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PROLOGUE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
It’s my last Christmas at home. Once I leave for Kingmakers, I’ll only be able to visit over the summer.
Christmas has never been my favorite season—I’m more of a Halloween kind of girl. But knowing this is the last time all of us will be gathered around one table to eat turkey and pull crackers is making me more nostalgic than usual.
Leo…not so much.
He can’t wait to leave. He’s so done with high school, I’m not sure how he’s going to make it through five more months of classes plus final exams.
Actually, I don’t know how he passed any of his classes. He’s not much for following instructions.
Right at this moment, he’s supposed to be helping me set out the place cards so everyone can find their seat at dinner. Instead, he’s swapping the order for maximum drama.
“You’re supposed to sit each family together,” I remind him.
Leo only grins. “What’s the fun in that?”
With twenty-four people en route, it’s lucky the dining room in my parents’ house resembles the great hall in a medieval castle. The fireplace is large enough to stand up in, and the tablestretches about an acre end to end. If my mom and dad sat at opposite ends, they’d hardly be able to shout to each other. But she always sits right next to him.
“Don’t even think about moving that one…” I point to the card withNessawritten in my mother’s pretty, cursive script.
“I’m not suicidal,” Leo says, leaving that particular card exactly where it sits, right next to the one readingMikolaj.
Leo is dressed more formally than usual, meaning he’s wearing trousers with his halfway tucked-in T-shirt. But his dark, wavy hair is messier than ever, and when he bends his knees, his slightly-too-short pants show several inches of eye-searing Christmas socks.
I smile to myself. “Are you growing again?”
If he is, he better stop—Leo’s approaching the height of your average NBA player, which means he already doesn’t fit very well into airplane seats or compact cars.
“Let’s see…” He comes around to my side of the table, wrapping his arms around me in a hug so he can rest his chin on the top of my skull. “Nope…we’re still exactly one head apart.”
“Maybe I grew, too.”
“How am I supposed to judge anything if you won’t stay the same?” He smiles down at me, not letting go.
I’m not complaining. Leo gives the best hugs. I mean, the best out of anybody, ever. For one thing, his body temperature seems to burn at about 102 degrees. Also, he squeezes like he means it.
Until my dad enters the room—then Leo lets go of me quick.
“Almost finished?” my father drily says. Pretty much everything he says comes out dry. Or menacing. Or both.
You have to know him well to spot his moments of softness. He has a narrow vein of emotion, but it runs down to his core. No one loves deeper than he does.
However, that love is almost exclusively reserved for me, my mom, and my two younger siblings. He’s not the biggest Leo fan.
As Leo is well aware.
He shoots me a sideways smile.
“Look how beautifully Anna set the table...”
Smooth recovery. Leo knows the best way to mollify my dad is to compliment me.
I do think it’s one of my best efforts. I’ve brought in armfuls of white Christmas berry from the garden, filling the air with the scent of evergreen. The ghostly berries and tall white tapers are offset by the black tablecloth and bronze plates. It’s elegant and slightly gothic. Basically, the exact opposite of Leo’s socks.
“Anna’s taste is almost always excellent,” my dad says.
