Page 46 of The Winter Princess
“Giana, Konrad’s wife, is Pavian. She comes into town for dinner at Uncle Timo’s from time to time.” He rolls the tie and tucks it into his breast pocket, nodding to the windows. “In the spring and summer, you can sit out on the patio with a view of the entire valley.”
In the mellow atmosphere of a restaurant booth with rain plinking against the window glass, fire popping in the hearth, and the taste of Italian wine on my tongue, my mind drifts from one image to another. Oskar wearing an open-necked shirt and a pair of sunglasses. The wind sweeping up the hills tosses his hair, his expression unguarded. He invites me into the walled garden. He leans over and kisses my mouth.
I bolt upright.
15
The Basics
OSKAR
I stretch across the table, settling my fingertips on Freja’s arm.
“What is it?” I ask.
“A crow landed on my shoulder,” she tells me, explaining away the thunderstruck look in her eyes as nothing more than a sudden, inexplicable shiver.
I withdraw and she rubs the spot, reaching for another cheese straw. “I enjoyed meeting your uncle. How didSehorFornasari wind up in Sondmark? Does he come from your mother’s side?” she asks.
I pour two glasses of wine, mine half as much as Freja’s to account for the drive back to Handsel, my nose filling with the scent of dried cherries, anise, and vanilla. Words seem to spill from her lips. She seems nervous but what would she have to feel nervous about?
“He’s not actually my uncle.” The bottle thumps when I set it down. “He’s not any kind of relation even if he’s been shoving his nose in wherever he likes for as long as I can remember. Pavians call everyone uncle or auntie or cousin. We all know each other’s business.”
She smiles, her chin angling away as she tries to keep her amusement to herself. We share words. We share wine. A few smiles. Not many.
I want to make her smile.
The thought arrives in my consciousness fully formed, having incubated inside me, in the dark, unexamined corners of my mind for heaven knows how long. I don’t want to know. It’s the first ordinary wish I’ve had in almost a year, I think, attempting to shrink the thought down into something I can wrestle with and win.
It’s a nice smile. It would be good to see more of them.
It’s not working. The more I try to make this nothing, the more it saturates my lungs and brain and heart, a spreading poison I haven’t found the antidote to.
“What?” she asks, sipping her wine.
I wipe the puzzled look from my face and make a deal with myself. Nothing that goes on here has to spill into the rest of my life. I can drive back to Handsel, and it’ll be as though this has never happened.
I grunt past the tightness in my throat.
“Uncle Timo was part of the security detail sent for the royal wedding.”
“My parents’ royal wedding?”
I nod. “Your Pavian grandfather insisted that his son be able to bring his own security team for a year.”
“To prevent his new bride from an assassination attempt?” Freja breathes a laugh.
The sound shakes me, and I have sudden sympathy for a pork cutlet being pounded flat under the steady drum of a tenderizing mallet. Another grunt. “My father also formed part of that detail.”
“Didn’t they return to Pavieau after their year was up?” Her brow wrinkles.Vede.I want to see more of those expressions, too. “You were born there.”
I nod. “Uncle Timo returned almost fluent in Sondish. My father,” I say, old stories flooding me, “returned to the girl he’d left behind to start a family. When the political situation got worse, Uncle Timo was able to get out. Because he spoke the language, Sondmark took him in.”
“And you?”
“My father forgot every bit of Sondish he’d learned, and we had to wait five years for Uncle Timo to find a way to sponsor us. You should have seen us on the train platform—”
I’m grinning and then I halt. There’s a way I tell this story to fellow Pavians and a way I tell it to people from Sondmark. Freja is getting the Pavian version, I realize. I gather the details close, inspecting each to figure out which ones to share and which to keep hidden.
