Page 55 of The Prince and the Ice King

Jack hadn’t seen Branwen much either in the past week. He should have been the one to check on his friend, instead of neglecting him. He’d spoken to Branwen, but he never knew what was right to say when accidents—actual or merely close calls—always felt like they were his fault, since none of this would have happened without him.

Yet there Reardon went, being everything Branwen needed just by being himself, undaunted and friendly, like a pillar of virtue.

That was it! That was the title of Jack’s book, the one he hadn’t been able to remember, resounding suddenly in his head—Pillars of Virtue. The knights in that story had displayed all the chivalrous pillars—courage, mercy, hope—and the sexual tension between them had fueled many of Jack’s adolescent fantasies.

He watched Reardon now, much like those knights, not pushing Branwen to talk about what had happened, but simply being with him to show that he wasn’t afraid or resentful.

“I’m not much of a drinker,” Reardon said, even as he tipped back his next few gulps.

“That’s coz you’re a twig. Keep training with the fletcher and Shayla. You’ll toughen up.”

“And with you?”

“Suppose so. If you take good care of those swords. And learn to hold your liquor.” Branwen pounded the table, flames bouncing across the wood but never causing it to catch fire.

Reardon took another gulp. “My only wish is that you could be drinking with me. Perhaps someday.”

“Oh?” Branwen straightened again.

“No curse lasts forever,” Reardon said.

Naive and ignorant.But oh, how his hopefulness was infectious, because it made Branwen laugh. “Says the twenty-year-old.”

“Twenty-one,” Reardon corrected.

“Nothing left to learn, then?”

“I have everything to learn. And I’d like to. Everything I can. Including about you, Sir Branwen, if you’ll tell me.”

“I’m no bard,” Branwen said with a wrinkle of his nose.

Lies. Though maybe not spoken.

“If every story was the same or told the same way, they’d be very boring indeed,” Reardon said.

He drank, not saying more, until eventually Branwen began to talk. He didn’t look at Reardon, and he didn’t tell stories of the castle, as Jack would have expected. He spoke of a quiet boy with a hard father and a too-soft mother—very relatable for Jack—but who’d always been seen as too brutish to think for himself.

None of it was likened to a life Reardon could relate to, but that didn’t seem to matter to the young prince. He listened and he drank until Branwen ran out of things to say.

Reardon was on what must have been his fourth glass of wine, slurring as he said, “M’sorry, Bran… if my stumbling scared you.”

The silence stretched, but finally, Branwen said, “Me too.”

When next the quiet broke, it was with a hum, followed by the tentative flow of song.

“A raging fire must first be lit

By sparks we plan or cannot see.

Tended slow to not burn out

But watched to calm when it burns free.

“Hark! The fire in all,

The fire in you,

The fire in me.

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