Page 100 of The Winter Princess
I looked it up on my drive this morning. The process of repatriation away from Sondmark after a failed citizenship bid is theoretical until it suddenly and decisively isn’t. In as little as two months, Oskar could find himself walking the streets of Gransoleil.
“A raincheck?” My tone is scornful as I lean against a table. A raincheck is what you get from the dentist when you develop a cold.
He rolls back to lean next to me, shirt stretched across his chest. I love him like this. He takes my hand, as he’s done so often.
“Maybe when relations between Pavieau and Sondmark thaw,” he says, “your family will send you on a delegation.”
I blink heavily. It’s silly to talk about his dismissal when the open question of when he’s going to kiss me has yet to be answered. Warm sparks drift up from our lightly clasped hands.
“You could sneak away to meet that seedy art restorer you used to know,” he bumps my shoulder with his. The contact is electric even if his words are light. He’s trying to keep this from devolving into tragedy. “I’ll find a job, get a flat—”
My free hand grips the table and I wonder for a fraught moment if I might overturn it like one of Ella’s video game monsters. I’m mad and weepy and, somehow, very, very Pavian right now. “Don’t you dare paint a picture that doesn’t have me in it.”
He exhales, hand tightening. “Vede, Freja, what am I supposed—”
“Oskar.” His name is an oath. “You can’t go. You speak in Sondish. You curse in Sondish. You love a Sondish princess.”
He hasn’t said any such thing, but I know. I know. I’ve merely dipped my ladle into the clear waters and drawn it up into the light.
The signs have been there from the beginning—most of which have been captured on camera and broadcast to the entire nation. The brush of our hands, the bracing intake of breath, how he was grumpy enough to cloak his feelings but never grumpy enough to drive me off entirely, the way he kisses. How he holds my hand and feeds me cookies from his desk drawer. How they never have raisins.
I dare him to deny it.
He takes a breath and turns, trapping me against the worktable, burying his head in my neck, lips against my skin, arms tight around my waist and back. I can’t breathe, but I raise a hand to his hair with a small laugh. I knew it.
He raises his head, and the laugh dries up. At this moment, Oskar isn’t Smit looking for a scratch behind his ears. His chin tips back, eyes filled with arrogance, and his hands settle on my waist. “What are you laughing for? You love me, too.”
My throat hurts with the effort honesty demands. I nod.
He swallows and shakes his head. “How?”
“Like a fairy tale. You had me follow a trail of cookies to your door.” I kiss him lightly, as though we’ve been kissing for years, but his gaze brushes my lips, warning me that I’m running a tab to be paid off later.
“What do we do?” he asks, abandoning gauzy fiction. “Meet in Switzerland?”
I make a noise. “Not that. Not Switzerland. My father meets his family in Switzerland, and they pretend it’s enough. Switzerland is where long-distance relationships go to die.” I tangle my fingers with his. “I have an idea. Come here.”
I lead him to the sofa. This will require time and attention to explain. It will require the kind of clear-headedness not to be found when I’m pressed against him, his hands on my waist.
Though I imagined myself perched on my end of the sofa and him on the other, rational discourse filling the gap, Oskar allows no gap. He pulls me into his arms, and I try to remember the stakes. Deportation. Unemployment. Separation.
Do we have time for this? I run through the list of things I’ve planned for today, the logistics that keep filing into my brain like overeager queen’s ministers. The letter I have to write. The emails I have to send. The treacherous interpersonal dynamics I have to avoid. Then his lips touch mine and I forget everything.
Some part of me must have understood, even in the beginning, that Oskar was dangerous to my future and my peace of mind. My only defenses were to avoid him like the plague and believe the worst of him. Such tissue-thin fortifications.
He lifts his head. “The timing is terrible,” he says, short of breath, forehead resting against mine. “You might have discovered my merits three years ago.”
“You might have been struck dumb by my beauty.” I’m breathless, too.
“Iwasstruck dumb,” he says, leaning forward for another kiss. “Stupid. Idiotic.”
I press a hand against his chest. “We have to talk.”
He collapses against the back of the sofa, slides an arm around my shoulders, and pulls me close. Oskar doesn’t feel an atom of apprehension that I’m about to break his heart, and I close my eyes against the brilliant light. This is trust. I’ll need it.
“I’m listening,” he says, bringing my palm to his mouth and kissing it, leaving behind the rasp of his chin and the vibration of his voice.
“I know what I’m supposed to say,” I begin. “I’m supposed to say that we’ll take it one day at a time, that we’ll get to know each other, that we’ll see how this develops.”
