the chance?
The first rule of Seongan dramas is that the frothy wedding hat gets flung off as soon as disaster strikes.
You can’t monologue with bouncing feathers.
I look ridiculous, being sad in a dress as sweet as a cupcake.
The sound of muffled voices carries up the hall, and I brace my feet. My sisters. Flamen hell. They will descend upon me like Valkyries.
There is a list as long as my arm of mistakes they’ve made this year, so I stand with my shoulders back and chin up, not above fighting dirty. I stand there for what feels like forever, but the noise rises and falls like a wave, soon followed by the reasonable, muffled sound of doors closing.
They’re not coming? I bite hard on my lip, eyes stinging with unshed tears.
They’re not coming. They don’t care enough to be mad and fight it out and hug and cry?
None of them? I wait and wait, but the Summer Palace’s ancient bones are silent, filled with the sound of every one of us going her own way.
I blink rapidly. Leaving my royal life behind is more vital than ever. I could do it tomorrow, channeling my energies into peddling mid-level mustards, weight-loss pills, and family secrets.
Still. I thought they would care enough to fight—to send a delegate, at least, to shout my ear off about what I owe them.
I glower at the door and turn, barking my shin on the coffee table that isn’t where it should be.
At my cry, Marc barges through the door.
He kicks it shut, tosses his jacket aside, and gathers me into his arms.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Or just feeling sorry for yourself?”
It’s embarrassing, needing him as much as I do. “I thought you left.”
“Do you still want to take my head off?”
I burrow into him as his arms tighten around me. “I couldn’t do that to the women of Sondmark. VrouwWOW called your face the best thing that has happened to this country since we deepened the harbor.”
I can see Marc’s smile even without seeing it—the cocky tilt of his brow, the divot in his cheek—but when speaks, his voice is gentle. “I’m sorry for being a jerk about those guys at the party. I don’t know where that came from.”
Under my hand, his heart beats out a steady rhythm.
I lift my head, catch my reflection in a mirror, and recoil. My mascara is thumbing a ride to Paris, my lipstick has vanished, and I look like I need a rabies shot.
“I am not radioactive,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
“Of course not.” He pushes a handkerchief into my hands.
I mop up, and he tucks me closer. I say, somewhere from the vicinity of his shirt pocket, “You’re right. I didn’t think about the mess it was going to make for Alma.”
“You apologize to your sister and we’ll figure the rest of it out,” he says, stroking my hair. “Are you going to delete the accounts?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Finally, he nods. “I’m sorry if I sounded like—” He tightens his hold.
“An overbearing brother,” I force myself to laugh. “I know it’s difficult to remember I’m a grown up.”
Marc stills, tense as an animal at the sound of an unknown footfall. “It isn’t.”
The words deserve attention, but I’m too intent on managing my reaction to his nearness to parse out the meaning.
I shouldn’t be in his arms, curving my body against him like it’s as easy as breathing.
This is the danger of Marc. This is why I love him.
Loved him. This is why I cut myself off, limiting myself to a smile and a wave at tiara events. Everything with Marc is easy.
I glance up, and his gaze holds mine. I blink and it shifts from my eyes to my lips. It’s a tiny movement, over in a microsecond, but my stomach takes a sudden dip and my reflexes slow to a crawl.
I told myself that Clara was wrong about Marc noticing me because I have never seen a speck of interest from this man I’ve watched with all the passionate absorption of an engineer with his battle robot.
Until this second.
His soft fingers trace down my spine and stop at my waist. My pulse leaps in my throat and I feel like a lost motorist, caught in a fog with no maps or familiar signposts to chart my course, my phone uselessly pinging out a cell signal. How do we get out of here?
He inhales suddenly and his hands lift away. He rubs the back of his neck. “See you next week?” he asks.
But I’m still lost in the fog. What just happened? “Next week?”
“Alix’s party,” he says, looking over me, around me, above me. “The camping thing.”
“Glamping,” I say, taking refuge in a laugh.
When he retrieves his jacket, I shake my hands out in an attempt to get the circulation going. The old, dead crush was firmly one-sided, but this is… I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
He straightens, tipping his chin up with a smile that draws me under a cloak of normalcy, warm and protective. “She says she wants to celebrate Tom’s traditional culture.”
“Finance bro?”
“Pennsylvania Boy Scout. But you know Alix. She can’t resist personally-branded sparkling water chilling in an antique bird bath, so...” He pins me with a look. “Are we good?”
I try for lightness, but my pulse still hasn’t settled. “We’re good. When I see you next time, I promise not to be such a brat.”
He grins, walking backward to the door as he shrugs his jacket on. “Don’t overshoot the runway.”
I don’t sleep. I lay in my bed, wondering if I imagined Marc’s eyes drifting toward my lips. When the night is darkest, I remember that Marc’s first instinct after that infinitesimal lapse in absolute moral rectitude was to ignore it and run like hell.
It’s a brutal reminder that I have to get over him. Someday soon, I’m going to get on one of those apps and keep swiping until I find someone to make out with me. Someone who holds me by the waist and keeps on holding.
I rise the next morning, a squished bean of exhaustion, determined to face the music. I stand, hesitating, on the threshold of the breakfast room, when I hear a voice.
“Looking for Mama?” Alma asks. I emit a tiny squeak, but she breezes past me to the sideboard. “She’s absorbing the news that I am no longer a scarlet woman in the press. I wouldn’t put it past her to launch an investigation into the identity of our leaker.”
Mama has little use for me on the best of days, but if she found out my online identity, a swift murder would be mercy. I place my laptop on the table and return with a cup of coffee, a dish of fruit, and Pankedruss.
“Are you mad?” I ask. Better rip the sticking plaster off at once.
“Yes.” It’s all the more devastating that she says it so plainly. I think I’d rather be screamed at or wrestled with. She reaches for a stack of newspapers, and I see a little nervous hitch in her throat. “Shall we see how bad it is?”
I’ve already seen the digital edition of PAPZ. The online tabloid placed the most lurid photo on the top of their homepage and cheerfully reproduced the entire @trashpandaprincess post from ReadHe. The headline read “SON OF A BEACH!”
Alma pushes each newspaper across the table as she finishes them.
The Holy Pelican reprinted a timeline of events, though it’s sequestered on their social pages where it can’t infect the real news.
The Daily Missive proclaims, “Handsy Hereditary Himmelsteinian Hooks Humanitarian Hottie in Hinterlands”.
The prime minister has weighed in, expressing sympathy on one hand while making a deadly knife thrust with the other.
“Though our hearts go out to Her Royal Highness, it makes one uneasy to consider the extent to which the palace successfully hid key details from the public during an important state event. The implications of such control...”
My lip curls. “He’s such an eel—”
Alma bends over her phone, tapping out a message. Texting Jacob. I can tell by the little smile playing around the edges of her mouth.
“Alma,” I prod.
She clears her throat, turns her phone over, then scoots it far out of temptation. “I’m ready.”
“I didn’t expect things to blow up—” I begin.
Her brow lifts. “No. You were angry at the prime minister, you reached for a weapon, and you didn’t care who might be hurt.”
“He said terrible things about you.”
She touches the edge of a newspaper and her chin quivers, almost imperceptibly. “Now the entire North Sea Confederation gets to join the conversation.”
I feel the pain of my own carelessness, made worse because she’s right.
“How did you know it was me?” I ask. Despite Marc’s warnings about digital security, I am certain I covered my tracks.
“Jacob connected the dots. You have access to photos of my ex, you’re an online creature, and you have a creepy raccoon collection.” She brushes the polished table with a row of fingertips. “It’s not just affecting my personal life.”