Page 99 of The Prince and the Ice King

“What is it?” Reardon asked. “Was it something important?”

His friend’s face seemed alarmed and almost pale despite his dark complexion. “I, um… no, it’s nothing. I just realized this must be why I kept thinking you needed more cold draught. I hate when I don’t understand my visions enough to help.”

“Don’t blame yourself. But are you sure that’s all?” Reardon had known Barclay a long time, and there was more than regret on his face.

That was fear.

“It’s nothing,” Barclay said again, covering his trepidation with an anxious smile. “Go see the king.”

Reardon knew his friend would tell him the truth in time, but for now, he had somewhere to be.

Zephyr told him the way, and Reardon accepted the supportive nods from his friends before leaving the alchemist tower on determined feet.

Jack

Jack had sat on his throne for hours, staring at nothing, even when Zephyr floated in to tell him that all was well and delivered Reardon’s expectedly naive message.

When Zephyr pressed for an answer, Jack had simply sent him away. He’d already known Reardon would live after seeing him on his bedchamber floor, but the cost, how close things had come to turning out so much worse, was unforgiveable. Couldn’t Reardon see that?

Jack wasn’t in his throne room any longer. He’d finally gotten up, only to discover the scarf that had once covered Reardon’s eyes lying on the floor in front of the still-open door to his private rooms. He couldn’t touch it, couldn’t go into those rooms and see the damage he’d done just by being in there. He had to get away.

Maybe he should have gone to the ramparts or the garden, but his monstrous feet had brought him into the secret tunnels and to the library. More hours passed, and he hadn’t turned a single page. He barely remembered what book was on his pedestal before he and Reardon had started reading together.

“Shall I have Zephyr fetchPillars of Virtue?” Reardon’s voice nearly caused Jack to topple over backward.

“What are you doing here?” Jack demanded, hunkered in his trench, as Reardon came in, looking weak and all manner of disheveled without a doublet or even shoes. “You should be resting. Are you mad?”

“So you keep trying to claim, Majesty, but I know what I am doing and what I want.” Reardon’s eyes held all their usual emerald brightness. He sat, tired and frail as he looked, right at the edge of the trench and far too close to Jack. “I’m fine,” he said, as though Jack were a child needing comfort. “I really mean it about the book. I can rest sitting right here, have Zephyr fetch it, and we can—”

“Get out.” Jack rose, so furious at the young prince’s negligence that he could barely see clearly.

“Majesty—”

“We are no longer having audiences. Not in the mornings, not now, and not when the sun sets.”

“You’d run?” Reardon yelled after him, when Jack tried to turn and flee. “You’d run like a coward and turn me away, after we—”

“After I nearly killed you?!” Jack howled back, whirling so fast and fierce, a burst of ice filled the trench about his feet, proving the threat he was to everything around him. “Yes, I’d run. I’ll get as far from you as I can, until it finally sinks in that you will only find despair here, and I will not let you make me be the cause of it. I’ve caused enough.

“Go home.” Jack swallowed the catch in his throat that Reardon’s eyes filling with moisture conjured so easily. “Once you’ve solved your precious potion, go home. Tell your people that I will accept no more offerings. Build a new kingdom that never thinks on us again.”

“No.” Reardon sucked in several breaths to stay his tears. “Love can beat anything. If only you’d—”

“There is no love for you here!” Jack cried, clutching the cracks of his icy chest to indicate the hollow shell beneath. “There is nothing but a cold, unfeeling thing that wants to be left to its prison.

“There will be no more audiences. There will be no more words between us. Do not waste your time on me any longer. Finish what you started to find justice for your mother, and then.Go. Home.

“There is no love for you here,” he said again, “only regret, only misery, and scars you didn’t earn.”

“I don’t care about scars,” Reardon choked on the sobs he could no longer keep at bay, standing on shaky legs and moving closer to Jack along the edge of the trough with tears streaming down that stoppedwhen he got too near and froze on his cheeks. “Not mine or yours. It was anaccident.”

Jack slid backward, putting as much space between them as he could with a stride. “Next time it might be your life. If you follow me,” he warned, even if the threat fell far flatter than it once would have, “it will be.” He tried to make it to the tunnel entrance in only a few steps, but Reardon called brokenly after him.

“Jack, please… I love you.”

Jack couldn’t turn. If he did, his frozen tear tracks would be visible. “Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

For once, Reardon didn’t follow. Even so, Jack couldn’t bear being in the tunnels, in his throne room once he reached it, or near his ruined chambers. He went up to the ramparts and looked out toward the Mystic Valley, wondering if the Fairy Queen, hidden by some invisible veil that made the lands look empty, was staring back, witnessing his suffering and laughing.

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