Reardon
Lombard was kissing him.
Lombard was kissing him!
It was like all Reardon’s adolescent fantasies come true….
But no —this couldn’t be real! Lombard was the one who found the city’s deviants, who locked them away or made sure they were banished.
“Stop!” Tearing his lips away, Reardon pushed at Lombard’s chest. “I-I… I’m imagining this or… or I’ve fallen asleep!”
“No, my prince,” Lombard whispered, so close despite Reardon’s wriggling, still holding his chin and smiling. “You are very much awake and seeing nothing but the truth.” He tried to kiss Reardon again.
“It’s against the law!” Reardon sputtered, shaking Lombard’s fingers from his face. “I’ve watched you cart people away who were caught with another as we just were.”
“I know,” Lombard said with pain in his expression, relenting finally and pulling back. “I am a hypocrite. I would never, ever have acted if you hadn’t confessed first. You’re like your mother and wish to do away with the old customs, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Reardon said softly.
“Then know this, my future king.” Lombard lifted his hand slowly, allowing Reardon to deny him if he so wanted, but when those cool fingers touched Reardon’s chin again, he stayed frozen within their grasp. “I will not condemn you if you do not condemn me.”
It was everything Reardon had ever wanted. “Never,” he said, and had his breath stolen when Lombard renewed their kiss with an eager lunge.
Passion was easy to feel springing to life inside Reardon with the tightening of Lombard’s grip, his other arm looping around Reardon’s waist to hold him close and his tongue boldly seeking Reardon’s own. The worktable they leaned against shook from Reardon sagging more weight against it, and he heard the vials he’d been working with clink in their holders .
He’d only ever known one other man’s mouth and tender touch, and this felt… different.
Lombard’s hand at his back tugging his shirt from his trousers, his whole body encompassing Reardon’s as he kissed him deeper, felt different too.
It felt wrong , with a twist of shame in Reardon’s gut.
The vision could mean Lombard. It could mean anyone. Lombard’s face had looked so white last night, and his eyes were beautifully blue, but that was when Reardon realized the truth, as his stomach bottomed out at the mere thought of his love being anyone else.
Because, deep down, the vision didn’t matter. All Reardon cared about was how he felt, and he loved Jack.
“I can’t.” Reardon tore away once more, more harshly and certain in his dissent.
“You can—”
“No. I can’t.” Even held tight in Lombard’s embrace, a place Reardon had once longed to be, he pulled his head out of reach. “Not because I think it’s wrong. I don’t. I never did. And please, please forgive me, but… I’m in love with someone else.”
Lombard stared, not seeming to understand. “Barclay?”
“No! Barclay and I are merely friends.”
“Then someone else at the Frozen Kingdom? One of those monsters?”
“They’re not monsters!” Reardon defended. “They’re… not what you think. I swear, Bardy, I found my love there. I’m sorry.”
Lombard drew back, the hand that had held Reardon’s face so sweetly falling to the table, though his other remained loose around Reardon’s waist. “I never expected this. No matter, though.”
Reardon meant to apologize again, but his words caught in his throat as Lombard continued.
“I only thought to do something nice for you before the end.”
The pain was so abrupt and cloying, Reardon’s mouth fell open in a silent scream.
“Shhh….”
Lombard’s hand on the table had claimed the dagger and stabbed it into Reardon’s heart .
“I know it hurts.” He used his grip to twist the dagger hard, springing tears to Reardon’s eyes. “But it won’t kill you. Yet. This dagger is special. It will keep you very much alive, until I’m ready to use you.”
Reardon stared, and within Lombard’s clear blue eyes, a darkness seemed to swirl, cold and terrifying.
“Let the spell take hold,” Lombard whispered, hefting Reardon from the table, kicking his sword belt from the nearby chair, and setting him down upon his crumpled cloak. “If you do try to remove it, rest assured, you will bleed out and die in even more agony than you’re feeling now. If you want your suffering lessened, then don’t fight.”
Moving back to the worktable, Lombard left Reardon as a splayed heap, frozen from the pain, arms dangling at his sides, as the dagger he’d loved with such naivete stuck out of his chest. Lombard, meanwhile, acted completely unfazed, not only from having been in a heated embrace with Reardon moments before, but from stabbing him with his own gift.
He didn’t even look at Reardon.
“You’ll be able to move in time, but every step will be excruciating, so I don’t recommend it. That’s why I told you to keep that dagger close. I never knew when the time would be right after you came of age. That time is now.” Lombard lifted one of the vials to inspect and glanced at Reardon finally with a wicked smile. “You’re quite close. You might even have already gotten the answer if you’d trusted Wells instead of falling for my misdirection. I killed that soldier, by the way. Such a pity.
“You knew to test transmutation. Impressive. Would you like a hint?”
The slow advance of Lombard back to Reardon churned his stomach, as he remembered that he’d kissed him and loved him, even if it wasn’t the same love he felt for Jack.
“The correct answer is transmutation into fire, which you would have realized eventually, but what makes any trace of this deadly poison vanish after the person dies is… well, I guess you’ll never know.”
The tears in Reardon’s eyes were from far more than pain, as Lombard dared to stroke his cheek before returning the vial to the table.
“Wh-why…?” Reardon croaked. This man had heard every plea Reardon ever made to his father, begging for magic to not be blamed for his mother’s death, and internally, he must have been laughing all the while.
“Your mother wanted to change things.” Lombard leaned against the worktable, as casually as if they were still talking civilly. “But I wasn’t ready then. I needed the condemnation of people with magic and the yearly sacrifices in order to quietly siphon their power without anyone caring what happened to them.”
“For… magic?”
“I was born without any, like you. That wouldn’t do, not if I wanted to live forever. When I was younger, centuries ago, I went to the Fairy Queen and pleaded to be given eternal life. She said I was welcome to stay in her lands, and that, there, I would never age. But then I would have had to stay in her lands , giving up my freedom. I wanted immortality I could take with me, and she could grant me that, but she refused.
“I knew there were other ways to get what I desired. Alchemy is so useful for doing what magic can’t.” He turned his sly smile to the worktable. “I started siphoning power from others to add to my life. But killing and having people constantly going missing gets tricky. The first bit of alchemy I learned after I drained the magic from a young elf was how to change my face.”
A ripple came over Lombard’s features, and he was one of the guards, then a wizened merchant Reardon remembered from the square, then the tavern innkeeper, then Reardon’s own father, before he returned to the handsome blond that Reardon couldn’t even say was Lombard’s original face.
If he even was Lombard.
“Did you… kill the real Bardy?” Reardon asked.
Lombard grinned terribly.
“Y-you… replaced him? When?”
“Does it matter?”
Reardon supposed it didn’t, since the switch had to have happened before his mother’s death. The man he had first thought he loved had never been that man at all.
“The right face can make anything effortless,” Lombard continued. “Start a war here, point fingers there, and everyone turns on each other. It was simple to twist people against magic and those who wielded it. And once those unfortunate souls were in prison, they’d die so easily, I’m afraid, and no one suspected it was because I was sucking the magic from their bodies.
“I couldn’t have your mother interrupting that, or your father in his grief over your disappearance when I was so close to finally being done with all this. You thought you fooled me when you replaced the sacrifice? I knew. You’ve made this all so much easier, because you’ve helped set the stage. Those sacrifices are my true purpose. They’ve been getting fat on the power of their cursed land, enough now that it is time to cull it—through you.”
“What?” The limpness in Reardon’s body started to fade, allowing him to lift his hands into his lap instead of dangling. Even moving that much made him ache with a pulse of the dark power working within him.
Lombard tilted his head, like every cringe of Reardon’s was amusing. “The Fairy Queen never paid much mind to the distant Emerald lands, compared to the Sapphire Kingdom so much closer to her own. She had no idea what I was doing, but I was always watching her. When she cast her curse, I made my move. She’d set things in motion for me perfectly, and I’d gathered enough power over the years that, once she returned home, I erected a shield to lock her away. I wasn’t strong enough to fight her, no, I couldn’t risk that, but I could keep her from interfering and force her to watch.
“Then all I had to do was keep the status quo, fed from the sacrifices ever since the first, when I chased a drunken nobleman’s son to the Ice King’s door.”
Oliver.
“I merely needed to wait for all that power and immortality to reach its pinnacle and for the right vessel to filter it into me. Only someone completely without magic will do. Do you know how rare that is? The people trick themselves into believing magic is gone, but it is never gone. You and I are the rare ones, Reardon.
“But I also needed it to be you, the Emerald Prince, so that when the people see you destroyed by magic after being corrupted by the Ice King, they’ll embrace me as their new ruler without question.”
“You—”
“Shhh,” Lombard shushed Reardon again, pushing from the table to saunter toward him. “You’re staying here, I’m afraid. The dagger will do its job no matter the distance. When it’s over, there will be no dagger or wound remaining, and everyone will assume you died from magic like your parents. All I need now is to pass the Ice King’s gates and complete a simple incantation tied to the alchemy that made that dagger, and it will begin .
“I’ll bring the whole army this time, so that when I—pure of heart, as they’ll believe—breach the castle, and all its inhabitants fall dead at my feet, I’ll be lauded a hero.”
“P-please… have mercy,” Reardon tried.
Lombard bent over him, never before having seemed so looming. “My prince, do you not remember what I taught you? Mercy merely means you might end up the dead man instead—and I never intend to be the dead man.”
One of Reardon’s tears stubbornly streaked down his cheek. “I… would show you mercy.”
“I know. That’s why I won. I will honor you, though, I swear. After this, the laws can finally be changed.” Lombard crowded in closer, so that Reardon knew long before his lips descended what cruelty he meant to inflict.
He kissed Reardon, and Reardon fought through the pain to turn his head away.
“Don’t… touch me.”
“So unkind?” Lombard breathed upon his cheek. “I’m going to let you say goodbye to your father. You should be grateful.” He hooked one arm around Reardon’s shoulders and the other beneath his knees to lift him. The jostling filled Reardon with so much pain, he gasped, especially when Lombard draped his cloak across the dagger to hide it. “You know, I only made them hate magic. Their hatred for you , simply because you long for another man’s touch, that they learned on their own.
“I never could have predicted you’d fall in love with one of those cursed creatures. Or is it merely one of the sacrifices?”
Reardon didn’t answer.
“No matter. They’ll all be dead soon.”
Every step Lombard took to leave the tower filled Reardon with more shooting pains throughout his chest and limbs and everywhere . It was becoming too much to bear, and he was so tired. He could feel his head swimming with the urge to sleep, his vision dimming.
“Now, as far as anyone knows, I am carrying you to bed, and I will tell them that you’d like to stay in your father’s room and not be disturbed by anyone, no matter how many days pass. Don’t fight, Reardon. I’ve already won. ”
Reardon could barely move, let alone call to any guards. Darkness was taking him swiftly, and he almost longed for it, if only to be free for a few brief moments from the pain—in his body and his heart.
Reardon used to think that all men could be reasoned with. No longer. He had doomed everyone in the Frozen Kingdom, thinking he could somehow be their salvation, and his own kingdom was doomed now too, for he was going to be caged with his father, the both of them left to die by the hand of a friend.
Jack
Jack had returned to his chambers before sunrise, but now he left for his throne room like any other morning, surprised to find that he was not alone.
“Barclay,” he rumbled at the diminutive man who stood ringing his hands in front of the throne. “What do you seek of me at such an early hour?”
“I’m sorry, Majesty.” Barclay bowed. He looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept. “Terrible dreams kept me awake, concerning my last vision.”
“Oliver said the Emerald Prince left with his soldiers to prevent it, your vision of a war.”
“Of worse than war—our destruction. Reardon thought he could fix things by leaving, but he’d be home by now, safe in the Emerald Kingdom to see his father, and my vision hasn’t changed.”
Jack didn’t truly believe Reardon would return at the head of his own armies, leading a war himself, but he had to wonder—who else might they have to fear from that kingdom?
“Tell me what you’ve seen.” Jack took his throne with a creak of the ice that made up his long limbs. “Tell me exactly.”
Reardon
Reardon roused, wishing it all had been a dream, but when he tried to move, the searing pain through his chest proved how real the torture was. He’d fallen asleep, overtired and aching, but that didn’t change the truth.
Lombard was a traitor. He’d killed Reardon’s mother, Caitlin’s husband, and was trying to kill Henry, and Reardon was helpless to stand against him. His old mentor was readying Emerald’s armies that very moment to leave for Jack’s kingdom.
As Reardon painstakingly moved his head to take in his surroundings, he saw that Lombard had laid him on the lounging sofa in his father’s room. He could see him upon the bed, frowning within what looked to be a fitful sleep. At least Lombard hadn’t lied about that much; he had brought Reardon to say goodbye.
But Reardon couldn’t accept this literally lying down. He couldn’t say goodbye from so far away. No matter how much it pained him, he had to make it as far as the bed.
“Ah!” Trying to sit up resulted in him immediately falling back onto the cushions. Lombard hadn’t lied about that either, that moving would be excruciating, as if, from the point of entry of the dagger’s blade, Reardon’s own blood had turned against him and seared him from the inside out.
It wouldn’t kill him, though, and if pain was all he had to fear, he had to face it.
“Ahhhhh!” Reardon broke off his howl through clenched teeth. He’d call for the guards, but voices didn’t carry well through these walls, and he didn’t know if he could trust anyone.
Lurching up into a sitting position took much out of him, but he eventually got up, and moved with tears in his eyes the entire way, until he collapsed at his father’s side upon the bed.
“F-Father…?”
Henry did indeed appear to be in a fever dream, looking far worse than Reardon had seen earlier. The right transmutation for their final version of the potion was fire. Reardon would have come to that conclusion himself, but what made it undetectable? Conflicting transmutation would simply cause the potion to evaporate right away, which wouldn’t give it enough time to have any effect.
Sea of white.
Sea of white….
Wraith’s teeth!
Ice.
“Of course,” Reardon said, taking his father’s clammy hand in his, much as that movement and any utterance of words made him wince.
Other opposing elements would have a similar effect, but only ice could work latently, melting over time. Once everything mixed in the victim’s bloodstream, it would eventually cancel out and vanish like vapor. In Henry’s case, Lombard must have been poisoning him slowly, with very little of the potion each time, to hide his tracks.
There was a cup beside Henry’s bed, and Reardon knocked it to the floor with a pained cry. Lombard might have poured more down Henry’s throat before he left. Reardon’s father may only have hours. Minutes. And now Reardon knew how to save him but had no way to make the cure.
Lombard must have enchanted the Fairy Queen to not speak of what kept her and her people behind a veil, but she’d tried to say all she could. She’d told Reardon to trust… something. Obviously not Lombard.
To trust something that Jack hadn’t….
Himself .
Reardon had to trust in himself as future king. Lombard didn’t think he could handle so much pain to be a threat, and oh, it did hurt, but Reardon had to act. He had to. He had to save his father and hurry on to save Jack.
Rising with a whimper, Reardon looked to where Master Wells and the physicians had been trying out possible cures. A handful of healing potion variants and herbs lay on a table. It wasn’t enough to make the potion Reardon needed or the subsequent cure, but it might be enough for something else.
Looking to his father once more, Reardon forced quiet words to pass his lips, “I love you… and I will defeat our enemy and prove my love for Jack is worthy.”
Jack
Jack had gathered his court in the throne room, as well as his best advisors—Barclay, Caitlin, Nigel, Shayla, and Oliver. There was little time, and the humans in their midst shivered to be so near Jack without having taken resistance draughts.
“None of us believe the Emerald Prince would betray us, but we know a traitor lives in his kingdom,” Jack declared. “Many of you have worked on the potion to prove it. If his presence returning home has not changed Barclay’s vision of a dire future, then that means Reardon is the one who has been betrayed. We must expect an army and a battle ahead that we might not win. ”
“What should we do?” Josie asked, golden before Jack, and while she was always lovely, he kept picturing her true form, now that he’d finally had the honor of seeing it again.
He longed for her to be like that always. His friends too.
“Everything we can,” Jack said. “Prepare the people. Fortify the castle. Have lookouts at all times and keep our fortune-teller on hand to keep telling fortunes.” Jack looked to Barclay with reverent respect, who tensed nervously but nodded. “If the future begins to change, we must know immediately.”
“If they’re turning right around with reinforcements,” Oliver said, “we can expect Emerald troops within two days.”
Not everyone in the room was a fighter, but each person’s expression hardened as Jack gave the final order: “Then be ready.”