Page 101 of The Prince and the Ice King

Or maybe Reardon was the one who was wrong….

Only when his hands ached from the cold did he realize it had been hours, his bag full and his potion losing its potency. He glanced back at the castle up the hill, pristine and beautiful when once he’d thought it ominous. He had a duty to his own kingdom, to his mother’s memory, but there was so much more he could do here.

He knew, selfishly, that the real reason he didn’t want to go home was because he’d finally found his love, and in a place where no one shamed him for it.

Could he really just leave?

The crack of a stick whipped Reardon’s attention back to the trees, where a pair of glowing eyes locked with his. Without moving any other part of him, Reardon slowly reached for his swords.

The glowing eyes drew nearer, and soon a familiar form stepped into the light from out of the wood—a thin but slightly less emaciated wolf than how Reardon had last seen him.

Another stick cracked, even though the wolf had stopped moving, and a second wolf slipped out from behind the first. This wolf was smaller but still fully grown, amate, if Reardon were to guess, judging by the way it nudged the larger wolf’s side and then began to growl at Reardon.

But the first wolf nudged back and didn’t growl in kind, as if to say,No, there is nothing to fear.The wolf that had nearly killed Reardon all those weeks ago had been healed, nourished, and left in peace to try at survival again, and with that gift, he’d found another.

“Mercy begets mercy…,” Reardon said softly, thinking this a very magical place indeed. “I am happy for you, lone wolf, that you’re not alone anymore.”

The wolves’ heads snapped back into the wood, picking up on something Reardon couldn’t hear, and then they took off running the opposite direction down the line of trees.

Reardon hefted the bag over his shoulder, turned where the wolves had looked, and finished drawing his swords all in one smooth sequence. He feared a bear, if the wolves were running, but in the darkness of the trees, the figure coming toward Reardon appeared to be a man.

Memory of the original sacrifice struck Reardon all at once, who he’d let wander into those woods alone. Could it be him, running from a horde of monsters he’d found once he reached the Shadow Lands?

“Here!” Reardon called, waving one of his swords in greeting. “Are you well? Do you need help?”

The figure kept hurtling toward him, the wood so dark, Reardon couldn’t make out anything save his outline, but it was definitely a man. Reardon started to put his swords away but hesitated.

“Hello?” he questioned, because the man hadn’t called back, and it was only when he burst from the line of trees that Reardon saw him fully—notthe sacrifice he’d saved but a dirty and wild-looking highwayman with a dagger drawn as he pitched himself at Reardon.

Reardon swung his swords up in an X that caught the dagger before it struck him.

“Stop! What do you want? I—!”

The man howled, hair bedraggled and beard so bushy, Reardon could barely see his eyes. The man pulled his dagger free and swung atReardon’s side, but Reardon brought his swords sharply to the right to deflect the blow, parrying the man once more.

“Listen! If you need coin—”

The man rushed him while Reardon’s swords were pointed down, using his body to knock Reardon off balance. The potion might have kept Reardon’s feet from slipping normally, but it had long since waned, and the slickness of the snow sent him tumbling backward. The man fell upon him, and Reardon barely managed to get his swords up into another X to stay a downward plunge of the dagger.

“Please!”

And then a sharp pain stabbed into Reardon’s side—from aseconddagger he hadn’t seen. Reardon pushed with the force of his connected swords to throw the man off him, but the second dagger stayed in his side, abandoned and dug in deep to the hilt. Reardon easily could have bested the man, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt him.

Mercy merely means you might end up the dead man instead, he heard in Lombard’s voice.

A howl from the man broke the afternoon quiet, as he swung the first dagger over his head to fall upon Reardon yet again—

—only to be caught, mid-leap by his throat, in anicygrasp.

The effect was instant, a wave washing over the man as if he were a matte surface on the ground and someone had spilled a bottle of oil that burst over him, catching rainbow colors in the light. But it wasn’t oil, and the man was far more than a soiled floor, dead now, turned to ice.

His neck cracked as the Ice King tightened his grip and threw the frozen highwayman into the snow, where he broke into dozens of shattered pieces. Reardon’s stomach lurched, but then he hissed, because the real pain was buried deep in his side, and there was no time to mourn the madman who’d attacked him.

“You fool,” the king said, his hulking form towering over Reardon.

“Y-you… came for me,” Reardon sputtered, vision dimming and the chill of the snow feeling strangely warm.

He must have passed out, though he remembered rousing when someone lifted him, then again from the bob of his body being carried up stairs, and once more with Caitlin’s face hovering. The sun was far from set, so the king must have fetched someone to rescue Reardon.

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