Page 34 of The Prince and the Ice King

Reardon glanced away, a rare glimpse of him being caught off guard. “It’s nothing. I mean… it’s everything, but I think I’ll go mad if I try to figure out your visions.”

Barclay nodded, understanding whatever was left unsaid with a thin smile.

What visions did the fortune-teller have of Reardon, Jack wondered. It couldn’t all be a swindle if the boy who could see the future loved him.

“What I can tell you—” Barclay took Reardon’s hands, a gesture, such easy touch, that they enacted often. “—is that I think you’re right. This is where you’re meant to be.”

Reardon nodded in kind, making Jack even more curious about what they were talking about.

After another quick squeeze of Reardon’s hands, Barclay rose. “I’m off to bed.”

“Already?”

“I… had a long day.”

Jack huffed. He knew that wasn’t the real answer, but Reardon didn’t notice the deflection.

“What about breakfast?” Barclay offered.

“I think I’ll grab something early again. I’m not letting the king banish me so quickly tomorrow.”

Optimist.

“Good luck,” Barclay said.

While Reardon’s brightness never fully dimmed, he was noticeably sadder, sitting there alone, but that only rooted Jack more firmly to his spot. He tried to pinpoint what it was about Reardon that kept captivating him.

Reardon was all the things Jack had told Branwen earlier—young, idealistic, foolhardy in his confidence that he could set things right, whatever the cost. He was also beautiful and warm and had charmed a few dozen members of Jack’s kingdom today.

At first, Jack thought it was because Reardon so obviously didn’t belong, the curiosity of the unknown in an outsider, but he’d certainly put in effort to belong here, and every so often, Jack would see a shadow in Reardon’s eyes that said he might belong more than first guessed.

What was that shadow that had darkened the young prince’s life like the others sent here? Merely guilt? His mother’s death? Or something more?

As Jack continued to watch, Reardon inspected the work done on his cloak, half sewn by Shayla and half by him, and hung it in his wardrobe. It was early, but although Reardon looked toward his door a time a two, as if debating going out to explore or find some of his new friends, he eventually chose to go to bed.

Tonight there were lanterns and candles still lit that he didn’t snuff out before undressing. As soon as his trousers came down, Jack loweredhis eyes, but it was difficult not to look through his periphery at the much clearer view of the young man’s lean, muscled form.

It was when Reardon settled but still left the bedside candle lit that Jack looked up again.

The covers weren’t pulled all the way to his chin, only enough to cover his nakedness, as he tilted his head back on his pillow and let a hand drift down his chest beneath the quilt.

Jack looked away again. He certainly couldn’t watchthat.

But just as he turned to leave, he heard Reardon whimper.

“Please. Oh please… let me find him here.”

Him.What nameless, faceless figure did Reardon conjure in the private dark of night?

Jack hurried away before he could be pulled into further deviance, but distance from the prince and what he was undoubtedly doing now in the solitude of his room did nothing to dull Jack’s errant thoughts. It had been so long since Jack had touched someone, since someone had touched him, and Reardon was something special but dangerous that shook Jack to his core and made him wonder what it might be like to melt.

Chapter 4

Reardon

That night, Reardon sleptwith straying dreams of blue eyes, handsome smirks, and broad muscled shoulders of no man in particular—but oh, his phantom figure could touch and kiss and hold him too tightly like he’d always wanted. He found himself half-awake as the sun rose, hard and leaking fresh sin onto his sheets. He would have let a straying hand drift between his legs again like last night, but not when he had somewhere to be.

He mixed a black shirt and black trousers with his scarlet doublet, and today he affixed his sword belt before taking his daily draught to face the king.

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