We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch, a new romantasy novel publishing with Bramble on October 8th.
Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.
But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.
Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand… and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.
“I hate him.”
“Pretty sure I initiated you into that club years ago.”
Iris leans on me to adjust her shoe. “I didn’t sign up for that. You and Kris complain—well, you complain—but I always tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I never wanted to hate Santa.”
I throw a glance over the crowd. This part of Claus Palace is packed with the same group from the Merry Measure tree trimming, all decked out as befitting Christmas at, well, Christmas, only the background is now our massive ballroom. Heavy, deep brown wood adorns the walls, giving the feel of a ski lodge with greenery strung through the rafters and two enormous fireplaces on either end of the room gilding everything and making the air smell woodsy and cozy.
The only imperfection in the scene is the reporters still lurking at the edges of the ballroom.
I willfully put my back to them. Iris and I are off to the side on a stage where a full orchestra usually sits, and it’s easy enough to make it so I only see her and the rear wall of windows that caps off the ballroom.
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“He isn’t Santa,” I say.
Her look of disbelief is puckered, like I’m stretching to make a point. “So he has the white beard and dresses in red because…”
“It’s my dad. It’s a publicity stunt. But he’s not Santa. He’s the King of Christmas. The ideal of Santa exists beyond all of us.” My tone dips, and that makes her frown at me in mild confusion. I know I don’t often get serious, but it shouldn’t be that surprising. “He’s Santa the way you’re the Easter Bunny.”
Iris cracks a smile. “Don’t blow my cover, Claus. I work hard to hide my werebunny transformations from you.”
She makes claws with her fingers and hisses at me.
“We are, need I remind you”—I’m grinning—“currently at a party to welcome a suitor for you, costumed up into believable facsimiles of functioning adults. Don’t blow our cover, Lentora.”
She drops her hands with an eyeroll. “You used to be fun.”
“You’re upset that I won’t hiss at you in public?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, I was too distracted picturing a feral fanged rabbit breaking into little kids’ bedrooms and pilfering their carefully situated pastel baskets.”
She straightens, playing for righteous, but her eyes sparkle. “Well, maybe the next time you try to start something silly and fun, I’ll be too distracted imagining you as Santa, which is honestly a far more horrifying mental picture.”
My head jerks back on an instinctive recoil.
I’ve never really imagined myself as Santa either despite knowing I was born into the role, but for some reason Iris’s easy dismissal of me in that position… hurts. More than it should. I’m sure as hell nothing like my dad, but I’m nothing like the jolly, loving, boundlessly joyful visage of the mythical Santa figure either.
So her flippancy isn’t misplaced.
And it shouldn’t be unsettling.
Iris closes her eyes and scrunches her face. “Like right now. I’m trying to picture it and—oh my god. You look terrible in red.”
“Hilarious.” And honestly, well documented; we’ve established that ruddy hues are not my color.
“No, seriously.” She holds a hand to her mouth. “It’s grotesque—”
Kris bounds up onto the stage. “What’s grotesque?”
Iris opens her eyes and bats her hand at me. “Your brother as Santa.”
“Well, yeah.” Kris sizes me up. “He’s too skinny.”
Now this time I let my offense show. “I’ve been doing those weight training videos you sent me!”
He squints. Sizes me up again. “You have?”
“Fuck you.”
Kris grins and looks back at Iris. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
She spins on me. “How do I look?”
She’s in a lavender dress that’s all descending layers of tulle with clusters of flowers stitched at random intervals. Half of her box braids are looped through a flower crown of tulips and daisies, and in this very Christmas room full of very Christmas people, she’s a riot of springtime and renewal and freshness.
But I don’t tell her any of that and squint at her. “You care?”
“Of course I care, I always care. When this whole thing blows up in our faces, it will not be because of anything I did. I will be perfect. Now, Kris”—she twists her question to him, probably realizing I won’t give her a straight answer and rightly so because it is super messed up that she would equate her physical appearance to being perfect—“how do I look?”
Kris goes as red as the checkerboard print blankets draped over the chairs in the ballroom’s alcoves. But before I can decide whether to intervene, he looks up and down her body.
“Perfect,” he says softly.
Iris must miss his tone, because she says only “Thank you” pointedly, then looks at me. “That’s how you respond when a woman asks how she looks.”
Kris gets an odd expression, eyes still on her profile where she’s looking at me, but he doesn’t seem hurt or rebuffed—it’s more of a well huh. That didn’t work. He’s always handled her obliviousness rather gallantly for someone who proclaims to be in love with her.
“Next time,” I say to Iris, “I will release a sonnet to your beauty.”
She nods, satisfied. “About damn time, Claus.”
“With all the pomp and extravagance of a Taylor Swift midnight single drop.”
“You know, when you say things like that, it’s hard to take your adoration seriously.”
Dad comes up onto the stage, trailed by Neo, as Easter-y as his daughter in pastels and flowers. He ushers Iris away—since his announcement three days ago followed sharply by another announcement of Oh, and now Halloween is vying for Iris’s hand too, isn’t that quaint, he and my dad have kept the two of us out of as many photos together as possible to avoid, quote unquote, “playing favorites.” Even though one of the contenders is also the host of this little competition and has already basically won. Yeah, it’s definitely going to be fair.
Iris wasn’t concerned about how that change of plans looked to Easter. She said her father was certain it would only make their family look desirable. Which made my nose curl, but Iris had shrugged and changed the subject, and I can’t shake the persistent itch that there’s shit she’s not sharing with me. Important shit, important to her.
My eyes dart over the ballroom again, at the individual chatting groups as they munch on hors d’oeuvres. I think back on what Iris said, about losing the trust of our people by backing out on our announced relationship. But none of these people would be concerned about shifting alliances, would they? It wouldn’t negatively affect their lives. They’ll carry on being the noble houses of Christmas no matter what happens.
What do the thousands of people out in North Pole City think? What story is Dad feeding them? I should find it within myself to start reading the tabloids again.
Now that’s a horrifying image.
I tug on the sleeves of my suit jacket. I sent Wren a thank-you gift for the nice blue suit at the tree trimming, and she responded with this number, an azure blazer done with baroque filigree in gold and green. I look fine as hell in it—Christmas Prince, I see no Christmas Prince, just a runway model.
Iris is center stage with our fathers. Dad is in a vibrant red suit, Santa but make it Versace, and the three of them turn forward.
One of our staff pounds on the floor at the rear of the ballroom, yanking all attention to the doors as they open.
The energy of the ballroom shifts. That hunter-level intent I usually feel directed at me and Kris is now pinned on a trio of people, trailed by half a dozen of their staff.
An enormous cloud of smoke pours in behind them, a shifting gray-black whorl that dissolves them into nothing more than silhouettes. There are no cries of alarm, so I’m guessing this is all part of their entrance and what I can only hope is passive-aggressive retaliation for the way Dad displayed our magic when just the Halloween envoys were here.
My eyes cut to Dad’s profile, and at the sight of his barely suppressed scowl, I don’t even try to hide my smirk.
The smoke undulates and shapeless shadows begin darting in and out of the silhouettes, the barest suggestion of something other lurking in the mist. It would be sufficiently “This Is Halloween,” but then a crackle of lightning skitters through the smoke, flashing sickly yellow light on a face here, a disembodied smile there.
The Christmas crowd jumps, a few people letting loose startled laughter.
Kris is one of the people who jumps, but he doesn’t laugh. “Fucking hell,” he mutters.
I spider-walk my fingers up the back of his arm.
He jumps again before cursing and batting me away.
The smoke fades in graceful corkscrews to reveal the people behind the silhouettes, now halfway into the ballroom.
If we’re clinging to the whole Christmas theme, then they’re clinging to a gothic Halloween vibe. No one in their group has a pop of color among their form-fitting black gowns, their sleek onyx suits.
Except for—
I’d thought about researching the Halloween royal family out of a morbid curiosity to see who my Dad is trying to fake-matchmake Iris with. She said she knew who the prince was, or had seen pictures of him at least, and refused to delve any deeper—but I’d never needed to care about anyone outside of Christmas and the Holidays Dad interacts most with, like Easter and Valentine’s Day. Halloween doesn’t allow paparazzi to the extent we do, lucky bastards, so any research would’ve required a dive into specialized Holiday sites, but every time I sat down to do it, I got super paranoid that Dad would check my browser history. And then I realized that yeah, he definitely has people tracking our browser history when we’re staying at the palace, and that idea was mind-numbingly nauseating because I am, in some iterations of myself, a twenty-two-year-old guy with twenty-two-year-old guy hobbies.
But I really, really should’ve risked it and fucking done even a single fucking minute of fucking research because now I’m standing on this stage and half of my mind is screaming at me to inhale but I legitimately cannot remember what muscles that act uses, and the other half of my mind is ravenously consumed with staring at the Halloween Prince.
The last time I saw him, I had his tongue in my mouth outside a bar in New Haven.
He’d just simplified one of my biggest unanswerable questions and then I kissed him and he vanished and I really had started to think I’d made him up, a fever dream brought on by vodka and regret.
But he’s here, he’s real, and he’s disastrously hot, wearing a goddamn corset vest.
The satiny black vest has vertical ribs that taper his chest into his waist in the very definition of a perfect V. I want nothing more than to drop to my knees and weep, good lord how I have never seen a corset vest before—I mean, I’ve seen one, but I’ve never seen one, not on someone whose body looks physically sculpted to fill out this apex of human fashion.
He’s got the only pop of color in the entire group, a scarlet silk button-up under the vest, the color such a deep red that there’s no question it’s meant to symbolize gore and darkness rather than Christmas’s cherry brightness. Tight black pants taper into calf-high combat boots and the tips of his black hair now brush his shoulders, half the strands pulled behind his head, showing—displaying— the blade-edge sharpness of his jaw and cheekbones and the array of piercings up the shell of his left ear. Wide, observant dark eyes rimmed with black liner go from the floor up to my dad and Iris, no emotion at all on his face, but that lack of emotion is reaction enough—I get the distinct feeling he’s pissed to be here. His hands hang at his sides, loosely clenched in fists, most of his fingers set with thick silver rings.
“The royal house of Halloween,” an announcer bellows. “King Ichabod Hallow. Queen Carina Hallow. And their son Prince Hex Hallow.”
His name rebounds in my head, cracking into the parts of my body that have gone immobile, and against every rational thought—I have no rational thoughts, none, not in this moment—I remember how to inhale and I gasp.
Loudly.
Attention swings to me. Dad, glaring; Iris, confused; Kris, like I’ve lost my mind, and I have, because Hex is looking at me now. And he doesn’t seem at all surprised that I’m here, even if there is a beat of recognition; he just emits that same capped fury.
He’s here to fake-compete with me over Iris. And will be staying in Claus Palace until Christmas Eve to keep Halloween appeased until Iris and I can get married. And is at this moment cocking one slender eyebrow and just the contact of his eyes on me yanks forward the memory of his lips beneath mine and fire crawls across my body.
Oh, no.
Oh no no noooo—
Dad turns back to the Halloween contingent. “Welcome to Christmas,” he booms.
Excerpted from The Nightmare Before Kissmas, copyright © 2024 by Sara Raasch.
