Page 48 of The Prince and the Ice King

“A king can’t enjoy some sordid fun? I thought we discussed that already. Admittedly, I prefer to reimagine most damsels as—”

“Stable boys?” Reardon teased. “Though I suppose in this case it would be a prince.” What he’d said seemed to catch up to him, and his sweet smile dropped. “I-I mean… uhhh….”

“I never had a prince,” Jack said. The words slipped free as easily as any confession to Reardon so far, because the bashful way he lowered his head and fluttered his emerald eyes, only to flick them back up and center on Jack, seemed to say his wants focused there too.

Not on Jack. It couldn’t possibly be that. But on a prince of his own.

Jack sat in an extra groove built like a bench, and Reardon pulled a chair over to sit close at the edge of the path. There was barely the length of a man separating them, and yet, in his trough to protect the world from his frozen form, Jack felt leagues away from Reardon beside that pedestal.

“How might a prince have changed things?” Reardon asked.

“Maybe not at all,” Jack said. He needed Reardon to understand that there was no changing anything—not here. “I wasn’t prepared for my father’s death. I thought I could put off the inevitable forever. I was young, like you, and felt invincible, constantly thwarting my father’s plans for me.

“When he died, I had a wicked and terrible idea. Thrust into my role as monarch and expected to marry, I vowed instead to change everything, to make a mockery of what my father thought a kingdom should be and create a land free for everyone to live as they pleased.”

“Wasn’t that a good thing?”

“Have you ever heard what the road to damnation is built with, little prince?”

Reardon’s twitch of a smile said he had.

“My intentions weren’t good. I was really only thinking of myself and the freedoms I wanted. I dismissed my father’s advisors, even the most well-respected ones, and chose my friends as my court. We did whatever we wanted, telling our subjects to do the same.

“Not to say my court isn’t each capable in their position, but back then, we had no plan or sense of gravity to all that fell under our rule. And let me assure you, there is nothing quite as dangerous as giving people exactly what they think they want.

“What happened wasn’t on them, however. They soon saw the folly of it all, that yes, everyone should be able to love and exist and pursue their heart’s desires—or at least most did—but there must be order and responsibility too. A kingdom should not rule every part of a subject’s lives, but freedom shouldn’t be a guise for apathy. There must be a balance between control and personal liberty or everything crumbles.”

“I understand,” Reardon said. “I wish to change the laws of the Emerald Kingdom, to not condemn anyone without a true crime against them, but not to abolish all law and tradition entirely.”

“Then you are far better than I was. A tyrant in power isn’t the answer, but giving everyone everything eventually collapses. Banditsarose, unrest, famine, and the people looked to me to fix it. But all I cared about was… my stable boys,” Jack finished wryly. “A system is only as good as its worst person in power, no matter how well-intentioned.

“More and more people left for other kingdoms, where crops were plentiful and soldiers dependable. Freedom didn’t matter when it came from a king who didn’t care—or certainly didn’t seem to. Eventually, my Sapphire Kingdom caught the eye of the Mystic Valley. The Fairy Queen had grown concerned about so many flocking to her lands, so she came to investigate.”

“The Fairy Queen?” Reardon’s eyes shot wide.

She wasn’t really a fairy. Fairies were myths or whispers of the Shadow Lands, but the Fairy Queen was such a powerful ruler of the elves that she had myths of her own. Elves of the Mystic Valley were said to be un-aging because of her magic.

Jack could see in Reardon’s eyes when he realized he should have guessed where the curse came from, since the castle’s inhabitants were un-aging too.

“She came with a small contingent of her people, and we threw a banquet in her honor.”

“That is the proper response for a visiting ruler.”

“Naturally, but at the time, my lands were half-abandoned, and the castle was a mess. We may as well have been drunken revelers, feasting from our stores, while the few remaining outside were starving.

“The Fairy Queen sat in silence through it all, as we made fools of ourselves. I even attempted to bed a human in her company who turned out to be her Prince Consort.”

“You didn’t.” Reardon paled.

“I did. It was clear that my kingdom would implode in months if not weeks, so, before the night was through, she stood from where we dined, and with a flourish of her hands, all the candles lighting the room snuffed out, and only she glowed, radiant in the center.”

Jack could still remember it so clearly, though he’d been well on his way to inebriated by that point. As he recited to Reardon what she said, he heard it in his mind in her powerful voice.

“You are not a king or a kingdom. You are a menace, even to your own people. Now I see why they come to me or run off to distant lands. I could let you continue wasting your resources and losing your subjects over time, but that would be cruel to everyone.

“Instead, I will give your people a choice—to stay or be welcomed into my lands instead, while you and those who rule beside you are taught a lesson.”

Her voice had resonated with even more power as she cast her spell.

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