“You always get carried away,” Hyzenthlay said cheerfully. “That’s why we love you.”
Vic’s heart did a ridiculous little dip. She reached down and ruffled her daughter’s hair, earning a squawk of protest. Hyzenthlay liked her hair neatly done at all times in a very opposite way to Vic herself. Sometimes, she could barely understand they were related, they were so different.
“You’re very soppy,” Hyzenthlay complained, batting her hand away.
“Comes with being a mum,” Vic said. “It’s either that or yell at you to tidy your room all the time, and I’m saving that for your teenage years.”
Hyzenthlay made a face. “What’s an objective?”
Vic opened her mouth, then hesitated. “In this context,” she said slowly, “it’s… the thing we’re trying to achieve. The goal. The dream.”
“You mean Christmas?”
“I mean,” Vic said reverently, turning toward the window where soft grey light was smearing itself across the landscape, “the perfect Royal Christmas.”
Outside, the grounds of Balmoral were a study in grey and white. They’d arrived two days ago, before the snow had deepened, while the hills were still more brown thananything. Since then it had hardly stopped. It settled in damp clumps on the branches, piled on the balustrades, blurred the edges of the lawns. The sky looked like thick wool, low and heavy.
Pretty, yes. Festive, sure.
Also: a logistical nightmare.
Vic’s phone buzzed on the table. She snatched it up before Hyzenthlay could grab it first—her daughter had learned to navigate to the Netflix app before she could walk.
The screen lit up with a message from Julia.
Julia-Swoolia, love of my life.
Everything okay up there?
Vic smiled despite herself, thumbs moving automatically.
Everything under control,she typed.Schedule is flawless. Child has defaced the Queen, but we move.
She added a little snowflake emoji for emphasis. A second later, Julia’s reply came through.
I told you not to leave them alone together. x
Vic snorted.You’re jealous because I love the schedule more than you.
Julia:I would be jealous, but I know you can’t cuddle a PDF.
Vic:Don’t challenge me.
She could picture Julia perfectly even without seeing her—probably at her desk in one of the smaller studies they’d claimed for work, papers laid out in neat piles, pen poised. Glossy dark hair pinned up, the strands of grey beginning to appear more with every passing year. Glasses on. The faint little crease between her brows that appeared when she was deep in thought and made Vic want to smooth it out with her thumb.
Warmth flooded her chest. God, she was soppy.
You’re procrastinating, she told herself firmly. Bird’s-eye view, Hughes. Two days till the Queen arrives. Focus.
She set the phone down and picked up the schedule again, flipping through the crisp pages. It calmed her just to see it all laid out.
Since they’d started dating properly—no more “oh, this is just a fling to distract us from our mutual pain,” but actual “we live together and co-parent and share a Netflix account” dating— which had even lead to marriage, Vic had discovered some unexpected truths about herself.
One of them was that she was, horrifyingly, capable of being organised. For love.
Operation: Perfect Royal Christmas had started as a joke. Someone—Alex, probably—had mentioned doing “something special” this year. Their first real winter at Balmoral as a solid family unit, not navigating bio-security bubbles or grieving or general constitutional crises.
Vic had declared herself Christmas Commander-In-Chief.
