Page 58 of The Prince and the Ice King

Normal.

Just like her portrait.

The curse was broken!

“It’s only at night!” Josie cried, sitting up fully while holding the sheets to her chest. She was radiant—blue eyes like her brother, wavy locks of soft brown hair, and youthful glowing skin. “The curse still stands, but what we hadn’t yet told you, Reardon, is that we get reprieve when the sun sets.

“I’m sorry. We’re vulnerable after dark, so we always wait a full two weeks to reveal that secret to newcomers, ever since… we were betrayed.”

Josie’s sorrow made Reardon sag and hugPillars of Virtuemore closely against him. “The thief,” he whispered. She clearly meant the statue in the garden of the thief who’d tried to run after killing one of their own. They couldn’t risk someone untrustworthy discovering that the court could be killed too if the time was right.

No wonder they were still sane and able to rule well if, after dark, they existed as they once were and could touch those they held dear. Barclay hadn’t fallen in love with someone out of his reach. He already had her.

Which meant all the other members of the court were human now too!

“Reardon!” Barclay called, as Reardon turned and fled back into the tunnels.

He ran anyway, returning to the entrance into Barclay’s room but moving past it, certain in his use of the tunnels lately that he knew how to reach each of the court members’ chambers. Or at least how to get close enough to find their wake trails, like Josie’s tunnel was covered in gold.

He had to know. He had to see for himself if the same was true for all of them.

First was Liam in the alchemist tower. He and Branwen both left scorch marks, but Liam’s were finely focused like jagged lines oflightning. The closer Reardon got to the tower, the more concentrated the scorches became until they suddenly stopped.

Pushing on the wall where they disappeared, Reardon revealed another doorway, leading into another bedroom, this one filled with alchemist tools overflowed from the laboratory.

And another pair of moving bodies on a bed, hidden by covers.

Reardon hadn’t hoped to find the same type of interlude, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t say he was surprised.

“It is true!” he cried, hearing a feminine yelp and rustle of sheets before Shayla appeared with her usually pinned hair wild and curly about her head.

“Reardon! How—?”

“What are you doing here?” Liam shouted.

Shayla sat atop his hips, keeping the sheets around them, but Reardon could see Liam’s face. He never would have known it was Liam if not for his voice, but that was indeed the wizard. He could have been a brother to the fletcher, really, if not for his elven ears. He and Oliver shared the same blond hair and blue eyes.

These eyes didn’t give Reardon pause, however, or wonder at Barclay’s vision, since he knew this man was another one spoken for.

“You were all so obvious, yet I didn’t see it,” Reardon said, unable to keep the smile from his face, even if he was being terribly intruding, because the court was not made of the lonely creatures he’d thought. “Nigel…,” he said in realization and turned once more to dash back into the tunnels.

“Where are you going?” Shayla yelled after him.

“Wait!” Barclay cried, not far behind, as he and Josie gave chase.

Still, Reardon ran, elation fluttering in his chest, finally understanding what Barclay’s friends had in common.

He didn’t know where Zephyr’s chambers were, but he knew Nigel’s. It only dawned on him now that he had seen evidence of a wind elemental in those tunnels and in Nigel’s room more than anywhere else—grooves in the stone like decades of erosion.

There wasn’t a tunnel exit directly into Nigel’s room, but there was one outside it. As Reardon burst into the room through the main door, Nigel spun around wide-eyed, in the process of changing for bed.

“What is that rack—ah!” Zephyr appeared—naked—from the wash area and clutched a robe he’d been carrying between his legs. “Don’t you knock?”

He had blue eyes too, though Reardon had dismissed Zephyr long ago, fair though his face may be, and clearly, he was also taken.

With color filling his usually translucent form, his cheeks held a warm glow, dark hair messy and damp from bathing, with the otherwise same slender form Reardon had seen floating.

“Youwerefighting about me,” Reardon said, “because Zephyr kept saying lewd things to me!”

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