Chapter 22 Ramen and Chill #2
I didn’t really race across town for this. I raced here because I needed to be with him. My skin feels singed and I want to burst into tears, but I slip the last button through and he hands me a thin black ribbon.
“Let’s do it properly,” he whispers.
The Hochneerheid doesn’t wear a powdered wig.
He wears the Sondish marriage knot to indicate his allegiance to the Crown.
Marc’s hair is not as long as it once was, but I perch on his stone coffee table and rake the sides back in the traditional loop, tying it off—three times around for health, safety, and fortune.
A knot for fidelity and another for love.
The action, one I have never performed for a man, carries an intimacy I’m not prepared for, and my fingers are stiff and unsteady.
I expected to get a little fashion show, some teasing—anything to get me away from the crushing tension of the palace.
But this is the cord a Sondish Viking would wear as he went raiding—a pagan promise, carried from his hearth, that he would return to his woman.
We all learn it in school. We make it into bracelets and draw it in the sand.
We practice this as a game until one day—this day—it becomes a prayer.
He catches my hand as I tighten the loop, turns, and lifts me into a kiss.
I thought I wasn’t any good at discipline, but who else could leave Marc in such a state—tugging at my hand while I back out of his apartment.
Who among my sisters in a similar situation could stop herself from undoing all those buttons again? Only me. Only just.
When Freja is called to testify before the committee, she wears a vintage Chanel suit.
Oskar accompanies her to the door of the briefing room, handing over an insulated flask of tea and a package of cookies before giving her a light kiss.
That image is splashed across the front page of The Daily Missive and The Holy Pelican.
“FREJA PROPOSED”. “Over My Dead Body: A Princess’s Plea to Protect her Husband”.
Protests and counter-protests spring up.
The next day, the papers carry photos of riot police.
My mother is tense. At all times, she is flanked by courtiers, secretaries, ladies-in-waiting, and lawyers.
She checks my clothes before official engagements.
If I don’t meet her exacting standards, I am dismissed with the softest exhale of frustration.
It drives home the point that I will never please her.
On the morning of my twenty-seventh birthday, I treat myself to a facial and manicure at Esther Hong’s.
When I walk out of the spa, my skin looks like the glowing sunrise of an alien planet, but I press through a gauntlet of paparazzi, cameras in my face, livestreamers asking about my twin, shouting about laws of marriage and succession they don’t live under the unbearable yoke of.
With my heart in my throat, I break a number of traffic laws to get home, arranging my expression into something that won’t make headlines like, “Princess Ella Drives into Hostile Crowd” or “Stone-Faced Princess Contemplates Murder”.
I tear through the doors of the Summer Palace like a cat emerging from an unexpected dunking. “What in the hell?” I gasp, tossing my keys to Anselm, one of our footmen. “What in the actual flamen hell has happened to Sondmark? Can we call in an airstrike on the satellite vans?”
A masculine laugh interrupts me, and I glance up to see Crown Prince Jacob, taking the stairs two at a time. He grabs me into a huge hug and I whoop in surprise.
“How?” I punch his shoulder, switching to English.
He grins. “I hitched a ride through the gates with someone in the renovation studio.” He looks me up and down, with as much interest as a customs agent. “You clean up nice.”
Over his shoulder, I see Max and Oskar sitting on the treads of the staircase.
“But why aren’t you upstairs?” I ask, fetching up in front of the others.
Max carries on a low-translation for Oskar but Oskar shrugs him away and perseveres in English for Jacob’s benefit. “She kick us out. Say tradition.”
Max points at Jacob. “That one keeps bellowing for Alma, but she bellows back that she won’t come down until you’re all ready. Go talk some sense into them?”
Not a chance. A fizzing excitement races through my veins. Getting ready with my sisters for a birthday party is nothing like getting ready for a state visit—I thought those days were long gone.
Jacob breaks in, grumpy now. “Does she not know how long I drove?” He shouts for Alma’s benefit, “Does she know I have to get back tonight?”
“Does he know he’s being a baby?” my eldest sister shouts back.
I gallop up the stairs and race for my suite, trying to smother my expectations. It might not be what I hope for. It might be—
Before it can be anything, Clara scoops me over the threshold of my room and pushes a pink martini into my hand.
BLUSH blares over the speakers. Freja is wearing noise-cancelling headphones, the band extended as high as it will go to accommodate the fat curlers in her hair, and Alma piles into the room with several dresses. Have I died and gone to heaven?
“Come see what we’re working with,” Clara says, clad in a silk robe and munching on a mini quiche.
She leads me to a row of priceless tiaras laid out on the same console where I keep my ramen noodles, and runs a light finger over The Grenlaud, a multi-colored tutti-frutti tiara that was part of an inheritance donated by a social-climbing heiress who finally joined the cool kids club only after her death.
“This is mine. The sweatband is for Freja.”
The sweatband is Princess Marel’s Emerald Bandeau from the 20s. It’s art deco, weird, and meant to be situated low on the brow. No one else has been brave enough to try it out, but we can always depend upon Freja to give aesthetic exuberances a crack.
“This is Alma’s.” She points to The Emir’s Diamonds. The row of glittering stars was the gift of a Middle Eastern billionaire whose grasp of human rights is as tenuous as a gust of wind.
“Which one are you wearing?” Freja asks.
“I passed.”
Her brow furrows and I lift one of her headphones. “I passed on Mama’s offer.”
Then I lift my voice. “Paige, turn it down to two.” BLUSH subsides into background music and I watch Freja visibly relax.
For the next hour, my sisters pass in and out of my suite. We move like a bee hive—each of us acutely aware of the others. They grab tissues and borrow claw clips, pose with cocked heads while using curling wands. A fog of hairspray billows above Clara.
Alma leans over the sink, opening her eyes wide to apply mascara.
“Jacob’s mom is breathtaking. She pads around her flat barefooted, talks to her houseplants, and appears to be a completely normal American mom—until she looks at you.
Then it’s magic. She’s not even fifty, and I’m willing to bet hard cash that King Otto will make a pass at her at Jacob’s investiture ceremony. ”
I giggle. “Lock the cloak rooms.”
“There are not enough locks in that castle.” Alma nudges Clara. “How are things going with Max?”
Clara dimples. “I love his family, but their idea of family drama is ridiculous. The Maagensens planted sunflowers, which is going to throw the shade situation of the Andersen Garden Allotment into complete chaos. His mom wants to bake them a cake as a peace-offering, but I’m like, ‘No—war.’”
“Diplomacy will only invite future incursions,” I say with a wink. “Uproot the sunflowers and salt the earth behind you.”
Clara nods. “See? You get it.”
I slip into my closet to don my gown. It’s the color of not-quite-ripe grapes and has a wide neckline with a fitted bodice.
I struggle doing up the back, but hear, “I’ve got it,” before Freja brushes my fingers aside.
A tide of emotion rises so fast I almost choke.
I blame it on the gin, but I know better.
This feeling—anger? Grief? I don’t know—has been here all along.
“How did you manage?” I ask, cursing the tremor in my voice.
“Manage what?”
“When you got married,” I say, biting my lip. “Who zipped you up? The intern?”
Her hands drop. “The dress had ties I could manage on my own.”
“Alone?” Vede.
“Who else would I have?”
Me. Clara. Alma. A knot of sisters. My throat burns with emotion, but I execute a little spin. “Well?”
She smiles. “You look like a fairytale.”
Freja’s dress has a tiny bodice, a long sweep of fabric falling from under her bust, and she wears Princess Marel’s bandeau across her forehead. It should be shapeless and weird, but she has a kind of magical intuition about these things.
“You look like something out of a Russian novel,” I say. Her brow lifts. “What? I’ve read War and Peace.”
Her brow lifts higher.
“The manga.”
Her lips pinch with a smile and she tugs the door of the closet closed, muffling the sounds of music and laughter beyond.
When she takes both of my hands in hers, I fidget under the brilliant spotlight of Freja’s attention, given to me all at once.
It never happens like this. I’m the one always throwing myself at her chilly walls—ever so high, ever so thick—and I feel a momentary disorientation.
“Ella.” Her breath hitches. “I’ve been trying to talk to you.”
“We talk.”
Her look convicts me. “It’s my birthday,” she tells me, as though I wasn’t there for it. “You have to give me what I want and I want to talk.”
Oskar has made her bolder. Teasing. More audacious. I try to blunt her intensity. “I guess I could return the fridge magnets.”
She flicks my forehead, and I rub the spot before she recaptures my hand.
“I’m never going to regret getting married exactly as I did.
You can’t wait for that.” What did I expect?
Freja is still Freja. She’s still as abrupt as ever.
She’s still pushing me away. My feet shift but she goes on.
“It might have killed me if Oskar had been deported.”
“Killed you?” I scoff.
“I can’t apologize for my wedding and mean it, but I hope you know I hated walking into that church without you.”
I’ve imagined Freja a hundred times, marching away from me with brisk certainty, chin up, back as straight as she can manage, eyes clouded by the stupidities of love.
I’ve imagined it like she smashed a jeweler’s window and ran off with her bag of loot.
I’ve imagined her posing for theatrical photographs, more concerned with a photo spread than having her sisters at her side.
Her smile wobbles and I look away. I know what the politics were.
The prime minister was targeting Neer Velasquez.
Time was running out, and there was no way the entire Sondish royal family could have packed into a Vorburgian church for a clandestine wedding without a national uproar.
I know all that. But something frozen in my heart starts to thaw at the knowledge that Freja didn’t charge into the chapel all sunshine and show tunes. She wanted us.
Her mouth pulls on one side. “I could not have done it if you hadn’t shown me how. Remember when you told Mama you were going to school halfway around the world? You had the acceptance letter in your hand before you ever said a word.”
“You’re blaming this on me?” I choke, turning these tender feelings into something we can laugh at.
She resists my retreat, gripping me tightly. “I know I’m not always what you need,” she says, taking a deep breath, “but I wanted you to understand me.”
Not “forgive me”. Understand me. Dominanstid. Freja has a way with her.
I want to run away from royal life but, holding Freja’s hands, I hear Alma bellowing down the hall and Clara’s answering laugh. The air is pregnant with our mingled scents, sharp and sweet.