“I don’t meannow—”
“I know you don’t. But you can’t think beyondnow.Not yet.” She sits up and nudges my hands until I let them fall.
She hands me half a croissant. “Eat.”
I obey. Chew absently. Stare up at the ceiling andmy bed still smells like him.
Now. Just think about now.
Now.
“I need to write letters rescinding the invitations,” I say.
Kris settles deeper next to me, his phone back out. I see him pull up a notes app. “I’ll handle it.”
“Kris.”
“You can’t write for shit.”
“I’ll do it. This is my mess. I need to do it. Dad will—”
But all my thoughts trip over themselves.
I’m staring up at the ceiling, sandwiched between Iris and Kris, fighting to swallow a croissant that turns to grit in my dry mouth, and a piece connects in my brain that lets a real, deep gasp of air find its way into my starved lungs.
Dad will… what?
He’ll blame Hex if I don’t rescind my invitations to the winter Holidays. If I don’t stop trying to get them to rally against him. Because together, they provide more than half of Christmas’s joy—so together, they’d be enough to restructure our Holiday.
And Dad has only had to threaten them to get their compliance. He’s only ever had tothreatenanyone. All this blackmail bullshit, and there’s never been any sort of scandal that came out about these Holidays. Justthreats.
Daddidn’thit Kris. He didn’t even try. The threat of his anger was enough.
Just the threat.
I sit up, brow furrowing, as my mind pulses and I feel half mad. Maybe I’m sleep-deprived. Grief-stricken. I am, that and more, but my heart starts racing and I think I was an idiot.
I know I was an idiot.
Because I remember the way Wren talked to me in the hall.“You and your brother are not as alone as you might think.”And Renee and her kitchen staff, and Lucas and the Route Planners—all the pervasive, unadulteratedjoythey create.
I remember the way our people cheered for Dad because of the merriness he perpetuates, and how disgusted they’d seemed that I’d mentioned the idea of blackmail.
Dad has kept all knowledge of coercing anyone a closely guarded secret, manipulating every single story that gets out about our family—because he knows our people would befuriousif they found out that all our joy isn’t ours.
He had to create a cover for Hex being here so our people would be okay with it. He couldn’t outright tell them,We’re holding someone hostage—he had to play up that whole fake-suitor arrangement. He even silenced the Halloween envoys when they were here beforethey could say much more than objections to the Easter-Christmas union; he feared them spilling any details, turning his own blackmail back on him.
So does Dad think he could make good on any of his threats?
Because if he did, if he started dropping these truth bombs to the Holiday press, and it got out that all this information was coming from Christmas, then that carefully constructed façade of wholesomeness he’s built around our family would be eviscerated.
He can’t reveal any of the shit he has.
Not without destroying the very thing he says he’s fighting for.
“Oh my god.” I shove off the comforter. The tray rocks; Iris makes a startled chirp; but I dive over her, I need to pace, I need tomove.
I start walking the length of my room. Hit my desk, turn back.
