Chapter 20 Dancing Bear #2
But I am uneasy, looking at these crisp bullet points. These questions have been battled out in bloody warfare for a thousand years. They were never supposed to be battled out in the courts. If my mother’s power is forced to be measured in concrete, quantifiable ways, she is bound to lose.
“This family has many pawns, but only one queen,” I say, lowering my voice. “This will end with Freja being sold for the Crown.”
I escape as soon as the meeting concludes, and Marc jogs after me, hands in his pockets. Though I need time to think, I do have manners.
“I’ll walk you to your car.” I say it like this has been a normal afternoon and none of it was spent with my lips on his neck. In addition to the succession catastrophe, I need to think of that, too.
But he takes a left in the Great Hall and walks backward up the staircase, dragging me after him, step by step. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” he asks. “We’re not done.”
The implications tighten my stomach. His kisses turned me inside out. How much more unfinished business could there be?
“Hey guys,” Clara skips down the steps, Max following in her wake. His rank allows him to grow a beard, and though it is neatly trimmed, he looks more like a Viking every day. Clara is on the fence about it.
“What’s up?” she asks.
“I’m going to ravish your sister.” Marc says it. He just says it, and heat washes through me, each oscillation like a tiny wave dashing over my skin. Clara laughs, choking off when she catches Max’s expression.
“It’s a joke. Stop looking at them like they’re a thing. They’re not a thing.” Her nose wrinkles. “It would be like dating a cousin.”
Max grins. “I thought that was one of the hallmarks of the Wolffe family.”
“Babe. Not for most of the last century.” She whacks his stomach and he traps her hand against his abs.
“Where are you headed?” I ask, shifting on the balls of my feet with this talk of my impending ravishment.
“We’re babysitting Ava.” Max’s niece. “Are you gaming tonight?” she asks. “Do you want me to pop in after?” The idea of Marc and me being caught necking never crosses her mind.
“Don’t bother,” Marc says, continuing on his way up the stairs. “It’s a two-person game. See you, Max.”
When they disappear down the hall, I frown at Marc. “We’re gaming? This is news.”
He swings my hand. “We need to talk.”
My limbs tense. What joy. None of Marc’s “talks” are fun.
I gallop up the stairs and he races after me.
What will it be this time? That he’s thought better of our kisses?
That he’s actually decided to start things up with Jang Mi?
Does Marc want to tell me that I need to find some way of self-regulating that doesn’t include having to touch him all the time?
“I’m changing.” I lob my handbag into a chair, and escape into my closet. “Fire up Heretics of the Blood Moon, if you really want a game.” Heaven knows I’m in the mood to go on a quest to escape ritual sacrifice.
I throw on a pair of loose joggers and a cashmere sweater, twisting a hairpin out of my tangled topknot as I pad into the room.
He’s discarded his jacket and shucked his Oxfords but his waistcoat hugs him and electricity dances along my nerves.
When he hands me a controller, I sink to the floor at his side, braced against the sofa.
The game is a mix of puzzles and hand-to-hand combat.
We problem-solve our way out of a palace dungeon, finding the cranks and levers to release as a blood-red moon rises, its sickly light framed by a window embrasure.
As the metal door swings open, a cut scene pops up, the characters gently bobbing as stilted dialogue scrolls through text boxes.
“Our plan got us this far but there’s an army on top of us and a murdering sect of priestesses beyond,” my avatar explains. “We’ll never escape.”
“We need to talk.” Marc tosses the controller aside.
My eyelashes flicker, but I scroll through the menu and skip the rest of the cut scene, nudging the controller back into his hands. “So talk.”
After a beat, he follows my lead, shoving a torch into a crevice and leaning his digital weight against the door.
“We have to figure out how we’re going to do this.”
We have played this game so many times he shouldn’t need to be told. “When the door opens, we head to the scriptorium for the map. Try not to get stabbed.” Duh.
He dispatches a couple of lackeys with a well-aimed shove, sending them rolling down the spiral staircase. “Not the game. I kissed you today. We were in public.” His hands still. Here it comes.
With flaming cheeks, I engage a hulking knight with an intimidating broadsword. I throw the torch, setting fire to his tunic, and observe his flailing immolation with some satisfaction. If only it were so easy to get rid of all my problems.
“We were at Minty’s,” I remind him. “You know how Arne has that place locked down.” My heart is pounding in my throat and a sedimentary nausea, leftover from Freja’s problems maybe, settles in my stomach. I smile it away. “You picked the right place.”
“That’s the thing,” he says, slaying an attacker rushing in from my blind spot with the swing of a stolen sword.
“I didn’t pick anything.” His breathing is uneven, full of catches and rushes as he sorts through his next words.
“We could have been at the supermarket or the post office or in the middle of Frederickplatz. I would have found a way to kiss you no matter where we were.”
The air thins and my lungs burn. “Can you imagine making out next to the Supernuss and pickle crisps?” I joke. “That would have been a first.” Maybe being subjected to his surgical dissection of our kisses is how I die?
“Ells—” He tosses his controller. “We have a lot going on.” His avatar gets stuck in a loop, hitting a brick wall over and over. Someone will probably come along to knife him in the back and he’ll deserve it for doing this to me again.
“Too much for kissing at Minty’s. I know, you moron.” I know the list by my broken heart. “Han Heyden, Alix’s wedding, the aid concert, Lindenholm, Noah in there somewhere, Freja’s catastrophe…”
I don’t expect anything different. I never do. From the time I was four, I could recite everything that took precedence over me. Standing up straight, Mama’s tiaras, an Olympic bid we didn’t get, an Olympic bid we did get, foreign tours, Freja’s health…
“You already explained your to-do list.” I lob this at him like a bowler in a backyard game of Sondish longball. Friendly. Easy. Pitched perfectly for him to crack it over the fence.
“I think…” His fingertips trace the edge of the coffee table. “I think…”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” I laugh, knocking his shoulder with my own. Always friendly. Never mind the pain. “I don’t make dandelion wishes. It’s not your job to be Prince Charming. It’s fine.”
He takes a breath and peels the controller out of my hands, erasing all our progress. I ball my hands into fists and wrap my arms around myself.
“It’s not fine,” he says. “Not for me.”
The knife twists—stinging, intense. Mama thinks I have no genius for self-control, but she should see me now.
I cock my brow. “That’s on you, because I am a very good kisser.”
His mouth tips with a smile. “It’s not fine because I need you.”
My brows gather. I understand just enough science to deploy Occam’s razor—the rule that states that the simplest answers are usually the correct ones.
Things are never more simple between Marc and I than when we are friends.
More than any kiss—which was definitely good; I’ll die on that hill—Marc needs my support and loyalty.
I hope I look like a cool girl. Cool with anything. “I get it. I need you, too. Our friendship is too important to play around with—we need to knock it off.”
Even though Marc looks like a civilized spread in Businessmen’s Quarterly, he makes a low noise in the back of his throat.
His eyes close for the briefest moment. “No, Ella. No. I am not doing well. This past month—and more—has been nothing but earnings projections, VP infighting, figuring out how to keep my workers employed in the face of ruinous tax regulations, and the logistics of putting on a benefit concert in the middle of the country. Do you know when I come up for air? The only time?”
I did not know there would be a pop quiz in the middle of this heartbreak.
“When I’m kissing you.” He swallows, his voice dropping into a rough whisper. “All the things I have to do, all the roles I have to fill, all the people I have to answer to—it gets quiet.”
I—I…
Suddenly it feels like I’m the one running into the brick wall over and over, caught in a loop.
He looks at me and takes a long time before choosing his next words. “What I mean is that if we want to turn this into a regular thing, I know our friendship is strong enough to stand it.”
I shake my head but it doesn’t clear. “Wait. What? I don’t get— Marc.”
In my confusion, he tumbles me back until I’m settled against the floor, and braces his hands on either side of me so that we are face to face. His expression is as serious as the Black Death. “Princess Ella Victoria Chiara Brunhild of Sondmark, should I repeat myself?”
My eyes widen and my hands curl protectively over my chest. I must look like a velociraptor. “Don’t you think you should?”
He nods. “You are my favorite princess. Whenever you walk into a room, I do a little,” he lightly pumps his fist in the narrow space between us, “because it’s going to be a good time. Every time. That’s not ever going to change. You got that?”
I think so?
“And you,” he adds. “Are you going to suddenly find someone else to send your taco cat memes to?” he asks.
I shake my head. “You love those things.”
“I do,” he agrees, tone serious. “None of that has to change.”
“What about—”
He settles a warm palm over my mouth and, with a quick jerk of his chin, makes a sibilant hush. I may be a princess, but I am also a normal, red-blooded Sondish woman. He can’t keep touching me if he expects me to listen.
“I can’t help the timing,” he says, furrowing his brow.
If I’m confused, he is, too, working it out in real time.
He hasn’t planned any of this. “And I’m not saying we date.
I know we can’t date.” I wriggle but he holds me fast. “Noah would put my head on a pike if he found out I was…creeping around his little sister,” he swallows, “and you’re not looking for a relationship with someone on your mother’s list.” He’s so certain. I made sure he would be.
“But.” His breathing is labored. “But. We’re going to start seeing each other.”
I blush hotly. Is that a euphemism for sexy times?
I blink up at him, a million questions cascading through my head, and nip his palm. He darts his hand away and wipes it on the waistcoat.
“How far do you expect to take this?” I ask. Should my father demand pistols at dawn?
Marc hitches his breath and plants a soft kiss on my mouth, lingering long enough that the thoughts in my head evaporate.
“This far. Enough to take the edge off.”
I’m a pain tablet? Take two kisses, put your feet up, call if symptoms persist.
The truth is that I’m tempted. I’m curious about the way he thinks we can confine ourselves to such narrow parameters of engagement and how he thinks we won’t be hurt. I’m not foolish enough to think I can escape so cleanly, and the whole thing terrifies me.
“Isn’t there something in the Geneva Bro Codes about kissing your best friend’s little sister?” I ask, pushing back.
“We’re not going to tell Noah. Or your sisters—or mine.” Again, he presses a kiss to my lips. I don’t know whether the soft, clinging touch should land in the plusses or minuses tally.
“What you’re describing is ridiculous,” I say.
He nods gently, repeatedly. “We have to do it anyway.”
I take a steadying breath. Terrible ideas are my brand. Not Marc’s. “Why?”
He kisses me again, lingering so long that he takes a ragged breath when he lifts his head. He looks like he’s been running from the cops.
“Because it won’t be Minty’s next time.” He brushes a curl from my face with a serious smile. “Think about how productive we’d be if we could regularize this, seeing each other—”
“Maximizing productivity requires kissing?” I scoff.
He’s honest enough to make it clear that this will be something temporary, without the promise of a rosy future for the two of us.
My throat tightens. Have some dignity, Ella.
Some self-respect. I should say no—escape from the temptation of his proximity, and go back to driving him off with talk of cufflinks.
A thought intrudes. And how did that work out?
I’ve been trying to fall out of love with Marc van Heyden for more than a year and getting exactly nowhere. My strategy has been a failure.
He smells so good, and I wonder if going along with his reckless plan would be like cannonballing into a lake, going all the way to the rocky bottom, and pushing up to the surface as a new creature. No more flailing. No more wondering. Maybe it makes sense?
He leans forward, but this time I meet him, trying it his way. After a few seconds, he lifts his head and takes a large swallow of air. “Yes. It requires kissing,” he gasps.
I trace the hollow under his ear, ignoring the medieval campaign music coming from the television.
I’m tired of fighting this fight alone. I’m tired of being the only one to suffer.
If I do this, I will become a turncoat to myself, willfully destroying the fragile peace I’ve won, but there will be compensations.
“We’ll go back to being friends?” I say.
“We won’t ever stop being friends.”
We’ll end where we began. I can’t say I haven’t been warned. I hold my breath and peer into the future as far as I can. I can imagine ruin and heartbreak, but they somewhere are beyond the horizon. I see that I’m going to say yes.
I wedge myself onto my elbows, narrowing the gap between us, noting the way his gaze keeps returning to my mouth. Vede, how distracted has he been?
“Just kisses,” I insist, feeling my power. “No scope creep.” There are some things our friendship can’t survive. I hold up my pinky between us, and he wraps it with his own.
“No scope creep,” he repeats. “So it’s a deal?”
Ignoring the stab of pain, I tip up my chin and whisper my answer against his lips.
“Deal.”