Chapter 14 Ove! Ove!
Ove! Ove!
ELLA
I squint away from the harsh points of light and hastily scrub my mouth.
“The game is up,” Alix laughs, hauling me out of the cleft, unaware of the terrain. I twist my ankle on a thick root and bite back a cry as I join her on the path.
“Didn’t you hear my ‘Ove! Ove! Pen up the cows’?” She sends Marc a scathing look as we go. “I found Mikkel right away.”
At the campfire, Alix pushes me into an empty chair next to the actor. For the rest of the night, I catch Marc gazing at me from across the fire, his face grave.
It’s not that serious, I want to say. It was one kiss and we satisfied our curiosity.
My throat vibrates with a rueful laugh. That wasn’t one kiss. It was a nine-part miniseries with subtitles, musical numbers, and a dramatic cliffhanger setting up season two. It’s all I can do to answer questions and nod along to conversations while that kiss plays and replays in my head.
The party begins to break up. Some guests head to their tents and others to smaller fire circles, filling the night with low voices, interspersed with apologetic bursts of laughter.
As the maid of honor, I do my part to keep the party going, hampered by Mikkel who won’t shut up.
The pain in my ankle turns into a dull throb and I listen with half an ear, wishing I could go to Marc.
I want to reassure him that nothing can change our friendship, but a worm of anxiety chews away at the soft flesh of certainty.
“I would have said no to the prosthetic ears but the money was insane,” Mikkel says, speaking of his role in an American blockbuster, firelight flickering over his chiseled features.
I tip my head back, following the smoke into the night sky. “There’s Ulek the Bear,” I cut in, pointing to Ursa Minor. Marc taught me to identify him and Karlswagon, The Woodsman and The Herring Net.
Across the fire, Marc stills.
“I read a script about a nuclear physicist on a doomed mission who falls in love with a nebula he imagines as Audrey Hepburn. We’re getting AI to recreate her role,” Mikkel persists. Pressing his palms together, he closes his eyes briefly. “Such an honor to work with her.”
Eventually, I give up any thought of outlasting Mikkel.
I retreat to my tent, gritting my teeth against the twinge in my ankle.
When the flap drops closed, I collapse onto the bed, finally allowing the enormity of the night to crash into me.
I kissed Marc. It wasn’t some delusional, self-insert fanfiction vomited into a Notes app by a fevered adolescent mind.
I peel off my shoes and go over it again a few more times just to be sure.
He knows I was into it. I flop back and cover my face with a thick pillow.
Dominanstid, he could see how much I liked it from a mile away.
It was as obvious as a monster destroying whole cities, burning everything in its path with fiery breath.
No matter how soft the Turkish rugs or how smooth the Egyptian cotton, sleep eludes me. At the break of dawn, I shrug on a flannel layer and stumble from the tent, my hair a fury of curls.
I follow the smell of woodsmoke and have a tiny, Girl Trackers freak out about leaving fires unattended all night next to historically significant stately homes.
I break into an awkward run, skidding to a stop when I see Marc add another log into the blaze.
He lifts his eyes and drops the piece of wood.
Sparks kick up, flying skyward in a whorl of smoke until they flame out.
“I thought—” I stumble into a low-slung chair, watching him.
“There’s water. There’s a rake. There’s a four meter perimeter,” he answers.
I nod. My heart won’t settle. He takes the chair next to mine, leans forward, running a finger along my uninjured ankle, and hooks the slim gold chain. “Ella—”
“Ove! Ove! The cows are out,” Alix shouts, hopping from her tent, hair wrapped in a pink plush headband with a bow in the front. “Breakfast!”
Marc’s fingers slip away and I scramble to my feet. “Where does she get the energy?” I mutter.
Marc grunts a laugh.
“You look like you’ve gotten a telegram that all the young men of your village have been wiped out in the Great War,” Alix says, greeting her brother. “What happened?”
He gives her a great hug and me a look. Don’t you dare.
Doesn’t he know me at all?
I won’t tell Alix. I can’t. After long hours of reflection, I arrive at the conclusion that it appalls me, what we’ve done—what I’ve done.
I dragged Alix along when I got my first bra.
We played pin-the-tiara on the eligible bachelor when we tried to guess who Mama had lined up to be Alma’s future husband.
When Tom wanted to propose, he came to Amma first and then to me.
She doesn’t know how long I was in love with her brother, but she does know every boy I’ve ever kissed.
If it had been Mikkel in the woods, I would have already dragged Alix off to my car, where I would have ranked his performance on a well-established scale between Tobias, the Unexpectedly Capable Stanford Beatnik, and Cameron, the Handsy Junior Diplomat.
I can’t lie to Alix, but neither can I bring myself to look at her. This is the hard truth. Marc and I are connected by invisible threads of kinship and history running back and forth in a water-tight weave, and the kiss is already snagging those irreplaceable strands.
Breakfast is served in a small courtyard where heating towers provide an umbrella of warmth and a long table is set up in the center.
It’s decorated with crisp white linens and careless wildflower bunches that have me wondering how early some servant was up, raking through the meadows for the delicate arrangements.
The wedding party straggles in, bleary-eyed but conspicuously chic.
A princess, aware of the professional photographer prowling on the perimeter, has to be careful about how she publicly interacts with wealth, but Yasmin’s hair is in effortless disarray and money drips from her wool blanket, patched tweed jacket, and vintage cowboy boots.
Alix butters a roll and hands half to Tom. He hands her the jar of preserves, their exchange deft and wordless. “I want reviews,” she says. “Did you all sleep well? Marc?”
I glance up to find her brother looking at me.
“Marc,” Alix snaps her fingers.
“I stayed near the fire pit all night.”
She makes a sound of annoyance at the back of her throat. “Is that where the wi-fi was strongest? You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm if you keep going at this pace.” She pats Tom’s hand. “A wise man turns his life into a temple and finds better things to worship than work.”
Marc’s gaze drifts to me with a look that steals my breath, looking away only when a servant leans over his shoulder and speaks in a low voice.
Marc strides away, and when he returns, I almost tumble off my chair.
The spectacle of glamor rounding the high hedge on his arm is wearing the shortest miniskirt I’ve ever seen in my life.
Long black hair moves like strands of glass and her baby-smooth skin appears to be experiencing sun for the very first time.
I bolt to my feet and Alix grabs my wrist, her voice coming out in a breathy squeak. “Ella. Is that Lee Jang Mi?”
I nod and look around the table, waiting for these dummies to get it.
A member of the Seongan girl group BLUSH is standing in the garden.
This beauty ambassador for Chloe. This pop queen.
This singer of such iconic lyrics as “Blow up my phone like dynamite. Blow up my life, let’s do it right” with accompanying iconic body roll.
She greets Alix with a soft bow and elegant hands, the epitome of Seongan formality under Marc’s approving eye. Though I want to lean into the delightful fandom of it all, my heart stops. She’s here because of Marc.
This was always going to happen. Someday, a girl would come into Marc’s life who suited him in every way. Someday is today.
I want to run out of the garden and have a good cry, but a lifetime of wrestling tender feelings into submission serves me well.
I send a message of silent gratitude to my mother.
My face clears of everything more complicated than how much I am BLUSH’s number one fan and I rake my unruly curls over one shoulder, smiling widely.
Marc watches me. “Lee Jang Mi, meet your most die-hard fan, Her Royal Highness Princess Ella of Sondmark.”
Her expression is one of gentle curiosity.
“Just Ella,” I correct. “I’m so excited to meet you that I might die. I really might. Am I dead?”
The goddess looks to Marc for a translation. He speaks to her in Seongan, a string of syllables too fast for me to parse out with my limited vocabulary. Besides, his hotness is extremely distracting. “My pleasure to meet you,” he coaches her.
“My pleasure,” Jang Mi murmurs, mangling it, giving Marc an adorable look of confusion.
I curl my fingers in, the nails biting into the soft flesh of my palm, but Alix grips my fist, too overwhelmed to notice. “Would you like to join us for breakfast?”
Jang Mi halts over her words, drawing an invisible string connecting her to Marc. “We have business.”
Marc leads her back through the break in the hedge, and Jang Mi turns her head to look at me, slipping her hand through the crook of Marc’s elbow.
I frown, thinking of a famous Sondish expression from the Cold War.
“When you meet a Vorburgian on the street, punch him in the mouth. He’ll know why.
” Some things you understand without the need for words.
Jang Mi wants me to know about her relationship with Marc. Stay clear. This is mine.
Alix rocks me side to side. “Did you know a member of BLUSH was coming?” she asks. “Marc is killing it with his surprises these days.”
I reach for a blanket, covering my sudden wish to burst into tears in the dousing weight of wool.
“And did you see that miniskirt?” She laughs, taking a strawberry cut in the shape of a heart from Tom.
I nod. “The dating scandal isn’t the only thing that has legs.”