“No,” Erin said. “You absolutely do not. The igloo has failed inspection. The igloo has been condemned. The igloo is a hazard to navigation and possibly international law.”
“What’s nav… nav… that word?” Florence asked.
“Never mind,” Erin said. “The point is: this is unsafe. You could have tripped over the cable, or kicked the heater, or gotten hypothermia because you literally soaked your socks in the name of science.”
“It’s not science,” Hyz said. “It’s experiential learning.”
Erin turned slowly to her. “Okay, Professor,” she said. “Help me out here. At what point did you think, ‘this is a great idea, absolutely no way will this end in an adult having a panic attack’?”
Hyzenthlay had the decency to look mildly guilty. “I didn’t think about the mattress,” she admitted. “I just thought about the adventure.”
Erin closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. Adventure. Right. That was half her problem, wasn’t it? She’d signed up for one life—dangerous, structured, adrenaline-fuelled—and ended up with another one that was,somehow, all of those things and also featured people under three feet.
“You’re not in trouble,” Erin said, and meant it. Mostly. “Well. You’re a little bit in trouble. But mostly, you are going to help me fix this.”
“Fix it how?” Matilda asked. “With… with magic?”
“We are not summoning any spirits in this castle,” Erin said. “We have enough ghosts of monarchs past without adding whatever you lot would drag in.”
She straightened, awareness of the wider situation nudging at her. Power flickers. Snow. A schedule that even now was probably being ritually sacrificed in the kitchen.
“First,” she said briskly, slipping into problem-solving mode because that, at least, felt solid. “We get you four out of the damp clothes. Vic has spares for everyone. Then we call housekeeping and see what can be saved. Then we find somewhere to sleep that is not… this.”
“Can’t we sleep in the snow fort?” Frank asked. “It’s so cosy.”
“It’s so wet,” Erin said. “And flammable. And entirely inappropriate for princes and princesses.”
Alexandra would, Erin suspected, probably think it was hilarious and join them anyway if given half a chance. This was precisely why Erin was not giving her half a chance.
There was a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Erin called, because apparently they were doing things the posh way now even when standing ankle-deep in damp towel.
One of the housekeepers—Maureen, Erin thought, a small Scottish woman with forearms of steel and an expression that said she’d seen everything and been impressed by very little—stepped in. She took in the scene with onesweeping glance: the towels, the sagging duvet, the children shaped like damp laundry.
“Oh, love,” she said. It was unclear whether she was addressing Erin or the mattress.
“We had a blizzard,” Frank offered. “It was tactical.”
Maureen’s mouth twitched. “Aye, I can see that,” she said. “You’ve done the laundry a right treat.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erin said automatically. Apologising to staff for her children’s antics had become a reflex. “We’ll help clear it up, of course. I just—could we get… I don’t know. Replacement everything?”
Maureen’s expression did that tiny, almost imperceptible shift that Erin had learned to interpret over the years. Not reluctance. Not disapproval. Just a kind of bracing.
“That’s the thing,” Maureen said. “We’ve had a wee… issue in the laundry wing.”
The word wee did a lot of heavy lifting there. Erin’s stomach sank.
“What kind of issue?” she asked.
“Pipe burst,” Maureen said. “The snow’s weighed on the roof wrong, and there’s been some… leakage. Half the dryers are out. We’ve got sheets queued up back to the stairs. We’ll get to it, don’t you worry, but it won’t be tonight.”
Erin stared at the mattress again. “So this…” she said slowly, “…is not going to be fixed any time soon.”
“If I put it in the queue,” Maureen said, eyeing the waterlogged sag, “we might have a bed for you by Hogmanay. Maybe.”
Hogmanay. New Year.
