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Clara Bianca Solace-di Angelo is eight years old, which—according to her—makes her an expert on several things.
Karate, for one, which she considers less a hobby and more a calling. Her family, for another, because she has spent nearly a decade observing them with the sharp, relentless precision of someone who absolutely intends to publish her findings one day. And, most importantly, she is an expert in the fact that grown-ups never remember the things that matter: where they last put the glitter pens, why the cat refuses to stop chewing Will’s shoelaces, or how it is somehow always Clara—always—who manages to stop Lucia from walking directly into doorframes whenever she’s reading while in transit.
Clara considers these oversights both tragic and predictable. Adults are busy, distracted, and extraordinarily prone to missing the obvious. It’s fortunate, she thinks, that she is here to keep everything running properly.
And so she has decided, on this particular early-December morning, that if anyone is going to tell this story properly, it should be her.
Because honestly?
Her dads get sentimental about everything. Everything. Will tears up at any display of familial affection within a ten-foot radius, and once cried because Lucia said please in Italian. Nico pretends he isn’t sentimental at all, but he has exactly two emotional settings: unreadable, and quietly staring at his family like they’ve personally restored the balance of the universe.
It’s unbearable.
And Lucia—twelve, bookish, tragically shy Lucia—would narrate the entire world like it’s a sad poem about candlelight and inevitable loss. Clara likes candlelight just fine, but she also likes the part where someone kicks the candle over and everyone screams.
So: Clara will do it.
The air outside the windows is winter-cold, the kind of bright that feels like it has personal vendetta. The Solace-di Angelo household is awake in its usual half-chaotic way, with Lucia shuffling around in her socks like a small, ethereal librarian who hasn’t fully materialised yet; Will humming distractedly in the kitchen as though he’s orchestrating a holiday musical only he can hear; and Nico pretending not to be awake though Clara can hear him muttering threats at the coffee machine like he’s negotiating with a minor god.
Clara, meanwhile, is having thoughts. Big, important, narrator-type thoughts. The kind of thoughts that require posture, introspection, and possibly a dramatic sigh.
It occurs to her, rather inconveniently, that if she says my dad and my other dad, everyone will get confused.
People always do. Teachers, especially. (Her favourite was the substitute who confidently assumed Nico was the “fun dad” and Will was the “serious dad.” The look on their faces when the truth emerged—when Will arrived with colour-coded snacks and Nico arrived with the thousand-yard stare of a man prepared to bury a body—was better than television.)
So, Clara decides, with the authority of someone who has absolutely earned her narrator status: we’ll just call them Will and Nico.
You’re welcome.
Will is the blonde one. The one who panics at the sight of a thermometer like it’s a prophecy of doom. Clara has witnessed him sprint across the house because Lucia coughed once—just once—and he immediately began muttering about viral loads and differential diagnoses. Nico had calmly reminded him that he is, in fact, a trained healer, a son of Apollo, and possibly the most dramatic man alive. Will had not been comforted, and Lucia had fled under her blanket like a distressed woodland creature.
Nico is the dark-haired one. The one who teaches them self-defence in the backyard with the solemnity of someone passing down ancient, slightly worrying knowledge. He moves like the world is something sharp he learned to hold without bleeding. Clara watches him with the delighted awe of a kid who loves a challenge, and, naturally, she is the best in her karate class. Even better than the older, bigger kids. (She’d say that part twice if she could. Maybe three times.)
Lucia, meanwhile, spends most of her time buried under a blanket with a book, so shy and soft-voiced that you’d never guess she once elbowed Uncle Percy in the ribs so hard he wheezed and accused her of attempted murder.
But Clara knows. Clara always knows.
As for where she and Lucia came from—well. Clara is eight, not stupid.
She understands biology in theory, mostly because Will insists on “age-appropriate scientific literacy” and because Nico bought her an anatomy colouring book last year that was absolutely not age-appropriate. And she understands that two dads having two daughters is technically “a mystery for another time,” which is what Will once said when she asked, doing that thing with his hands where he tries to physically sculpt a lie into something educational.
Grandpa Hades, who had been sitting in the corner pretending not to listen, looked up with the heavy sigh of a man who has been tired since the Bronze Age and said, “The Fates handle these matters. And your souls were placed exactly where they were meant to be.”
Which sounded very final and very official, but also like the kind of answer designed to prevent follow-up questions. Clara is excellent at follow-up questions, so she had opened her mouth to ask one when—
Grandpa Apollo barreled in with the energy of a thousand suns, beaming so brightly it made everyone suspicious, and announced that she was “woven from sunlight and stubbornness and a little genetic magic,” which was either comforting or terrifying. Possibly both. Nico muttered something in Italian about dramatics; Will looked like he was about to start crying again.
Clara has chosen not to think too hard about it. Mostly because she doesn’t want to get caught between her grandfathers in an explanation war that would inevitably involve charts, divine metaphysics, and at least one unsolicited prophecy.
Besides, she has more important facts to provide, such as the origin of her own name. Adults think children don’t notice these things, but Clara notices everything. Names especially. They carry stories, and stories never stay quiet around her.
Her sister is Lucia Naomi Solace-di Angelo, though everyone calls her Lucia or, on the rare occasion she leaves her book long enough to acknowledge the outside world, Lulu. Her middle name comes from Grandma Naomi — Will’s mom — who is now a very successful alt-country singer with two Grammys and an Instagram account Clara is technically not allowed to follow because, according to Will, “Grandma sometimes forgets her microphone is on.”
Grandma Naomi writes songs about heartbreak and open skies and that one time she lived on a bus with a drummer named Fox. Clara thinks she’s fascinating. Will thinks she is an ongoing public relations crisis. Nico thinks she is “very loud, but in a charming way.”
Clara’s own middle name, Bianca, comes from someone she has never met but feels she knows anyway. Aunt Bianca — Nico’s sister. Gone long before Clara was born, but alive in the stories Nico tells on soft nights, the ones where the house is quiet and the light has gone blue around the edges.
Clara has heard everything she’s meant to hear: how Bianca used to steal extra desserts for Nico, how she braided his hair, how she called him piccolo, how she once tried to catch a firefly and accidentally set the porch on fire. Nico laughs when he tells those stories — real, bright laughs that make Will look over from the couch with that soft, helpless expression he gets — but eventually, always, something shifts. The laughter thins. His eyes go distant, like he’s listening for footsteps that will never come down the hallway.
Clara knows better than to ask questions when that happens. She is mischievous, not cruel. She just quietly presses herself against his side and lets him rest a hand on her hair, and the story ends where it needs to.
Anyway, all of this is to say: names matter. Names tell you where you come from. Names tell you who raised you.
Which brings Clara, naturally, to the greatest naming incident of her early childhood.
Because once upon a time — specifically between the ages of one and two — she called Will tesoro for an entire year. An entire year. She had heard Nico say it so often, in that warm, low voice he only uses when he’s not pretending to be terrifying, that she simply assumed it was his name.
It was not.
Will, for reasons no one will ever fully understand, didn’t catch on immediately. He just thought Clara was going through a vocabulary phase. And then one day, while she was building a tower of blocks taller than her ego, she’d proudly announced, “Look, tesoro, I made it stand up!”
Will had frozen. Nico had choked on his coffee. Lucia had vanished behind the sofa like she’d been hit with a spell.
The day Will realised what she meant — that Clara had been toddling around calling him treasure like it was a job title — and promptly burst into tears was, according to Nico, one of the purest moments of his entire life.
Clara remembers it fondly. Mostly because Lucia, mortified on her sister’s behalf, locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out until Will had “stopped being so emotional.”
Clara thinks, privately, that if anyone should be allowed to cry at being called treasure, it’s probably Will. But she would never say that out loud. She has some sense of dignity.
Anyway. This is Clara’s family — loud in some ways, quiet in others, ridiculous at nearly all times, the kind of household where chaos and affection exist in a constant, mutually supportive ecosystem. The early-December light is pale and sharp against the frost outside, and the box of Christmas decorations sits waiting in the corner like an omen, promising glitter, broken baubles, and at least three arguments about which string of lights “looks least cursed.” Clara studies it with the solemnity of someone preparing for battle and decides she is ready for the next part of the story.
Because today is about the tree, and the chaos that comes with it, and the kind of glitter that will be found in their bedsheets until April, and the catastrophe she will absolutely deny responsibility for, even if there are witnesses, security footage, and irrefutable forensic evidence. She is, after all, a Solace-di Angelo. Denial is her birthright.
But before all of that — before the lights and the noise and Nico’s annual fight with the extension cords — she thinks it’s important that you understand one thing, something foundational, something essential to the narrative she has taken it upon herself to deliver with accuracy, dignity, and just the right amount of dramatic flair.
Clara Bianca Solace-di Angelo is the narrator here.
And she has plans.
***
By the time breakfast is over, the entire world outside their windows has turned white — not a shy, half-hearted dusting, but the full theatrical commitment of a snow globe someone has shaken far too enthusiastically. Clara presses her forehead to the glass with the solemnity of someone observing fate unfold. Lucia hovers behind her, clutching a book to her chest, making small unhappy sounds at the concept of “fresh air.”
Will appears in the doorway wearing three layers, two scarves, and the look of a man ready to organise a family memory. Nico stands beside him holding a travel mug of coffee, looking like he has accepted his destiny with great personal reluctance.
Clara finds all of this deeply charming.
Outside, the snow has transformed their whole property — acres of land, trees weighed down with white, the long slope behind the house already calling to Clara like a personal invitation to chaos. She loves living out here, even if she complains dramatically whenever she remembers other children live within walking distance of one another. But their house is big, drafty in the poetic way, and surrounded by enough land for training, exploring, and occasionally witnessing Nico decapitate rogue branches with a sword. That makes up for the isolation.
Lucia trudges through the snow like a small, disgruntled academic forced into a wilderness expedition. She clings to Will’s sleeve, partly for warmth, partly because she is naturally clingy, and partly because she is convinced the snow is “too quiet” and therefore suspicious. Her hair — Will’s hair — catches the light in a soft golden halo, and she narrows her dark blue eyes at the sky like it has personally wronged her.
Clara, meanwhile, is thriving. She has Nico’s colouring — dark hair, dark eyes, a scowl that can be deployed at will — but absolutely none of his restraint. She sprints into the yard with combat-level enthusiasm, testing the density of the snow in her hands. It packs well. Perfect for throwing.
Will tries, bless him, to start everyone off with something wholesome like making a snowman. He launches into a gentle monologue about teamwork and seasonal joy.
Clara ignores all of this and nails Nico in the shoulder with a perfect snowball.
Nico turns slowly, assessing the trajectory with the intensity of a man surveying a battlefield. There is a long, fragile silence in which Will says something faintly horrified like “Clara, sweetie—maybe— we don’t—” before Nico calmly packs a snowball with terrifying precision and hurls it at Will’s chest hard enough to make him stagger.
This, naturally, begins a war.
Lucia ends up on Will’s team, mostly by default, because she hides behind him like a shy moon orbiting a panicked sun. Will attempts something he calls “tactics,” which in practice means shouting things like “ADVANCE WITH CONFIDENCE” even though nobody is advancing and the only available cover is a sad collection of trees. Nico fights with elegant, surgical accuracy, which is unfair but deeply impressive. Clara manages to hit Will in the face twice. Will pretends to be traumatised. Lucia tells him to stop being dramatic.
By lunchtime, they are wet, freezing, starving, and—as Clara notes with pride—already tracking snow into every corner of the house. They eat grilled cheese and tomato soup while Nico mutters darkly about laundry and Will tries to defrost his glasses over the stove. Lucia curls up with her book again, thawing like a shy forest creature returned indoors.
The afternoon becomes a rotation of family activities: cookie-making, hot chocolate drinking, and Clara making increasingly ambitious snow-angels that look, in her words, “like battle scenes if you squint.”
And somewhere between all of this, Clara’s mind drifts to her ever-growing internal roster of Important People, because most days in this house — most weekends — someone is visiting or dropping in or letting themselves be emotionally ambushed by Clara Bianca Solace-di Angelo.
Aunt Hazel and Uncle Frank live closest. Their kids are technically Clara’s cousins, but Clara classifies them as “Sparring Partners One and Two” because they take her backyard training sessions Very Seriously and once helped her construct a booby-trapped snow fort that Nico pretended to disapprove of while absolutely admiring the structural integrity.
Uncle Percy and Aunt Annabeth come when work allows, always bringing their children — three small, feral creatures who treat furniture like potential mountain ranges and who give Will at least one minor cardiac event per visit. Annabeth says this is character-building. Will says this is how he dies.
Aunt Piper appears in bursts of expensive perfume and questionable advice. Uncle Leo arrives like a localised weather event, usually trailing smoke or glitter depending on what he “didn’t mean to set on fire this time.” Aunt Kayla brings archery supplies, Uncle Austin brings snacks, Uncle Cecil brings an aura of mischief so potent Clara has been instructed — repeatedly — to “never, under any circumstances, follow his example.” And Aunt Lou Ellen — Aunt Lou Lou — brings spells she absolutely promises are safe.
The nickname had started with Lucia, naturally. Lucia, who rarely speaks above a gentle murmur, once whispered “Aunt Lou Lou” because it sounded the same as Lulu, the name Will used when she was tiny and soft-cheeked and learning language like it was a cautious new animal. Lou Ellen had lit up like someone had handed her a medal for Best Honorary Witch-Aunt, and Clara — never one to miss a good branding opportunity — adopted the nickname immediately. Now everyone uses it. Even Nico.
Clara loves when the house is full, full, full — people everywhere, noise everywhere, magic everywhere — and Nico leaning in the kitchen doorway with his mug of coffee, pretending to be emotionally above all of it while secretly smiling into the steam.
But today, strangely, wonderfully, it’s just the four of them.
By the time the early-winter sky begins to dim — that soft blue slipping into gold slipping into the kind of darkness that feels like a blanket — the house is warm, the cookies are cooling, Lucia is reading again in the corner with her feet tucked under her, and Clara is vibrating with the righteous anticipation of someone about to commit an act of profound festivity.
Because next is the tree. And Clara fully intends to ascend that tree like a creature born to conquer heights.
***
Tree-decorating begins — as it always does in the Solace-di Angelo household — with glorious, well-intentioned disaster dressed up as holiday tradition, the kind that looks charming in theory and mildly life-threatening in practice.
The tree itself has the audacity to stand in the corner of the great room like some smug green monarch, towering over Will, towering over Nico, towering even over the ladder currently wobbling against its side like a prop in a slapstick tragedy. Of course it’s tall. Everything in their house is tall. The ceilings arc overhead like the inside of a cathedral someone forgot to consecrate; the windows stretch from floor to sky so dramatically that sunlight arrives each morning as if making an entrance; the fireplaces are so cavernous Uncle Leo once proclaimed he could “absolutely roast a whole boar in there, no problem,” and then spent the rest of the afternoon sketching diagrams to prove it while Nico muttered dark things in Italian.
Clara is clever—her dads make sure she knows it—and she notices everything. She knows most houses do not behave like this. Her friend Ava lives in a perfectly normal-sized home where the walls don’t echo and the hallway doesn’t feel like the beginning of a heroic quest. Ava once asked her if she lived in a museum; Clara had answered yes, very politely, and then inquired whether Ava would like to make a small donation. For snacks.
But Clara also knows exactly why their house is the way it is.
Because Nico has a never-ending stream of money from his dad — the sort of ancient, inexhaustible wealth that arrives in discreet envelopes and enchanted direct deposits, as though the universe keeps trying to apologise for something it broke a very long time ago. The kind of money that buys you sweeping staircases and acres of land and the kind of kitchen island that makes Aunt Piper whisper, “Okay, but this is actually obscene.”
She remembers the day she overheard Will muttering, with the weary fondness of a man married to a prince of the dead, about Nico being a “nepo baby of the Underworld.” She had repeated it with great enthusiasm for approximately forty-eight hours. It had been glorious. She’d done voices. She’d done impressions. She’d done a whole speech in front of the cat.
Until Nico reminded her — very calmly, with the cold precision of someone trained in both patience and vengeance — that she herself was the daughter of two of the most powerful demigods currently drawing breath, and the granddaughter of one Olympian and one literal King of the Underworld.
Clara had shut up. For all of five entire minutes.
Now, though, she stands with Lucia at the base of the tree, supervising with the authority of someone who once won a karate medal and therefore considers herself qualified to manage large-scale operations. Her parents are attempting to loop a string of lights around something roughly the height of a minor titan. The scene has the same energy as watching two brilliant academics attempt to assemble IKEA furniture: hopeful, misguided, destined for bloodshed.
Lucia is chewing on her sleeve, eyes enormous, shoulders tucked up like she’s bracing for impact. She looks so much like Will when he panics — that soft, worried crease between her brows, the way she forgets her hands exist unless they’re clinging to fabric — that Clara feels a brief and unreasonable flash of sibling affection before she remembers Lucia once tattled on her for climbing the kitchen cabinets.
“Dad,” Lucia whispers, barely audible, “be careful. That ladder… it wobbles.”
“It’s perfectly safe,” Will says from three rungs up, which is exactly what someone on the brink of certain death would say. He gestures in a large, sweeping arc that immediately endangers three branches and possibly one heirloom ornament. “I’m an adult. A trained professional. I know precisely what I’m doing.”
He then pauses, looks down, and narrows his eyes at Clara in the way doctors narrow their eyes at suspicious X-rays.
“Which,” he adds, voice dripping with parental significance, “is why I am doing this. Not certain eight-year-olds — who won’t be named — even though they have very obvious plans for this ladder.”
Clara places one dramatic hand over her chest, wounded in a way Shakespeare would applaud. “I wasn’t even thinking about climbing it.”
She absolutely was. She has been imagining the triumphant view from the top since breakfast, complete with waving at the mortals below like a benevolent queen.
Nico stands at the foot of the ladder, holding the tangled lights with the quiet resignation of a man who has battled monsters, ghosts, giants, Titans, at least one primordial nightmare-being from the dawn of creation — and yet appears genuinely unsettled by festive home décor. His expression suggests his ancient enemies were easier.
“Will,” Nico says, calm and precise, “you’re wrapping them around the same branch again.”
“I’m strategising.”
“You’re looping.”
“I’m establishing a lighting pattern.”
“You’re looping, Will.”
Clara beams. This is her favourite part of Christmas: watching her parents attempt cooperative tasks while gently insulting one another. In her professional opinion, it is better than when Percy swears in Ancient Greek and Annabeth pretends not to understand him.
Lucia edges even closer to Nico, small fingers tugging timidly at his sleeve. “Are you sure he’s okay?”
“Yes,” Nico says, reaching down to squeeze her hand in that steady, grounding way of his. “He’s fine. In fact, he’s overreacting less than usual today.”
“I heard that,” Will mutters from above, wobbling alarmingly as he tries to look offended and competent at the same time.
Clara watches her soft-spoken sister lean into Nico’s side, worry easing the instant he rests a warm hand on her shoulder. Lucia is all quiet edges and careful thinking, gentle the way snowfall is gentle until it suddenly isn’t. Clara sometimes envies her that softness — that permission to be shy, to be cautious, to let the world approach slowly rather than charge at it with flying kicks.
Mostly, though, Clara just feels protective of her, the way all good sisters do, even if Lucia technically has four years on her.
Clara doesn’t know everything about why they ended up here — in a house so enormous it echoes, with ceilings high enough that sound has to think about whether it wants to come back down, and a security system that hums quietly through the walls like a second heartbeat — but she knows enough to paint the outline.
She knows there were wars, not pretend ones like Lucia’s fantasy novels but real ones, the kinds with names nobody uses unless the girls are asleep. She knows both her dads fought in them, bled in them, lost friends in them, and returned home in pieces that didn’t always fit back together neatly. She knows they don’t tell her and Lucia the whole story, not because they’re hiding terrible secrets but because they want their daughters to worry about the tree and the snow and who stole the last gingerbread biscuit, not about monsters they can’t yet name.
Clara has perfected the art of paying attention while others are busy assuming she isn’t. She notices things, even the things she’s not supposed to. She sees the way Will loosens whenever she or Lucia laugh, how something in his chest unwinds as if joy were a kind of healing he can actually feel.
She sees how Nico subtly places himself between the girls and the window whenever an unfamiliar car pulls up the drive, shoulders angled like a shield, even though they live miles from anything except trees, snowdrifts, and the occasional very confused Amazon delivery driver. She sees how both her dads breathe easier when the biggest danger in the room is the oven timer shrieking or Clara accidentally extracting a spark from the fireplace poker.
And she understands. They didn’t get to have a normal childhood. They didn’t get winters like this — snow that doesn’t mean danger, quiet that isn’t the prelude to something terrible, a home that isn’t built out of fear. So they made one instead. For her and for Lucia. And maybe for themselves too, though they’ll never admit it.
“Okay,” Will announces from the ladder with the kind of dramatic bravado usually reserved for quest-ending declarations, wobbling only slightly as he reaches the highest safe rung (which, Clara suspects, would normally be labelled “absolutely forbidden” if he weren’t the one on it). “Lights secured. Pattern flawless. No injuries. See? Perfectly—”
The ladder shifts. Not by a lot — two inches, maybe — but in this house two inches is the distance between “festive cheer” and “somebody grab the ambrosia.” Lucia lets out a tiny gasp and clutches Nico’s sleeve in a way that makes the fabric rustle; Clara, meanwhile, whoops with entirely inappropriate glee, because mild danger is delicious.
Nico closes his eyes for a long, slow moment that seems to encompass several centuries of regret. “Will,” he says, calm in the way only someone on the verge of losing it can be, “get down.”
“I’m fine!” Will insists, scrambling down like a blond squirrel with a medical degree. By the time his feet hit the floorboards he straightens his jumper with exaggerated dignity, chin tilted like a man who has never once caused chaos via ladder. “I had it handled.”
Nico gives him a look Clara has only ever seen him direct at malfunctioning microwaves, minor gods, and Uncle Leo when he says the words “trust me” before lighting something on fire. Will pretends not to see it, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve.
Clara watches both of them with the fond exasperation of a child who knows she is being raised by two people who survived the apocalypse and yet somehow cannot hang Christmas lights without nearly dying. Lucia relaxes incrementally at Nico’s side, her shoulders dropping as she leans into his steadying presence, and Clara thinks — not for the first time — that despite everything they’ve lived through, her dads have built something warm and whole out of all the broken pieces.
The ornament boxes are dragged out from the storage closet by Nico, whose face immediately shifts into that same determined, mildly haunted grimness he reserves for battles, taxes, and any time the heating system makes a noise he doesn’t trust. Lucia hovers beside him, pale hair falling into her eyes, touching the edge of a cardboard box as though she might divine which ornaments inside are “too fragile” or “too emotionally significant.”
Will, meanwhile, declares, “Festive uniform time!” with a flourish dramatic enough to startle even the cat, let alone the two girls. He says it like a proclamation, like he’s about to knight them all in the name of Christmas. His hand dives into a paper bag with the reverence of someone retrieving priceless artefacts, and then—triumphantly—he produces the headbands.
Not just any headbands.
Glittery felt antlers in increasingly unhinged states of existence. One set has bells that jingle with the faint desperation of something that’s been dropped a lot. One has little embroidered snowflakes so delicate Lucia gasps softly when she sees them. And one—the legendary one—has a pom-pom that looks like it has survived war, weather, and possibly time travel. Clara stares at it with genuine respect.
She gets her headband first. Will crouches, both hands sliding into her dark curls, brushing the strands back, smoothing them behind her ears with that impossibly gentle touch he uses whenever they’re sick or sleepy or pretending not to be crying during Disney movies. Clara pretends she hates the fussing, but the warmth of his hands makes her stomach glow in a way she will never, ever admit.
He settles the antlers on her head with healer-precise alignment, nudging them until they sit just right.
Clara rolls her eyes dramatically. “I look ridiculous.”
“You look festive,” Will corrects, kissing her forehead in one swift, practiced motion. “There is a difference. An important one.”
Lucia has been hovering the whole time, pale hair falling into her eyes, hands clasped in front of her like she is witnessing a sacred rite. When Will turns to her, she straightens—not much, but enough. Enough for Clara to see the hope there.
Her turn is slower, gentler. Will tucks Lucia’s pale hair back with careful fingers, pausing to make sure she’s comfortable, because Lucia startles like a deer when she’s anxious. But today she stands still, soft and brave in her quiet way. When the embroidered-snowflake antlers settle onto her head, she smiles—tiny, secret, like a glow slipping between clouds.
Will leans in and presses a kiss to the crown of her head.
Clara sees it: the way Nico’s shoulders drop a fraction across the room, the way something in his expression melts in a way only Will and the girls ever manage.
Then it’s Nico’s turn.
Will lifts the final pair of antlers — red, shiny, with a glitter-crusted Rudolph nose bouncing at the front — and turns toward Nico with the unmistakable expression of a man about to cause mischief on purpose.
Nico goes very still. “Don’t.”
Will does not listen. Will never listens. Instead, he grins —not a normal grin — the specific one that means he has already made the terrible decision and is now merely honouring the performance of pretending he hasn’t. He rises onto his toes to place the antlers on Nico’s head before Nico can so much as shift his centre of gravity.
The glittered nose bobs twice, as if testing the air, then settles with triumphant stability.
Nico closes his eyes, inhales through his nose with the despair of a man who has seen the rise and fall of civilisations, and mutters something in Italian that Clara is ninety-nine percent certain would earn anyone else a stern lecture about inappropriate language.
Will pats his cheek sweetly. “Perfect.”
Nico opens his eyes very slowly, like a man evaluating every life choice that has delivered him to this moment. “You are deeply lucky the children are present.”
Clara snorts. Lucia hides a smile behind her mug. Will looks absolutely delighted with himself.
And Rudolph-Nico, glittered nose and all, accepts his fate with the weary dignity of a man who married into this chaos fully aware of what he was signing up for.
Once properly antlered, Will retreats to the kitchen to orchestrate hot chocolate — his dramatic, hand-whisked masterpiece, not the “insulting powdered stuff,” which he pronounces with the same disgust he reserves for broken thermometers and store-bought pesto.
Nico lifts Clara effortlessly so she can hang the first ornament. She chooses the sparkly gold snowflake, obviously, because she possesses taste, aesthetic clarity, and a visionary sense of what a tree should look like.
“Higher, dad!” she commands, wriggling upward like she has somewhere to be.
“You’re going to pull something,” Nico sighs, already lifting her higher. His voice is the perfect blend of resignation and affection — the same tone he uses when she attempts parkour off the sofa. “One day, I swear, I would like to decorate a tree without risking injury.”
“That,” Clara declares, hooking the ornament with flair, “sounds boring.”
Lucia hovers below them, holding an ornament shaped like a tiny ceramic book. She turns it over gently, tracing the painted spine with her thumb. She doesn’t ask to be lifted — she never does, as if the wanting itself is too loud — but Nico crouches beside her anyway, softening in that way he only ever does for her and Will.
“Luce mia,” he murmurs, “which one do you want to put up?”
Lucia points, small and certain, and Nico gathers her up in a careful, practiced lift. Lucia tucks herself against him instinctively, pale-gold hair falling over his shoulder as she places the ornament on a branch with the reverence of someone installing an artefact in a museum. Clara would tease her if it didn’t look so annoyingly sweet.
Will reappears carrying four steaming mugs, the scent of cinnamon and chocolate curling around him like he’s personally invented winter comfort. “Hot chocolate,” he announces, “for decorators of exceptional talent and very poor ladder judgement.”
“How many marshmallows?” Clara demands, narrowing her eyes. Will has a checkered past where marshmallow distribution is concerned; one time Lucia got three and Clara only got one, and the household has never known peace since.
“Two for you,” Will says, handing her a mug, “and extra whipped cream.”
Ah. Now that’s service.
Lucia tilts her mug just enough to peek inside. “Three?”
“Obviously,” Will says, ruffling her pale hair. “It’s the rule.”
And it is the Lucia Rule — one born the year Will realised Lucia hated whipped cream with that quiet, polite revulsion she saves for poorly written book endings. So while Clara gets mountains of whipped cream (“for artistic children who require enrichment”), Lucia gets three marshmallows, exactly three, never two, never four, never a rogue mini marshmallow bobbing around like a lawless comet.
Lucia beams — tiny, warm, glowing like the fairy lights.
Clara rolls her eyes in the dramatic fashion of someone pretending not to enjoy being spoiled, then takes a victorious sip of whipped cream and cocoa.
They sip between ornament placement, the room filling with layers of light — the warm spill of the fireplace, the fairy lights flickering in the branches, the faint reflection of snow drifting past the tall windows like quiet applause.
Clara hangs ornaments at lightning speed, which she considers a sign of both genius and athletic prowess. Lucia hangs hers slowly, thoughtfully, like each ornament deserves a monologue. Nico keeps having to re-space Clara’s entire cluster because apparently “putting all the sparkly ones together” is not a valid artistic movement.
Will climbs the ladder again, muttering about “upper branch distribution,” and Nico mutters back about “avoidable back injury,” and Clara can hear the fondness threading through every word — like the tree isn’t the only thing wrapped in lights.
***
Eventually, like many great warriors before her, Clara is defeated.
She makes her move — a flawless, cunning ascent up the lower branches, her hand already reaching for the sturdy bit of trunk like she is born for this — and Nico does not even let her get halfway.
One moment she is climbing, the next she is scooped clean off the tree like a misbehaving woodland creature. Nico turns with her in his arms, spinning her once, twice, three times until the whole room tilts and Clara is giggling helplessly into his shoulder, antlers slipping sideways.
“No climbing,” he says, trying to sound stern while grinning into her hair. “Absolutely no climbing.”
“I wasn’t climbing,” Clara lies beautifully, still laughing.
“You were definitely climbing,” Will calls from across the room, the traitor.
But it doesn’t matter, because eventually the lights are finished, the ornaments are balanced (mostly), and the tinsel has been draped with both artistic brilliance (Clara) and delicate emotional intention (Lucia). Nico has performed three minor rescues, Will has issued two “stern parental” warnings, and someone — probably Clara, definitely not admitting guilt — has eaten half the remaining marshmallows.
By the time they all drift toward the sofa, the whole room smells like cinnamon, pine needles, and faintly singed tinsel. The four of them fall into place the way they always do: a quiet, accidental collapse of limbs and blankets and hot-chocolate drowsiness, like the end of a long battle fought with glitter instead of swords.
Clara and Lucia settle between Will and Nico as a Christmas movie flickers on the TV — something old and soft, the kind with hazy edges and sentimental music that Lucia adores. Clara tolerates it only because Will gives them one Hershey kiss per commercial break. (He pretends it’s a reward system. Clara pretends she doesn’t live for it.)
Lucia insists she is “too old” to fall asleep on her dads now — she is twelve, practically an elder — but she’s already tucked under Nico’s arm, small and pale and warm, breathing slow little snowflake breaths. Her hair spreads over his jumper like a spilled halo, and Nico strokes her back absentmindedly, slow and steady, in that quiet way he has when he’s thinking too deeply. His eyes are on the screen, but the rest of him is somewhere else entirely.
Clara presses herself into Will’s side, her forehead tucked neatly under his chin, her body curled against his like she’s been doing it her whole life — because she has. She pretends to drift off, keeps her breathing even and delicate, because being carried upstairs is one of the last great privileges of childhood and she is determined to maintain custody of it for as long as possible.
Will’s hand slips through her dark curls in those soft, absent waves he doesn’t even realise he uses. Clara can feel his heartbeat through his shirt — steady, warm, familiar — the safest rhythm she has ever known. The one that always steadies Nico too, even when he pretends it doesn’t.
The movie slides toward its end. The only light comes from the tree — soft gold and winter blue — and the flicker of the fire painting slow patterns across the ceiling. The snow taps at the tall windows like it’s trying to join them. The whole house breathes in that deep, contented way big old houses do when everyone inside is safe.
And it’s then — in the hush of almost-sleep, with Lucia breathing softly against Nico’s chest and Will’s heartbeat steady against her cheek — that Clara hears Nico exhale. That long, heavy kind of sigh he only ever makes in December.
Will notices, of course he notices; he always does. Clara hears the soft rasp of fabric as he turns his head toward Nico.
“You okay?” Will whispers, the words shaped gently, like he’s afraid of breaking the moment or waking the girls.
There’s a pause — long, fragile — and then Nico breathes out, low and tired at the edges.
“Christmas always makes me miss her,” he murmurs. “Bianca.” His voice softens even further, a thread pulled thin. “She hated carols and pretended to be allergic to tinsel, but she always ended up in the middle of everything anyway. Like she couldn’t help it.”
Will shifts slightly, careful not to disturb Clara tucked under his chin. When he answers, it’s with that quiet, steady warmth he never uses on himself. “Yeah,” he breathes. “I know. I’ve been thinking about Lee and Michael more lately too.” His thumb rubs slow circles over Clara’s shoulder, a subconscious comfort. “Winter just… does it. Makes the quiet bits feel louder.”
Clara keeps perfectly still — the advantage of being small and sneaky — but she listens hard. Bianca she knows: the stories, the soft look Nico gets, the way her name feels like something sacred. Lee and Michael she knows too, in the kid way: the photos on the bookshelf, the way Will goes quiet sometimes, the warm little smile he gets when he remembers something about them. She files the names away again, tidy and careful, like adding two more treasures to her drawer.
Nico breathes out, softer. “I keep thinking about all of them,” he says. “Our siblings. Jason.” His voice shifts on Jason’s name — heavier, but also fond in a way that’s lived a long time. “He should’ve been here. He’d have taken over everything and acted like he was doing us a favour. He’d have carried both girls at once just to show off.”
Will huffs a soft, aching laugh. “He’d have bullied us into matching pyjamas.”
“He would’ve,” Nico agrees, almost smiling. His hand drifts over Lucia’s arm, thumb brushing rhythmic little circles that make her sink deeper into sleep. “I just wish they’d seen this. The girls. The house. You. The way everything got softer after the hard parts.” His voice thins again, barely there. “They would’ve liked knowing it turned out like this.”
Will nudges him lightly under the blanket — a small press of foot to foot, intimate and habitual. “They’d be proud,” he says, voice a soft ache. “Of them. Of us.” Another pause, softer still. “Of you, most of all.”
“That’s debatable,” Nico mutters, but Clara can hear the smile he’s trying to bury in it. One of his shy ones, the kind he almost never lets anyone see.
Will huffs a quiet laugh through his nose. “It isn’t. Not even remotely.”
Silence settles after that — not heavy, not sad, just warm. Full. The kind that makes the house feel like it’s breathing around them, all soft light and quiet magic and hot chocolate still lingering in the air. Clara can hear Lucia’s little sleep-sighs, the soft pop of a log shifting in the fireplace, the faint brush of Nico’s fingers smoothing Lucia’s hair.
Will murmurs something then — too soft for Clara to catch — and Nico hums a reply, squeezing Will’s hand where it rests loosely behind the girls. They talk like that for a while, low and close, about the crooked star and cookie experiments and whether the girls might want to go ice skating tomorrow if it stops snowing. Their voices blend into something steady and tender, the kind of sound Clara could fall asleep inside forever.
She can feel sleep tugging at her — warm, slow, tempting — but she holds it off with the stubborn determination of someone who has Very Important Plans. The room is soft around her, all tree-light reflections and fading dialogue, and for a moment she’s sure she’s drifting… until Nico’s voice threads quietly through the hush.
It’s barely more than breath, softer than snow settling on a window ledge, the kind of softness he only uses when he forgets anyone might hear him.
“I never thought I’d get something like this.”
Will’s answer comes just as quietly, but thicker somehow — like he has to push the words past a lot of feeling to get them out. Clara doesn’t have the vocabulary for that kind of tenderness yet, but her chest recognises it anyway, warm and aching.
“You deserved it,” he murmurs. “Every bit of it.”
Clara stays exactly where she is — breathing slow and peaceful, the Lucia Method, perfected and field-tested — but inside she is alert, wide awake, gathering her strength for the absolute marathon of pretending to be unconscious.
The credits begin their quiet crawl up the screen. Will shifts, the sofa dipping under his weight, and Clara feels the faint jostle of him leaning across both girls toward Nico. There’s the soft sound of a kiss — one of those slow, tired ones that means something — and she has to fight the primal urge to make a dramatic gagging noise.
Normally she would. Normally she does. Lucia once told her she had to stop doing that because “people might think you’re homophobic,” which Clara found deeply unfair and profoundly stupid.
Clara has no objection to romance in principle. She is perfectly happy with other people kissing. What she objects to — very specifically — is being forced to witness her own parents doing it. There is nothing political about being traumatised by watching your father put his tongue in your other father’s mouth. If that makes her “homophobic,” then fine. She’ll take the jail time.
But for now she swallows the urge, partly because she’s undercover as a Sleeping Child, and partly because she really does love moments like this — the quiet, the warmth, the way her dads soften around each other like the whole world finally decided to give them a break.
The fire crackles. The room glows. Nico murmurs something too soft to catch. Will murmurs back.
Clara waits.
She waits like a hunter. Like a strategist. Like someone who has spent three consecutive Decembers honing the exquisite art of being carried up the stairs by unsuspecting parents who think she's already dreaming.
And then she hears it: Will’s quiet exhale, followed by Nico’s matching one — a syncopated little sigh-duet of exhausted parents — and Nico’s whisper:
“We should take them up.”
Clara feels victory fizz through her chest like soda.
Success.
Lucia goes first, Nico gathers her the way he always does — with that grave, deliberate tenderness he reserves for the things he loves most — one arm under her legs, one around her back, lifting her as though sleep has turned her to glass. Lucia folds into him instantly, cheek pressed to the wool of his jumper, pale hair falling over his shoulder in a way that makes her look less like a twelve-year-old human girl and more like some small, moonlit creature who wandered into his orbit by accident. She always looks peaceful in his arms. Peaceful in that ancient, uncanny way that only sleeping children and very old gods can manage.
Clara, meanwhile, prepares herself.
Will gets to her second. She feels his arms slip beneath her with the kind of confidence that comes from long practice, like he could do this blindfolded and still not jostle her. He lifts her with warm, steady strength — healer strength — the kind that promises safety before he even speaks. Clara keeps her face slack, her limbs limp, channeling every ounce of dramatic ability she has ever inherited from her father(s).
Something brushes her forehead as he stands — maybe his chin, maybe the edge of his collar — and it smells like cinnamon, detergent, and the faint, impossible scent she privately categorises as dad. He carries her up the stairs with the focused silence of a man escorting priceless artefacts through a museum, and she remembers — with smug, glowing vindication — that he made them brush their teeth during the last ad break.
“You’ll thank me later,” he’d said, wielding a toothbrush like a weapon of justice.
Clara is thanking him now with the power of her mind.
Lucia’s door opens first. Nico slips inside with that soft-footed reverence he uses in temples, graveyards, and children’s bedrooms. Clara hears the whisper of blankets, the rustle of Lucia being settled, and the low murmur of Italian shaped like a lullaby. Then the faint press of a kiss. Then silence.
Will eases her own door open with the gentleness of someone cracking the seal on a rare book. Clara maintains her perfect corpse impression as he lays her down, tucks the quilt around her in slow, careful sweeps, smoothing the corners with absurd precision — as if she might slide through a gap if the edges aren’t anchored correctly. His hand drifts through her curls, slow and warm and rhythmic, and she feels her resolve wobble for a dangerous moment. Then he bends, presses a soft kiss to her temple, and Clara very nearly ruins the whole operation with a sigh.
She does not sigh.
She is a professional.
Nico enters a moment later, carrying that cold-edged quiet he always brings in from the hallway. He crosses to her bed, bends down, and kisses her forehead — his kisses are always cooler than Will’s, always edged with some crisp winter air he can’t quite shake — and whispers, “Ti voglio bene, piccola.”
It hits her square in the chest, still she does not move a muscle.
Nico straightens slowly. For a moment he just watches her, something soft and aching flickering behind his eyes — something she doesn’t quite understand but knows is important.
“She looks so much like Bianca,” he says, barely above a breath.
Will comes to stand beside him, his hand brushing Nico’s arm in a gesture so small and intimate Clara can feel it without seeing it. “Yeah,” he whispers back. “She really does.”
They linger. Two silhouettes framed by the soft gold of the hallway, shoulders almost touching, the quiet between them full of the kind of affection Clara pretends she doesn’t notice but absolutely collects for later analysis. They look at her once more in that stupid, melty way they sometimes do — the way that makes her feel warm and annoyed at the same time — and then the light clicks off, the door closes, and their footsteps soften down the hall like a secret retreating into the dark.
Clara waits — one beat, two, three — because discipline is important in matters of espionage, especially when the targets are her dads, who are catastrophically easy to read. Lucia once told her she was dramatic for conducting “post-mission surveillance,” which is rich coming from someone who cries at animated films and hogs all the marshmallows, but whatever. Clara forgives her. Mostly.
Only then does she let the smile unfurl, slow and victorious, blooming warm as the tree lights downstairs. She has succeeded. She has been carried. She has, as usual, been adored far more openly than she will ever admit she likes. And best of all, she is loved beyond measure — by two dads who wear their hearts like flashing Christmas decorations and by a sister who pretends to be grown-up but still slips her extra chocolate coins when she thinks no one is looking.
Clara pretends she doesn’t know any of this — but she feels it everywhere, like the glow under her skin. And tonight, wrapped in it, she allows herself the final, private truth of the mission: she wouldn’t trade any of them for the world.