There’s a long pause.
I turn around, hands bearing down into the back of the couch, and my eyes hit him as a grin is sliding off his face.
He shrugs. “It is more collaborative.”
God, elaborate, please elaborate, save me from myself.
“My family represents Halloween,” he continues, “but my mother is part of Día de Muertos, as I’ve said—and we come together with a dozen or so other autumn Holidays. We all work together throughout the year, and we all take equal shares of the joy we bring in. It is a collective, not a mere alliance.”
“You pool your joy?”
“Yes.”
“And you all get along? No one tries to usurp the others?”
“That would be counterproductive. We bring in joy from different sections of the world; taking over each other would risk that. We are stronger allowing ourselves to evolve as we are.” He hesitates. “Which is what my family realized, once we were informed of what a Christmas alliance would require, demanding a percentage of our joy with little in return. There are faint rumors that Christmas is rather underhanded in their partnership tactics, as has been proven. But at the time, we were… hopeful that these fears were misplaced. That Christmas would be open to collaboration. Many of the other autumn Holidays distrust Christmas—they fear that if one of usgets pulled into Christmas’s orbit, what would stop the rest from being dragged in as well?”
So Dad’s let our reputation among other Holidays be less than perfect; is it only our people he cares about manipulating? Or does he not have as much control as he believes?
“The other autumn Holidays would force you out of the collective if they found out you tried to negotiate with Christmas?”
“They may, depending on how your father phrases whatever he lets slip. Even now, the way that my presence here is being spun, it is keeping our allies mollified—they happily believed that Christmas bowed to our request to forego an Easter alliance, which was rather clever of your father, to be honest. It gave the autumn allies exactly what they wanted, seeing Christmas recoil. But the fact that I am here, even under the guise of linking with Easter, is being met with… strain. They are questioning our commitment to a fair distribution of magic rather than Christmas’s monopoly.” Hex’s lips tighten. “Which further solidifies that we are right to fear their reaction to any past Christmas-Halloween negotiations coming out.”
A shiver walks up my spine. Is that part of why Dad orchestrated this whole thing too? To remind Halloween how detrimental his blackmail could be? Fuck.
“And you think your allies will forgive and forget when it comes out that we screwed you over in this engagement sham?”
Hex gives a careful smile. “I told you I don’t need you to fix my Holiday. We have it under control.”
“I’m not trying to fix it.”
His look flattens.
“Fine, I’m notonlytrying to fix it. I want to understand as much as I can. I want to make sure I’m seeing everything for once in my fucking life so if—when,whenI do something, I don’t screw it up.”Again.
I start pacing behind the couch, pivoting back and forth.
“And what are you trying to do?” Hex asks.
I stop, staring at the wall behind his head. “What if your autumnallies found out that the real reason you were in the North Pole is that you were helping the Christmas Prince put together his own collective?”
Hex pushes up from his chair. “What?”
A fire lights in me, a plan forming between each word. “A winter Holidays collective. It’d be easy to negotiate a pool like the one you mentioned with the Holidays Dad is taking advantage of so they’re not just something we leech off—and maybe that way, we’ll be able to focus on doingactual good,rather than worry so much about global reach. If all the Holidays Dad is bullying rally together, he’d have less leverage to screw them over.”
Hex isn’t picking up on my wonder. He looks worried, the same twist of hesitation that almost kept him from letting me into his suite. “Won’t your father be opposed to this?”
“He won’t have to know until I get something set up, see if the other Holidays are willing to discuss it. And if you’re part of it, then your collective can’t be upset with you for any association with Christmas, because you were really here to help me start this. Right? And we could spin that into the reason for Halloween’s original negotiations with Christmas, so it’d take all the leverage out of Dad revealing that.”
Plus, Iris couldn’t be faulted for not choosing either of us at the end if Hex and I were working on this all along. Yeah, it was a lie, but it was to cover up somethinggood.We could finagle Easter into the collective too so they get benefits that would shut up any of the people gunning for weaknesses around Iris’s family—Easter isn’t a winter Holiday, but whatiswinter, really? Christmas also happens during the summer in half the world. It snows on Easter. Somewhere. Whatever, this collective doesn’t have to be bound by a season.
Could this be a solution Iris would approve of? Should I tell her about this? I don’t even know if there is athis,not yet; all the winter Holidays could laugh at any attempt of mine to fix what my dad has done. Even telling Hex this much—
I rock backwards. “Oh mygod.I did this to you again.”
“Did what?”
“I put you in another awkward position.” Panic drains all the warmth from my face. “Because if youdon’twant to be involved in this, then theprince of a rival Holidaynow knows that I’m planninga small coup against the reigning Santa—oh my god. As if my dad needed more shit to blackmail you with. Holyfuck,why am I sotoxic—”
