Vic’s lips twitched. “True.”
She flipped further ahead in the schedule, heart rate ticking up. She’d risked a lot on this plan. So many moving parts. Very little margin for error.
Snow.
She’d factored snow in, of course. It was Balmoral in December. But she hadn’t factored in… this much.
Quick mental triage: what absolutely needed to arrive when it was supposed to? Food, obviously. Fuel. Firewood. Gifts, technically, though she did have fallback versions hidden in a locked trunk. Decorations were mostly already here—she’d supervised that delivery herself, much to the staff’s weary amusement.
And then there was Phase One.
Vic thumbed the edge of the schedule, finding the page more by muscle memory than sight.
23rd December — 10:00–12:00: Delivery & Settling-In of Reindeer (for Christmas Eve Courtyard Appearance).
She’d been so proud of that idea. Actual reindeer in the courtyard on Christmas Eve, snow falling, lights twinkling, triplets screaming with joy, Hyzenthlay giving them all names from Watership Down because that’s just how her child rolled.
Julia had called it “potentially excessive.”
Alex had said, “Reindeer? We can have reindeer?” with the unvarnished delight of a kid who’d grown up with pomp and circumstance but not a lot of actual magic.
Erin had made the face. The one that meant, “I love you all, but I am also planning fifteen contingency routes and a tranquiliser plan.”
Now the reindeer were at the mercy of the Scottish trunk roads and the gods of weather.
Vic’s phone buzzed again.
Julia this time:Do I need to come up and confiscate your phone?
A smile tugged at Vic’s mouth. She snapped a quick photo of the window, the thickening snow, and sent it.
Only if you can stop this, she wrote.
Julia:Can’t. But I can bring tea. x
Vic’s shoulders relaxed marginally.Tea. Tea would help.And Julia.
“Hyzzie,” she said, closing the laptop with more force than necessary. “Emergency summit. Round the coffee table. Agenda item one: How To Make Christmas Perfect While the Universe Tries to Sabotage Us.”
Hyzenthlay rolled onto her hands and knees, then pushed up to sit cross-legged, tiny hands folded on the tablewith exaggerated seriousness. “I call this meeting to order,” she said. “First question: why do you think you can control the universe?”
“Because I have a forty-three-page schedule,” Vic said. “And a label maker.”
“That’s not how it works,” Hyzenthlay said gently. “Mama J. says the universe is chaos and we just ‘surf along the wave of it.’”
Vic made an affronted noise. “Julia is banned from talking philosophy to you. It makes you smug.”
The door opened before Hyzenthlay could respond. Speak of the literal angel.
Julia stepped in, a tray balanced elegantly on one hand like she’d done it her whole life. Steam curled from a pot of tea, and there were biscuits too—shortbread in a neat little stack, the good kind with extra butter.
Vic forgot about the schedule for a whole three seconds.
“You brought offerings,” she said reverently.
“I heard there was a cult forming around a PDF,” Julia replied, nudging the door shut with her hip. She was in one of her Balmoral cardigans—the soft grey one that made her look utterly, devastatingly huggable, shiny hair up in a messy knot, glasses perched halfway down her nose.
Vic’s chest did the stupid warm thing again. For a moment, her obsessive spiral about snow and reindeer and deliveries receded.
