Chapter 35 Kissed Again
Kissed Again
ELLA
I open the door to an insistent knock, and Clara bursts into my suite, dragging Freja behind her. Alma slips in and shuts the door, locking it for good measure. “We saw you leave Mama’s office,” Clara says. “What’s going on?”
I sink against the arm of my sofa, more lost than I’ve ever been, and twist the toe of my shoe on the floorboard. “Nothing.”
“There it is,” Alma says, pointing at my foot. “You’re lying. She’s lying. Marc told me what to watch for.”
Traitor. I kick off my shoes and grab the remote, powering up the television.
“You’ve been weirdly punctual,” Freja says, right on my heels.
I scramble onto my bed and sit with my back on the headboard, scrolling to that one episode of Unwritten Destiny where the female lead kisses the male lead upside down really thoroughly before he goes in for triple bypass surgery.
The way the camera lingers on his craning neck has never failed to pull me out of a crisis.
Alma and Freja crowd onto the bed.
“You showed up to that tea party in a ballgown,” Alma says, tossing a bag of peppermint puffs into my lap.
Clara piles on last, chucking a box of the good tissues I keep in my bathroom into the middle of our circle. “You’re getting low.”
I miss Marc. My heart hurts. I can’t talk about it to anyone.
I throw the box of tissues across the room. “It’s been a rough couple of days. I’m not dying or anything.”
“Of course, dearest.”
“We know you’re not dying.”
“I came for snacks.”
Their words flop over each other like a net full of fish, awkward and disquieting, and I take a breath. “Why are you treating me like I’ve got days to live?” I ask, pointing to my wrist where Freja has hold of me.
“You are exhibiting an unhealthy amount of royal compliance,” Clara explains.
“I have a theory.” Alma blushes and clears her throat. “It’s a crackpot theory—”
“My favorite,” I return.
“You were upset the other night after Freja’s announcement, and when I came in I saw that you and—”
A small plink against the windowpane interrupts her.
“I saw you and Ma—”
Another plink. Another. The Summer Palace is old and emits many noises, but these are too regular for chance.
“Go see what it is.” I shove Clara off the bed, and she trots to the window, throwing back the French doors to the cool night air.
A shout rises from below. “Princess Ella Victoria Chiara Brunhild of Sondmark!”
“Ella.” Clara chokes on a laugh, turning a surprised face to us. “You’re going to die.”
I know who it is. It’s Marc. My good pal Marc.
His recent text messages have been full of GIFs of Seongan actors making a fist with the caption, “Whui-ho.” I take them to mean “Hang in there, little buddy.” I take them as a daily punctuation mark to signal the beginning of Marc and Ella’s Friendship: Phase Two, Electric Boogaloo.
My throat thickens with tears, and I want to tell my sisters to put a cauldron of pitch on the boil.
We have to drive him off. I can’t see him when I still don’t know how to pretend I’m not in love with him.
“Ella,” Freja prods me in the back, her touch as gentle as the business end of a pike. “He’s calling for you. It’s polite to answer.”
“Thank you. I’m just learning that,” I shoot back, my tone acid.
She prods the sensitive spot on my waist and shoves me off the bed. “What do you want?” I shout, flouncing to the window in my huffiest huff.
I’m not prepared for the sight of Marc on the terrace, leaning against a balustrade.
A thousand lifetimes would not have prepared me.
He’s wearing a navy blue polo shirt and one denim-clad leg is crossed over the other.
Ordinary enough. But, when he catches my eye, he pushes a hand through his hair, and the muscle of his arm strains against the cuff of his sleeve.
The motion lifts the hem of the shirt, exposing a shocking amount of abs to just be flashing themselves in my great-grandmother’s ornamental garden.
I choke. “Couldn’t you find a shirt to cover you?”
“You like it better when I don’t.” He grins, lifting his arm a few more centimeters.
I clap my hands over my eyes. I know exactly what this is.
Marc is recreating the cover of Seongan Vogue from nine years ago.
August edition. I have ten physical copies just in case solar flares wipe out global data storage and civilization has to start from scratch.
One of them is in the drawer of my nightstand.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, doubling my hands over my eyes when I catch myself peeking.
“Don’t pretend you don’t think I’m hot,” he says, loud enough to alert half the country.
“I don’t,” I insist, feeling the sudden rush of my sisters all around me.
“Elskede,” he says. In my thousand lifetimes, each version of me pauses, longing for that word to be said in just that way. This is your turn, they seem to say.
“Elskede,” he repeats, “the time stamp on your latest installment of Temptation of the Elf Prince would suggest otherwise.”
My cheeks burn and my hands drop. This week has been difficult and lonely. There was no SquadRun. Alix is busy receiving her first guests. There was no Marc.
To keep myself out of trouble, I wrapped up that old, episodic story. My readers have been waiting for years and deserved some kind of resolution. My throat tightens as I mount a brilliant defense. “That fanfic has nothing to do with you.”
He nods, casually, easily. “It’s a coincidence that your Elf Prince is Asian-coded and has my forehead scar—and he’s better at kissing than your red-haired heroine imagined he would be.”
I squeak, but I don’t have an answer. The Elf Prince is definitely Marc.
“Wait.” Freja’s soft voice cuts through my mortification.
“Wait. When Alma came to us with her genuinely insane theory that you and Marc might be a thing, I thought maybe, just maybe, your old crush had resurrected itself. I was prepared to feel sorry for you,” she says, her words vibrating with outrage.
She aims an accusing finger down at our brother’s oldest friend.
“Have you been dating Marc van Heyden? Is that what’s been happening all this time? ”
It doesn’t feel like the right time to explain that it wasn’t really dating. “We were keeping things low-key,” I grit, shooting a glare at Marc.
“You were keeping things secret,” she shouts, loud enough to drive the bats from the attic.
“You yap about everything. You have dragged secrets out of me I wouldn’t give up under torture, but you didn’t breathe a word about Marc this whole time?
You pushed me out of your life for a man?
” Freja appeals to Alma to settle our dispute.
“I came to smooth things over and she practically shut the door in my face.”
Alma slides me a “For shame, Ella” look.
“I didn’t have to loop you in because this wasn’t ever going to go anywhere,” I protest.
I look down at Marc, who slides me a “For shame, Ella” look. Then his eyes shift with subtle intensity, and I shiver with the effort of holding his gaze, every nerve humming with some promise, not yet satisfied.
What game is he playing?
“She shoved me into the closet, Freja,” he says, never glancing away from my face. Arrogant. Taunting. “Forgive her, though. She wasn’t thinking straight. I’d been kissing her senseless.”
How long have we been keeping our secrets—our hands grazing in the fullness of my gauzy dress, our eyes meeting across an ancient pool, our lips— There have been more kisses than a whole decade of lonely nights. Now he’s telling everyone.
“This is my great-grandmother’s ornamental garden,” I blurt. “You’re being inappropriate.”
His mouth tilts with a dangerous smile. “Freja, I’ll bring her around when she’s ready to grovel,” he calls up to my sister, “but we’ve got some things to work out. Are you coming down, elskede, or am I coming up?”
“Stop calling me that,” I shout, curling my hands around the wrought-iron railing. I can’t survive this if he doesn’t mean it. I can’t. The sheer terror of not knowing bubbles up as fury. “Send me a cat meme if you want to talk. A chirpy little whui-ho.”
His brows gather. “How can you be upset about cat memes, woman? I was busy this week and I couldn’t chance saying too much over text. I wanted to be encouraging. I hoped you would understand—”
“Understand what? That we’re definitely friends still?” I give him two aggravated thumbs up. “We’re definitely that.”
“Ella,” he scolds, crossing the terrace to the base of the palace walls. Thick vines curl up the ancient structure and he tugs on them, testing his weight. What is this? I shake my head. Marc has a profound respect for the monarchy and an impeccable public image. He’s bluffing.
My certainty evaporates when he lifts his foot.
“Any news from the prime minister?” he asks, hauling himself onto the first string of foundation stones.
Still bluffing.
“He’s going to get his daughters into Saint Sissela’s,” I say. “That’s what he really wanted.”
“Your doing?” Marc hauls himself to the next string of stones, his hands gripping a mass of vines. The upper branches quiver, but he’s going to stop any second. He doesn’t have a safety harness and he can’t mean to climb all the way up.
I swallow away the dryness in my throat. “I only gave him some contact info.”
“What did you get in return?” He leans away from the walls with one arm, testing and rejecting several handholds, and looks up at me in a way that sends heat through my veins.
My voice is thick. “A standardized immigration test. I’ve been turning my app into a general quiz about Sondish culture and history which should boost the pass rates. It’s an elopement gift.”
Marc tips his head back, craning his neck. “You could use some help with the interface and roll-out. Your involvement would be untraceable. When you commit your crimes, I’ll always clean your fingerprints off the glass.”