Morrigan woke on Christmas morning to the smells of cinnamon, citrus, and woodsmoke. A fire roared cheerfully in the hearth, and hanging on her headboard was a fat red stocking, overstuffed with treats.

She tipped it upside down, and into her lap spilled a treasure of chocolate, clementines, and gingerbread, a shiny pink pomegranate, a knitted scarf that looked like a fox, a pair of red mittens, a gold-and-purple tin of Pakulski’s Pickled Sugarplums, a small clothbound book called Finnegan’s Faerie Tales, a deck of silver-backed cards, and a wooden hairbrush with a ballerina painted on the handle. All this, just for her! Saint Nicholas had outdone himself.

Morrigan pulled on the soft woolen mittens and held them to her face, remembering much less satisfying Christmases past. The Crows were never big on gifts. Once, long ago, she’d worked up the courage to ask Corvus if she might get a surprise at Christmas that year, and to her delight he’d said yes. After weeks of anticipation Morrigan jumped out of bed on Christmas morning, excited to see what had been left overnight, and found an envelope at the foot of her bed. Inside was an itemized bill for every cent Corvus had spent that year paying reparations to the Registry Office for Cursed Children on her behalf.

He hadn’t lied, at least. It was a surprise.

As Morrigan worked the gold foil off a chocolate coin with her teeth, her bedroom door flew open and Jack strolled in carrying a piece of paper in one hand and his stocking in the other.

“Jolly Christmas!” Morrigan said. She almost added, Now go back outside and knock, but decided she was too full of Christmas cheer to really mind.

“Glad tidings of Yule to you.” Jack dropped onto her bed, handed her the note, and made himself comfortable, pouring out the contents of his stocking in a pile. He picked out a gingerbread dog and tore off its head. “Except not entirely glad, because Uncle Jove’s been called away.”

“On Christmas morning?” asked Morrigan, reading the note.

“What’s Ma Wei?”

Jack swallowed a mouthful of gingerbread. “One of the middle realms. Probably another explorer missed their scheduled gateway home. He always gets called in on Christmas Day to help some idiot. Ugh—here, you can have this.” He handed Morrigan the pomegranate from his stocking with a look of distaste, and she threw him a couple of her clementines in return.

“You don’t have to take me sledding.” She bit into another chocolate and shrugged. “I don’t even have a sled.”

“What do you think that is, a pony?” said Jack, nodding toward the fireplace.

Morrigan peered over the end of the bed and saw a shiny green sled encircled with gold ribbon. The tag said Jolly Christmas, Mog.

“Wow,” she breathed, quite overwhelmed. Never in her life had she had so many gifts.

“Mine’s red,” said Jack, rolling his eye. “Thinks he’s funny.”

Jupiter didn’t make it back in time for lunch or supper, instead sending his apologies with a messenger. Morrigan might have been disappointed by his absence, except she was far too busy having the greatest Christmas of her life.

The day was marked by a thick, swirling snowfall, courtesy of the Yule Queen. Jack and Morrigan spent the morning sledding down nearby Galbally Hill over and over again and warring with the neighborhood children in an epic snowball fight.

They trudged back to the Deucalion at midday just in time for lunch in the formal dining room. Long tables groaned under the weight of glazed hams, smoked pheasants and roast geese, dishes of fat green sprouts with bacon and chestnuts, golden roast potatoes and honeyed parsnips, boats of thick gravy, crumbly cheeses and braided breads, and bright red crab claws and glistening oysters on ice.

Morrigan and Jack were determined to try a bit of everything (except maybe the oysters), but they both gave up halfway through to lie down in the Smoking Parlor (peppermint smoke: “to aid digestion”), declaring they’d never eat another bite of food as long as they lived. Fifteen minutes later, however, Jack was dutifully plowing through a heaped bowl of trifle and two mince pies, while Morrigan demolished a fluffy white meringue with cream and blackberries.

During Jack’s third trip back to the dining room, while Morrigan lay on a corner sofa and breathed in the soothing mint-green vapors, she heard someone enter the parlor.

“It’s not that I don’t trust him,” said a man’s voice. “He must know what he’s doing. The lad’s a genius.”

Morrigan opened her eyes sleepily. She could just make out two figures through the thick waves of smoke rolling out from the walls—elegant Dame Chanda dressed in flowing silks of red and green, and spry, snowy-haired Kedgeree Burns in his Christmas kilt.

“Too clever for his own good,” Dame Chanda agreed. “But he isn’t immune to making mistakes, Ree-Ree. He’s only human.”

Morrigan wondered hazily if she should let them know they weren’t alone. She was about to clear her throat when—

“Why Morrigan?” said Kedgeree. “Of all the candidates he might have chosen, why her? Where’s her knack?”

“She’s a dear girl—”

“O’ course, o’ course. Grand wee thing. Champion of a gal. But what makes Jupiter think she’s Wundrous Society material?”

“Oh, you know Jupiter,” said Dame Chanda. “He’s always taking on challenges nobody else will. He was the first to climb Mount Ridiculous, you remember. And he went blazing into that troll-infested realm that no one else in the League of Explorers would touch with a hundred-foot pole.”

The concierge chuckled. “Aye, and look at this place. It was a wreck when he found it. He took it on as a hobby and now it’s the grandest hotel in Nevermoor.” His voice had a grave edge. “But you canna’ take on a child as a hobby.”

“No,” agreed Dame Chanda. “At least if he’d failed with the Deucalion, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. You can’t hurt a hotel.”

There was a pause. Morrigan froze and held her breath, worried for a moment that they’d spotted her through the clouds of peppermint smoke.

After some time, Kedgeree sighed heavily. “I know we should keep our noses out, Chanda, but I’m only worried about the poor wee thing. I think he’s setting her up for a terrible disappointment.”

“It’s worse than that,” added Dame Chanda in an ominous voice. “If the Stink finds out she’s here illegally, think of what Jupiter risks. It’s treason. He could go to prison, Kedgeree. His reputation, his career… gone. And not only that, but—”

“The Deucalion,” finished Kedgeree solemnly. “If he’s not careful, he’ll lose the Deucalion. And then where will we all go?”

Morrigan was unsurprised to find herself wandering the halls of the Hotel Deucalion in the middle of the night, trying to banish her stomachache and bad dreams.

It was past midnight when she noticed that the door to Jupiter’s office was ajar. She peeked inside. He sat in a leather armchair by the fire, and on the table beside him was a steaming silver teapot and two small painted glasses. He didn’t even look up. “In you come, Mog.”

Jupiter poured the tea—mint, with swirling green leaves—and stirred a sugar cube into Morrigan’s glass. His eyes flicked up to her face briefly as she took the chair opposite. She thought he looked tired.

“Another nightmare.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re still worried about the Show Trial.”

Morrigan sipped her tea and said nothing. She was used to it by now, the way he always knew these things.

Once again she’d dreamed of epic failure. But this time, instead of ending when the audience began to jeer and boo, the nightmare continued with a parade of vicious, slavering trolls filing into the Trollosseum with clubs, presumably to beat Morrigan to death and put her out of her misery.

“The trial’s next Saturday,” she said pointedly, hoping it would prompt him to tell her, at last, what she was supposed to do, how she was supposed to perform.

He sighed. “Stop worrying so much.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Everything will be fine.”

“You keep saying that too.”

“Because it’s true.”

“But I don’t have a talent!” she said, accidentally splashing tea down the front of her nightgown. “Why am I even doing these trials when I’ll never get into the Society? I can’t ride dragons or—or—sing like an angel. I can’t do anything.” Morrigan found that once she started naming her worries out loud, she couldn’t stop. “What if the Stink finds out I’m here illegally? They’ll kick me out and put you in prison. They’ll take the Deucalion away from you. You—your reputation—your career—” Morrigan’s voice caught in her throat. “You can’t risk all that just for me! What about the staff? What about Jack? You can’t look after him if you’re in prison. And what about—” She faltered, losing her thread.

Jupiter waited for her to continue, smiling politely behind his glass of mint tea. That infuriated Morrigan even more. Was he even worried about whether she’d make it into the Society? Or was this just something he was doing for fun? Was Morrigan just his…hobby?

The thought made something swell up inside her, like a cornered animal rearing back, preparing to force its way out of her rib cage. She put her glass down. It rattled on the tray.

“I want to go home.”

The words were out of her mouth, low and dark, before she’d even thought of saying them. They hung heavily in the air.

“Home?”

“Back to Jackalfax,” she clarified, though she knew Jupiter realized exactly what she meant. He had become very still. “I want to go back. Now. Tonight. I want to tell my family I’m alive. I don’t want to join the Wundrous Society and I don’t—” The words wouldn’t come easily; they fought her at every syllable. “I don’t want to live at the Hotel Deucalion anymore.”

That last bit wasn’t true, but she thought it would be easier if Jupiter thought so.

Morrigan loved the Deucalion, but no matter how many rooms and hallways and floors it had, it would never be big enough to contain her growing dread of the Show Trial. Her worry felt like a monster, like the ghost that haunted the Deucalion’s walls, seeping into her bones like winter so that she could never feel truly warm.

She waited for Jupiter to speak. His face was impassive, and so very still that she thought it might crack, like a porcelain mask. He stared into the fire for a long time.

“Very well,” he said finally. His voice was soft. “We’ll leave at once.”