Page 48 of The Midnight Princess
Alma brushes by me to scrape the dishes. “It’s not the right season,” she insists, filling the sink with hot water and suds. Pushing her sleeves to her elbows, she slips her engagement ring onto the counter and dons pink rubber gloves, scrubbing vigorously. Hair has worked out of her bun, and pieces of it are sticking to her skin, damp in a cloud of steam. I imagine bracing my hands on either side of her waist, pushing the hair off her neck, and following it with a kiss.
I hate Pietor.
I try to do the thing she’s trying to teach me—to carjack my human emotions, stuff them in the trunk, and drive them off a high bridge. It’s the memory of my grandma smacking my knuckles with a wooden spoon that convinces me to keep my hands to myself.
“Those herring are too lean,” she explains, attempting to sound rational. She’s adorable, and she’s failing. “They’re not in season.”
“My people eat pickled herring year-round,” I say, looking up at the ceiling, crowded in this tiny kitchen. There’s nowhere else to be. I grab a towel, wiping the counters and the top of the fridgewhere Housekeeping has already been. “And the whole point was to eat pickled herring like a Vorburgian.”
“You don’t eat them like this until May,” she counters, the words high-pitched, desperate. “They don’t get fat until the North Sea gets warmer. Did you know that the custom started during the reign of—of…?” Her words trail off and she swipes the back of her wrist on her forehead, leaving behind a trail of soap.
“Eating raw herring is an established culinary tradition,” I say, brushing a thumb across her brow.
“It’s a dare that got out of hand,” she snaps. Alma clamps her lips together and plunges her hands into the sink. “You’ll be expected to take the first bite of the new catch when you’re king—right off the boat. They’ll like you even more if you carve it up with your own knife.”
“I already do that,” I say, reaching around her. I pinch the tail of a herring and drag it through onion and dill. “I’d never even seen this kind of fish until my first term at the Royal Academy.”
Alma sees what I’m not saying. “What happened?”
“Kind of gruesome,” I warn her. “On my first day of school, a group of boys—the best blood in Vorburg, so I was told—held me down and stuffed my mouth full of the stuff.”
Her brows lower in a snap and her eyes flash. “You had bullies?” The memory is too old to sting, but at her look, I fear for their lives.
“Not much,” I grin. “Anyway, the joke was on them. Pickled herring is the best.”
Sondmark doesn’t agree. They’re too civilized for the raw, lightly brined delicacy, plucked straight from a fishmonger’s cart and eaten on the spot. Even when they eat it for good luck, they shudder.
“You’ve got to try it the Vorburgian way,” I insist.
Her nostrils flare. “Fine.”
“You should be glad they’re so skinny,” I say. “There’s less to consume.”
With a strained expression, she draws a gloved finger down her neck, pushing the hair back. Her tongue darts between her teeth, moistening dry lips.
“You first,” she says.
Easy. Raising the herring above my head, I tilt my chin back and lower the fish to take a salty bite. I lock eyes with Alma—a taunting, rounding-the-bases, home run celebration—as I swallow. Then I catch something she wouldn’t want me to see.
Attraction.
She blinks, the flash is gone, and she lifts her chin like a baby bird. “Ah,” she prods, and the sound has me positioning the fish above her mouth. As it nears, her nose wrinkles. She closes her eyes and sways.
I steady her, snaking an arm around her waist. Her pink rubber gloves lift slightly, suspended at her side, but she doesn’t push me away. It hurts to draw air.
“That face would get you tossed out of the country,” I breathe.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she says, a fisted glove drumming lightly on my arm.
“Here goes.”
She takes a stingy bite, holding it in the well of her mouth. “Ah, aw, eh,” she breathes, gagging it down, punctuating each chew with a miserable moan. She clutches my shirt front with her gloves and burrows in my arms.
A laugh rumbles through my chest. “You’re going to have to work on your game-face before I let you loose at the St Jusuf’s Day festivities.”
“Vede,” she gasps, “How do you do it?” She rips a glove off and holds the back of her wrist to her mouth, gagging against my shirt. I don’t mind. “Is St Jusuf’s for singles? No one is going to want to kiss this mouth ever again.”
I give another laugh, trying to break up the incredible tightness of my chest. “The tradition is that you’re supposed to kiss someone who just ate some, too.”
