Chapter 29 Grand Passion
Grand Passion
Four Hours Earlier
ELLA
I spend the morning in the Chevres Salon, where Alma runs me through several interrogation scenarios, both friendly and hostile. Freja enters just after Alma has posed the question, “Do you expect us to believe that your twin sister kept this relationship secret from you?” She tugs Clara after her.
“Where did you come from?” I ask, eyes darting to their linked hands. Voluntary touching isn’t Freja’s thing, and it always means big feelings when she does.
“Oskar and I had a meeting with the Management,” she says. Noah, Mama, and, to a lesser extent, Père are at the apex of the Wolffe family hierarchy, and all major decisions are shunted through their command structure.
My most reliable tool for discovering Freja’s emotional state, buried under layers of her natural reserve, is her clothing. You can’t hide clothes. She’s wearing one of Mama’s old frocks and I cock my head. “Where have I seen that dress before?” I ask.
She kisses my cheek and grips my hand, leading me to a long sofa—more sturdy than a true antique.
When she sinks in, I am pulled after her on one side, Clara on the other.
With a tiny jerk of her chin, she indicates Alma’s place at the end.
“Mama wore it during the nuclear warhead crisis when she was expecting us,” she answers.
“Remember the footage from the press conference?”
How could I not? In every documentary about the Crown, there are clips of our mother standing at the gates of the palace in the burnt orange light of sunset, addressing the people directly and challenging the international community to keep their eyes on Sondmark—all as the great powers conducted a tense standoff in her waters and threatened her sovereignty.
Everyone knew she was pregnant, but no one has ever looked less vulnerable.
That was the night the North Sea Confederation was born.
I expected this dress to be on display at The National Museum someday, not on my sister’s back.
“You look good,” I say. My eyes drift down. “It’s actually giving you business up top. Wait. Did you get a boob job?”
Freja stifles a laugh. “I did not.”
“Well, you’re doing a lot of touching,” I say, “and it’s freaking me out. Hurry up and tell us what it is.”
She swallows and nods. “Oskar and I are going to be interviewed this afternoon. We cleared everything with Mama. We’re giving up my place in the line of succession.”
Clara makes a tiny, wounded noise, and Freja tips her head to hers for a moment. “I wanted to tell you in person.”
This is growth. Freja is growing. My throat hurts, my head starts pounding, and everywhere else is numb. Moreover, I have failed to keep Freja in so that I could get out. Nothing will ever be the same again.
“I guess I don’t have to prep myself for the legislative committee anymore,” I offer, making light of the situation. It’s a poor attempt to give Clara time to pull herself together, but we can get through this. We can.
“I have one more piece of news,” Freja starts.
Stultes es. She never was able to read a room. “I don’t know if this is the time for more news.”
“It’s the time,” she breathes. “I can’t keep it private for much longer.”
“Oh hell. How bad is it?”
“Not bad, even if it is difficult.” She touches her cheek against mine and I breathe in her scent. We were born this way and it is a gift when she lets me feel it. Her voice is soft. “I’m pregnant.”
In Seongan dramas, white box trucks come out of nowhere, smashing through the plot in the blink of an eye, and throw characters into disarray. They are responsible for everything from meet-cutes to death. You just never know.
At her words, I feel like I’ve been pushed under the wheels of one.
We are happy for her. We can’t be anything but happy.
But Clara cries and Alma fusses, asking pertinent questions about due dates and prenatal nutrition.
I try to catch my breath. I hug my sister as long as she allows, but I still can’t catch my breath.
I’m still trying hours later when the Management watches Freja’s interview behind the closed doors of Mama’s office.
Me and my sisters crowd around Caroline’s desk, cautious and winded.
Nothing Freja says comes as a surprise. Not the renunciation of her role as a working royal or her pregnancy. Thank heaven for that.
Clara, the new Number Four, is heartbroken in a way no one else can understand.
“She looks calm,” Alma says, leaning into the screen and fidgeting with her button. “Doesn’t she?”
Clara nods. “Ella?”
Their eyes turn to me and know what I look like.
Pinched. Tense. Like one more shock will disintegrate my bones.
I close my eyes and bite the inside of my cheek as my sister calmly explains to the entire country her reasons for throwing away her first identity, the one stamped on the birth certificate issued by the private nursing hospital where we were born.
Her Royal Highness, Princess of Sondmark.
There are photos of the day: Mama, looking astonishingly well-made-up, holding Freja. Père, his finger held by a tiny fist, smiling down at me. Princesses. Twins. The House of Wolffe was doubly blessed.
My stomach roils, and I press a fist against my midsection. This reminds me of the video feeds from the Seongan earthquake showing areas of liquefaction—of sandy soil turning into water and rigid building foundations beginning to flex and buckle. Unthinkable destruction followed.
I knew this was coming. Knew it was possible as soon as Freja ran off to be married, if I’m honest. If she did that, she might do anything. But the knot in my throat grows harder by the second, and I feel a wish form at the cellular level. Marc. I need Marc.
“It’s fine,” I manage, sounding like this happens every day, talking around the painful ache. “This is what she wants.”
Caroline looks over her shoulder at me. Her glance flicks to my fist before retreating in discreet, sympathetic silence. Does she also know what it’s like to have emotions that have no easy outlet?
When the broadcast concludes, Noah pokes his head around the door of Mama’s office. “Come on in,” he says, leaving it ajar even after we stride past him. There’s likely nothing we could say that Caroline hasn’t heard already.
Mama’s hand is tucked into Père’s steady grip, knuckles stark white against his tan, but I don’t make the mistake of getting my hopes up. She has been a giantess my whole life, and if the last several years have made her hard, the last hour has made her fragile.
She leaves it to Noah to guide the discussion.
“The interview didn’t do any more damage than Freja’s departure will,” he says.
“It probably helps in the long run that it appears to be her own idea. The press will make itself ridiculous for a few weeks, talking about the baby, but the main thing is that we need everyone to lock in. No elopements.” He looks at Alma, who utters an outraged gasp, and moves on to Clara.
“No gloating when you win your lawsuit.”
I am on the edge of losing it and his aggressive certainty makes me bristle. “You know what would be really helpful?” I reply. “If you picked a girl, got married, and gave us an heir.” It’s easier to have these kinds of spats than face the storm of emotions brewing in my chest.
Noah’s jaw sets, but Mama raps her knuckles on the desk. The air shivers with power.
“Your brother is correct. We have asked for circumspection time and again this year and, dominanstid, we’ve had little of it. The press will run with stories sourced on the thinnest material. We can’t afford to give them any.”
Père releases a breath. “I’m proud of our donnina for putting her marriage first.”
Silently, pointedly, Mama slips her hand out of his. She aims a blind nod to no one. “There are to be no comments to the press. No leaks.” She aims a scorching glance at me. “It’s certainly not the time for levity, Ella. You are all dismissed.”
While the administration wing is in fight mode, my sisters elect to raid the kitchens for ice cream bars. I tell them that I’d prefer to blow off steam by exploding space lizards on my computer.
I run up to my suite, and instead of reaching for the gaming controller, I kick off my shoes, frozen in place. The ancient wood floors creak under my shifting weight and I feel…I feel... Every tear crowding my throat comes wrapped around a nucleus of knowing that Freja is right.
I jump when an urgent knock sounds. “I know your code,” Marc calls through the door. “Just let me in there.”
Vede. Painful pressure gathers behind my eyes and in the roof of my mouth. I open the door a crack. “Where is security when you need it?” I mutter.
He scoots me backward and presses the door shut. “They think I’m harmless.”
He’s not harmless to me. We watch each other across a short expanse. The pressure builds and builds. “You saw the broadcast.”
“You knew it was coming,” he says, narrowing his eyes. He’s figuring this out now. “And you didn’t tell me.”
I wave a hand, but the careless effect is ruined by the stiffness of the motion. “I didn’t know anything four hours ago. Didn’t Noah tell you?”
He shakes his head.
“Then you should be banging at his door.”
I swear he growls. “It’s not Noah I’ve been kissing.”
My eyes burn, but I think of how my mother will appear in public tomorrow, as cool as ice.
“That’s no reason to babysit your best friend’s little sister,” I say, pushing him towards the door. He doesn’t budge and my feet slip.
“Ella,” he protests.
He’s a wall of muscle and vastness, impervious to my attempt to shift him. I think seriously about investing in a moat or posting snipers at the head of the staircase.
“We’re friends,” he says.
Stultes es. The ground beneath my feet is shifting and my fist rests against his heart. My own is going to break into a million pieces.
“We help each other,” he continues. “Don’t throw me out.” He reaches over and locks the door.