“We were in something of a… conflict.”
“Conflict?” Coal grunts. “Wait. That study room thing?”
Just do it. Like a Band-Aid.
“He stole a study room from me,” I hear myself say, and it sounds so goddamn absurd that I hate myself all over again. “So I sort of. In revenge. Filled the whole room with tinsel.”
Coal’s office is dead quiet.
“And filmed it.” I drag my phone out of my pocket, eyes shut, and by muscle memory, I pull up the video.
Not that I’ve watched it a profuse amount. I just know where I stored it. That screenshot staring up at me, gray eyes framed in reflective blue tinsel strands.
I press play and swivel the screen towards where Coal, Hex, and Iris are standing. The office fills with the muffled sounds of the study hub’s laughter.
The video ends.
“That wasyou?” Iris chirps.
My eyes pop open. “What?”
She digs her phone out of a pocket on her dress and flips through screens until she shows me a tabloid site, one of the outlets that covers all Holidays,24 Hour Fête.Magic goes into keeping these news sites separate from the normal world, and until a few months ago, when Coal severely cut our press coverage, they featured the Claus family more than anyone else.
Unluckily—or maybe luckily?—neither Coal nor I frequent these poison sites.
The page Iris is showing me has its own video of that guy stumbling out of the study room. It’s a different angle, but there he is drenched in tinsel, there he is flipping off someone in the crowd—me. But my face isn’t in the shot and it isn’t clear who he’s mad at.
The headline:St. Patrick’s Day heir ensnared in hazing scandal.
I snatch her phone and scroll through the article. It alleges that Prince Lochlann is connected to hazing at the university.
Can he be trusted with as much power as King Malachy has given him?the article asks.
Half of me wants to laugh. And I do. A dry, humorless gasp, because it was one idiotic moment that involvedtinsel,and this reporter is blowing it up to behazing?
Maybe using Cambridge blue tinsel was a mistake. Well, doing itat allwas a mistake.
“You knew about this?” I gape at Iris.
Her eyebrows are nearly at her hairline as she takes her phone back. “Only people likeyou”—she gestures at me, Coal, and Hex—“who refuse to read the tabloids don’t know about it. The St. Patrick’s Day royal family has never been in the spotlight, so this? Their crown prince comes out of nowhere with a scandal,andit turns out he got passed over for the role of king? It’s made Lochlann into the paparazzi’s next fascination.”
The article did sound the way tabloids used to talk about Coal, dissecting how irresponsible he was, how unworthy of his station.
It almost makes me like Lochlann out of solidarity against tabloid bullshit.
And I started it for him.Idid this to him.
“Fuck,” I groan. But my stomach turns to concrete and sinks straight to my toes. “Oh shit. This is bad, isn’t it? Like, bigger picture bad. Christmas attacking St. Patrick’s Day?”
Hands grab my cheeks.
Coal beams at me.
“You tinsel-bombed the St. Patrick’s Day Prince,” he says. “I have never been more proud of you in my life.”
His joy butts up against my dread like oil on vinegar. It’s comforting, in a way; this has always been our dynamic. Me, silently panicking about a thing; Coal, finding that same thing hilarious.
“For fuck’s sake, Coal—”
