Page 40 of The Prince and the Ice King

“You changed things then, before the curse?”

The bitterness that had not dwindled in over two hundred years made Jack’s lips curl. “I certainly did.”

“Is that why you allow such freedoms here? Because you were the same?”

There was no such scorn in Reardon, only the innocence of a youth who’d been hiding all his life. “I allow it because who one loves or lies with shouldn’t matter.”

Reardon smiled, and if Jack had still had doubts about him, all would have been banished in that expression, catching the warmth of the sun in his ruddy cheeks. “I wonder if my father could ever understand that.”

Not if he was anything like Jack’s, but Jack couldn’t imagine this young prince turning out as he had with a cold, brutish figurehead raising him.

“Majesty,” Reardon asked with sudden hesitancy, his eyes falling to the drop-off of the wall, “when you approached other men to… be with, what did you say? How did you win their favor?”

“Besides asking if they wanted a romp in the stables?”

“Surely it wasn’t that easy?” Reardon’s cheeks burned brightly again.

“Sometimes it was. Do you know nothing of wooing, little prince?” Jack asked, knowing the answer, but it still surprised him how virginal those green eyes looked when they blinked at him.

“Isn’t that for women?”

Oh, dear boy.

Reardon was a man, and yet also only on the cusp of manhood, shielded from knowing all he might have asked of the world.

Leaning low once more to bring their faces as close as he dared without risk of unintended touch, Jack dropped his voice low too. “You tell me. Wouldn’t you like to be wooed?”

Reardon dropped his eyes to the stones at their feet. “I… suppose I would.”

“And how would one woo the Emerald Prince?” Jack asked—foolishly, because Reardon’s thoughts could never stray tohimwhen they went distant with reverie.

“I… would want us to understand one another,” he said sweetly, sighing with the first breath of anyone young and yearning to find love, “to have similar wants and goals, similar likes. I would want to bedrawn to them as I am a good friend, but with that stir of passion that is impossible to explain.”

“You speak from experience?”

Reardon glanced up fearfully, but then relaxed, as if he had to remind himself that here he could speak openly. “The first man I ever loved… was the worst candidate. Our master of arms. He’s older. Strong, dependable, handsome. But he is the very man who would have seen me to the gates upon my banishment if I were discovered. I could never be free to love him, blue eyes or not.”

“Blue eyes?” Jack repeated.

“Oh, um… it’s nothing.” Reardon’s gaze darted fearfully away again. “He was always there when I needed him, but he also helped me to be self-reliant. He taught me to fight and to stand proud during court like a proper prince. He could weave tales almost as good as a bard, to the point that I often didn’t know if what he told me actually happened or was a legend spun for my amusement.”

“You enjoy stories? I suppose your singing suggests as much.”

“I do, but really, I enjoy the ways people can connect, maybe because I had so few I connected with back home. The people were always wonderful to me, and I tried to be wonderful to them, but what I have with Barclay is unique. It’s difficult to befriend a prince who can’t be honest about who he truly is.” He fidgeted with his hands, mesmerized by the smooth skin that had so recently been burned by ice.

Something startled Reardon then, and he pulled back, looking at Jack in full and at their surroundings.

“I’ve… never told anyone all that. Not even Barclay knows about Lombard.”

Lombard. Jack disliked this “master of arms” immediately, silly as it was to care about Reardon’s infatuations. “Why tell me?”

“Youasked. And I promised we would know one another. Isn’t that easier with a connecting thread? We are not so different.”

They were different in all the ways that mattered, because Jack could have been like Reardon, good and wanting to do right by others despite being barred from his heart’s desires, but he chose a selfish path. Reardon reminded him of all he might have become if he’d been better, and although that truth and their similarities might have made Jack hate him, he felt warm in the prince’s presence.

Their eyes locked, sapphire on emerald, and with the wind and the sun and Reardon’s rosy cheeks, he looked far too beautiful and breakable to be standing before a monster that yearned to touch.

Reardon shivered, sharp breath escaping his lips, and Jack reared back, too much mist and power emanating from him.

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