Chapter 5 No Filter
No Filter
ELLA
I shoot through the funhouse maze with crisp certainty, detecting false reflections, and building up speed as I go. Light flashes across my eyes in a dizzying kaleidoscope of color, but I keep running.
I don’t see the mirror until I slam full-tilt into it, cracking my head against the surface. I reel back while the surface flexes, distorting my shape—short, tall, short, tall. Pain splinters through my brain and behind my eyes, and I sink to my knees.
“Ella? Ella!” Marc sounds far away but closing in fast.
“I’m dying,” I gasp.
“Keep talking.” His voice bounces around the glass and metal. “I’m coming. Is there blood?”
I lift my hand and groan when I see the slick surface. Mama is going to murder me.
“Ella?”
I’ve got a little cry in my throat when I admit, “I need medical attention.” Vede. There’s a goose egg rising under my hand.
Marc slips through an opening I was certain was a dead end.
“Let me see,” he commands. Gentle fingers prod the skin, and when I flinch, his mouth presses into a line.
“Elskede,” he murmurs the common endearment.
His mouth is tense, and I think he would rather be swearing.
When his hand cups the side of my face, I grit my teeth. “Let’s get you out of here.”
We make it into the fresh night air, and he consults the park map for the first aid station while I take a long breath through my nose. Hot and cold waves flash through my body in sickening succession. My head spins, but he crouches in front of me, presenting his back. “Hop on.”
No. Not that. Marc has carried me on his back when I reeked of the muddy patch in the bottom of the kitchen garden or was bleeding from some scrape with a farm animal who didn’t want to be hugged.
But I’m a grown woman, or so my mother attempts to drill into my throbbing skull, and I do not ride piggyback.
“You look like death,” he says, merciless in his honesty. “Hop on.”
I grip his shoulders and he eases me up as gingerly as a blossom falling into a palm, stepping away in a swift, soft-footed stride.
We skirt the noisy midway, and sooner than I hoped, he settles me into a reclining chair in the brilliantly-lit first aid station.
He perches on a stool while the nurse attends me.
“How were you injured?” she asks, examining the wound, tipping my head back and forth. My brain feels like a bucket of wet sand and I want to throw up on her shoes.
“We were in the funhouse,” Marc starts.
She rips open a package, extracting a sterile swab. “Are you under the influence, Your Royal Highness?”
I groan. “Only of my own poor judgment.”
When the ointment hits the scrape, I suck in a sharp breath, and Marc’s large hand settles on my ankle, rolling the thin chain under his thumb.
“Ice for now,” she says, stripping her gloves off and handing me an ice pack. “Neerheid van Heyden—” she murmurs, eyes lingering on Marc in clear violation of ethical standards.
“Have we met?” he asks, gently curious.
Her cheeks flush. “You were just voted the Hottest Man in Sondmark. There’s a copy of the magazine in the breakroom.” She jerks a thumb toward the doorway and I emit a sharp double cough, recalling her to a sense of duty. “Are you responsible for her?” she asks.
He frowns at my forehead, hardly sparing her a glance. “Definitely.”
The “trained” “medical” “professional” sighs. “I don’t think it’s a concussion, but let’s be on the safe side. No driving. A good night of sleep is fine, but I’d like someone to keep an eye on her for the next twelve hours. If the headache gets worse, seek further care.”
Marc’s pocket buzzes. “It’s Thor,” he says, checking his phone, “wondering where we are.”
I lift the ice pack. “Gimmie.”
He surrenders the phone and I angle my body so that it looks like Marc and I are standing side-by-side. I snap a photo and engage speech-to-text. “Ella wants to head home. I’ll drive. Can you send someone from the palace to collect her car?”
He looks over my shoulder. “Did you seriously crop your wound out? He’ll think—”
I toss him the phone. “I learned from the best.”
My head throbs all the way across town and up the hill to the Summer Palace. When we enter the Great Hall, Marc hands his keys to the night footmen while I frown at the velvet treads of the marble staircase.
“Do you need another lift?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I grit out. It might be true.
He ignores me and slides his hands around my waist, lifting me against his chest. We’re halfway up the stairs before I work out that being carried with my nose pressed against his collarbone is much worse for my peace of mind than being transported piggyback.
“You’re going to drop me,” I insist, shifting my weight.
I receive a slap on my bottom. “You’re being carried up the palace staircase by the Hottest Man in Sondmark, as determined by the discerning readership of VrouwWOW magazine. Enjoy it.”
I fumble for my remote key. “I knew you could tell she was checking you out.”
He pushes through the door of my suite. “I’m not blind.”
True. He isn’t blind to other women. Only blind to me.
He sets me down, peels my bag away, and drops it on the sofa. “Are you good?” he asks, standing too close as he examines my bump.
“Perfect.” I step away too quickly, and he steadies me with a hand on my waist.
Taking a sharp breath, I paw through my hard-earned wisdom like a woman digs into her purse for a pain pill. Marc is a dead end. Falling out of love with him has taken every ounce of discipline I’m capable of. I can’t go back. I won’t.
So it’s just friendship—a relationship status as simple as water. That being the case, I allow him to steer me into the bathroom and deposit me on a stool. He opens and shuts a few drawers, and hauls a low chair over so he can work a fluffy, pink headband around the bruise.
“Ells—” His thumb traces the raised edge.
“I’m fine,” I insist, even as my vision slips sideways.
He starts removing my make-up and I surrender. The truth is that I can’t lean over a sink in this condition and the sooner he gets me into bed the happier I’ll be.
My brow furrows. No. Wait.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he says, smoothing the furrow. I close my eyes against his face but I still smell his scent and feel the dizzying sensation of his fingers on my skin.
He rubs in a night serum, the last step in an abbreviated skincare routine, and I force myself to my feet—away from his closeness. A wave of nausea shudders through my frame.
“Whoa, I got you,” he says, hands splayed across my back.
I shrug his hands away and edge toward the closet. “I just moved too fast.”
“Yes. And if you do that, you’ll fall over. Can I help with the pajamas?” he asks.
I grip his arm and say, deadly serious, “I would rather die.”
His eyes dance. “You need eleven more hours of observation.”
I turn him to the door, ignore the throbbing of my head, and push against Marc’s back. He plants his feet like a Seongan statue of an ancient warrior prince. Immoveable. Freakishly hot.
“Doctor’s orders,” he says, spinning. I land into him with a thud and he holds me steady. My defenses are down. My judgement is sketchy. My hands are on Marc’s rock hard chest and he needs to leave.
I push again. “I’m not sure she was even a nurse.”
He shrugs and my hands move up and down with the play of muscles. Dominanstid. I shove myself away, will the rocking in my head to subside, and retreat to my closet for a pair of flannel pajamas. “Figure out where you’re going because you can’t stay here,” I call.
“It’s a palace—I can find another room,” he says. “I’ll just text your mother—”
“Traitor.” I poke my head around the door, faster than is wise, and blink against the pain. “You wouldn’t.”
He lifts his phone, finger hovering perilously near the green call button.
“There’s nowhere for you to sleep,” I return to the closet, wrestling with my pajamas.
A light sheen of sweat glistens on my misshapen forehead.
Even the exertion of carrying on a conversation with a closed door is exhausting.
Still, I persevere. “You’re, what, 190 centimeters?
” I sound offhand, but I know exactly how tall he is. “Too tall for the sofa.”
When I emerge, he’s sitting on the edge of my bed, bouncing lightly. Testing it.
“I’m not taking the sofa,” I say. The only other option is a hammock chair. He’d be crippled for life.
He smooths the bedding. “Your bed is big enough for two.”
Oxygen vanishes from the room. This is what comes of maidens consorting with forest spirits. This is what comes of being carried in the arms of the man you used to love when you’re not in your right mind. Trouble. “We’re not sharing a bed,” I snap.
“You’d rather die?” he echoes with a little laugh.
There’s nothing to do but turn it into a joke. “Worse. We’ll fall in love,” I say, giving a horrified shiver.
He grins, running with my tired Seongan drama plot line. “Our families will fight in the Great Hall.”
“Your mother will slap me across the face with spicy fermented cabbage and scream about how I corrupted her treasured son.”
“Corrupted?” The word is soft, barely audible. Then his eyes narrow. “My mother would never scream at you. Amma loves you and your mama loves me,” he says, giving another bounce on the mattress. “They’d have us married before the month was out.”
There’s a sharp pain in my lungs, but I excise the feeling and replace it with cold-blooded reason. “See? Disaster. There’s not room for you, me, and all those stuffed animals.”
He leans back, palms against my coverlet. “We could build them into a wall.”
I do a hot word problem. How many plush racoons would it take to form a wall tall enough and thick enough to keep me away from Marc in my bed? Answer: Infinity of them.
“No,” I clip, alive to the possibility of danger. “No sofa. No bed. You have nowhere to sleep.”
Marc pushes off the mattress. Instead of heading to the door, tossing health warnings over his shoulder, he opens an antique linen cupboard and digs out a thick coverlet and pillow.
“When I’m in Seong, I often sleep in the traditional way,” he says, spreading them on the floor along my side of the bed. He looks up with a taunting smile. “Give up, Ells. I hate to lose.”
I release a shaky breath. “I have an extra toothbrush under the sink.”
We brush in silence, but I feel as though I’ve stepped into one of those slice-of-life movies that throw the beauty and tragedy of ordinary things into soft relief—the peeled tangerine rind catching the light, the wind blowing papers into the ocean, the ice cream offered to a crying child, a solitary dinner eaten under a cruel light.
Beauty and tragedy. I listen to the rhythm of us and wonder which this is.
He wipes his face and catches my eye. I return a strained smile.
I was good. I was good for so long. I was good when I made promises to Future Me and My Lutheran Babies that I’d cut out this fruitless love for the man who had zero interest in being their father.
I was good when I focused on self care and my exit plan.
There is evidence that I wasn’t good all the time. Things between Marc and me got muddy over text these last months, but he was more than 8,000 aeronautical kilometers away. When our teasing tipped into flirtation, it presented no real danger.
I close my eyes and remember how Marc would send me a snap of himself hiking through a forest in traditional Seongan workwear—baggy pants, a utilitarian button-up shirt, a hot pink chainsaw hooked to a utility belt, and a dusty face mask covering his nose and chin.
He would type a caption: “No filter. What are you wearing?”
He always seemed to send these when I was still in bed, but I’d send him a selfie, no matter what. Would I angle myself out of the morning sun? Yes. Would I rake my hair in order? Also, yes. He said no filter, but he didn’t say no judgement.
I step over his pallet and slip into bed, the sheets cool and soft against my skin. My hands grip the edge of the blanket and my eyes bore into the ceiling as I prepare to count off every second of this long night.
With the flick of the light switch, he settles on the floor.
Perhaps he can sense my restiveness because he begins to talk, his voice warm and dark, bridging the distance between us.
He tells me stories about clearing roads in Seong—of the endless wreckage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, of whole houses carried off their foundations.
He speaks of ancient characters found deep in the hills—mountain gods in the form of goat farmers scouting for survivors and castaways, and friendly fire spirits tending their woks, feeding the volunteer force day and night.
We drift off to sleep like that, laughing softly back and forth, and I dream that he rouses me hours later when the night shadows have deepened and the palace is at rest from turret to dungeon.
“How’s your head?” he asks, cupping a hand around his cell phone flashlight, shielding me from the sharp glare.
In the dream before this one, I was wearing a fluffy pink cupcake dress, surrounded by fortress walls, a churning moat, and canons belching balls of flame as a hero hopped inexorably in my direction.
“The princess is the worst,” I grouch.
He pushes the hair off my forehead and I feel myself slipping back into cupcakes and fire canons. Cool lips touch my forehead and his whisper reaches me on the frontier between these dreams. “Not my princess.”
I wake to Clara leaning over my bed, her nose scrunched up. “You look awful.”
I sit up, clutching my head, and my gaze drifts to the floor. Marc left no sign of his stay.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Marc van Heyden knocked on my door around seven. He said you needed to be checked at,” she looks at her watch, “nine. So how are you?”
Clara is clad in workout attire and her high ponytail swings as she adjusts her laces. It takes a second to realize that the faint irritation I feel is being cheated out of brushing my teeth with Marc this morning and roasting him for how anxious he was.
“The headache is manageable.” I reach for my forehead and feel the stomach-sliding sensation of encountering skin where there shouldn’t be.
“Great. Now, on a scale of one to ten, how excited would College Ella have felt about Marc sleeping over?” My sisters know about the old crush, too.
I don’t even consider telling her the truth. “Negative four. I almost barfed down the back of his shirt.”
“Ew. Are we hiding this from Mama?” She looks doubtfully at my forehead.
I reach for my phone and scroll to my calendar. “My next engagement isn’t for days.” We might be able to keep this secret.
“Alright,” she agrees, stretching her quad, “I never saw you. I was never here.”
Clara jogs off and my phone vibrates. I swipe on Marc’s text and grin.
“No filter, Ells. What are you wearing?”