Page 62 of The Prince and the Ice King

“P-please! I won’t look!” Reardon promised, keeping his head forward but glancing down at the arms around him, at the glimpse of skin and humanity and….

Scars, countless scars, covering so much of the king’s arms that Reardon hadn’t noticed for how many overlapped and ran together.

“Is this what you wanted?” the king roared, shaking him. “To see the true,uglyme? Ugly and earned, have no doubt about that.”

“No, I… I could never think you ugly, Majesty, no matter what the rest of you looks like. Please, I have seen too much beauty in you to see ugliness.”

The hold on Reardon slackened but did not release. “Then you are a fool. You learned our secrets early, which means I can choose to cast you out or imprison you, maybe freeze you come morning.”

“You won’t.”

“So bold and foolhardy, little prince?” The king’s voice was ice where his touch was not, sharp and biting, but Reardon saw through him.

“No, but if you had such hatred for me, you wouldn’t have left me that book.Youleft it, Zephyr said, not him.”

A puff of air disturbed the hairs on Reardon’s neck, as warm as the room and enough to make him shudder. “Damn gossip.”

Reardon smiled, because the king hadn’t denied it, and his hold was loose now, just their bodies flush and those arms around him. No one had ever really held Reardon before, besides a brief embrace, and certainly not like this, intimate and caging. Reardon should have been unnerved by it, but the king never instilled that feeling in him.

“I won’t look if you do not wish it, Majesty.”

“I do not. But I also do not believe I can trust you anymore.”

“Then let me prove myself again. Let me know you. Isn’t that what we promised?”

“Youbrokeour promises.”

“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident. You can ask the others.”

“Was coming here an accident too?”

“No. But I hoped you might make an exception for that.”

Another silence, as if the king wasn’t sure what to do or whether he dared release Reardon—and honestly, Reardon did not want to be released. He felt improper stirrings low in his belly at being so securely detained by the mighty Ice King.

“May I ask…?” he ventured quietly, still looking at the scars and seeing a hint of the king’s bare feet too. He was otherwise dressed like Reardon by the feel of him, in only a shirt and trousers.

“Part of my punishment,” the king said, hot and close at Reardon’s ear. “I don’t feel pain. Or if I do, I have grown too used to it to notice. The others become their element at sunrise, but I am trapped inside. Every day, these two hundred years, the ice cuts deeper. I don’t have wounds come nightfall, only the scars.

“If you came here looking for a handsome face that only looks unfortunate in sunlight, you will be disappointed.”

The harshly spoken words did not change the stirrings Reardon felt. “That does not matter to me. It wasn’t your face that first showed me who you are. A face is not what warms someone the way knowing them can. The way… a touch can.” He lifted his hands just enough to alight a soft caress on the king’s forearms.

A howl was the only precursor to Reardon being slammed onto the desk, the king releasing him but for a hand pressing to his shoulder and another at his lower back, keeping him down. The king’s hips were close at the curve of Reardon, bent to his will.

“I will not touch you,” Reardon swore, biting back an unbidden moan, “but if you asked… oh, Majesty, if you asked… I would, and I would welcome you touching me.”

The grip on Reardon faltered. The king wasn’t hard behind him but very present along Reardon’s backside. “You know not what you say.”

“I do. Believe me, I do.” Reardon arched backward, as bold as the king had accused him of being. His captor might not be hard, but Reardon was, twitching in reaction to being pinned when he knew therewas no danger. “Please,” he said, shifting his legs to spread wider and splaying his arms across the desk.

“I saw you,” the king said in answer, and for the first time, Reardon felt the king tremble. “I… watched you in the night.”

Reardon tilted his head, though not so much as to risk peeking over his shoulder.

“It was your second night in the castle. I watched you, I am always watching, but I saw something that night that I shouldn’t have and almost didn’t turn away. You undressed and retired without snuffing out the candles and reached down your body beneath the sheets.”

Recognition made Reardon throb at the thought.

---