Reardon burst out of his father’s room, and the pain was so blinding, he feared he would collapse, but he refused to lose faith.
“My prince!” a guard cried, taking hold of him. “What have you done?”
“General Lombard warned you were unstable,” another said.
“But to stab yourself—”
“No time!” Reardon screamed as he threw them from him, simultaneously hurling a concoction to the floor that burst with a cloud of thick smoke.
The guards scattered, and Reardon pushed onward. It caused more pain than he had ever known, but he knew this castle better than any guard. He could get to the alchemist tower blindfolded; through smoke was easy.
The physicians had been sent away, not a soul left in the tower when Reardon reached it—but his work was gone too! Lombard must have returned and destroyed it all.
“No,” Reardon lamented, resting against the worktable with a suffering sag. There were barely any ingredients around to be of any use. He needed alchemist supplies. He needed….
Master Wells’s shop. It wasn’t far from the castle, but the journey would still be arduous. Royal tunnels led from the palace, like the secret tunnels in Jack’s castle, and could bring Reardon close, but he had to hurry and be discreet. Lombard could have the whole kingdom against him .
Every step was agony, and covering himself with his cloak to hide the dagger put stinging weight on it, yet Reardon persisted, vision swimming all the while, until he met the cold air of the brisk winter morning. It was morning , but it was late. Lombard might have already left.
Hurling himself onward, Reardon snuck around everyone he could, hoping that those who spotted him didn’t recognize who he was in such a rumpled state.
He found the shop blessedly unguarded but locked as he’d requested. Thankfully, Zephyr and Nigel had taught him a few tricks for remedying that, and he’d come prepared. Once inside, he raced to find everything he needed. He knew his way around this place almost as well as the castle, and soon had the poison simmering, adding in Wraith’s Teeth that immediately began to melt.
Before the ice was gone, Reardon had to transmute the entire potion once more in order to create a proper antidote. With such singular focus, the pain that lingered was not nearly as important as his goal. He couldn’t be certain how much time passed before it was all complete, but with a triumphant puff of smoke rising from the vial, he knew he’d succeeded.
“Yes!”
“What are you doing?”
Reardon spun, cringing at not having taken the movement slowly. It was Wells, standing at the bottom of the stairs leading up to his private quarters with wide, accusing eyes. “Please… I had to—”
“You are bewitched, aren’t you?” Wells backed away. “The Ice King controls your actions and would have you poison us all….”
“ No , I—”
Reardon fell forward at moving without thinking, the cloak already loosed from so much shuffling, finally unwinding from his shoulders and falling open.
Wells gaped—and turned to run.
“No!” Reardon snatched the antidote and sprinted after him, gritting his teeth as the pain renewed tenfold. “Please! It’s for my father!” He ran, but the pain spiked so terribly, he stumbled over the unwound cloak and crashed to his knees, barely keeping the antidote from crashing to the floor with him.
Pained breaths kept Reardon from passing out, but he saw the darkness encroaching .
“Lombard… did this to me… please … please believe me….” As Reardon pitched forward, a sudden firm pair of hands grabbed hold of him.
“That can cure the king?”
“Yes….” Reardon looked up, still swaying within Wells’s hold. “Forgive me for believing you caused this. Lombard made you look guilty, but I should have trusted you. Whatever else you believe… please make sure my father gets this.” Reardon thrust the vial toward Wells with a shaky hand. “If something happens to it… use Barclay’s notes, transmuted into fire, then add Wraith’s Teeth. Before the ice melts, transmute it again.”
“Barclay’s notes…?” Wells repeated, accepting the vial with deeper remorse.
Reardon handed that to him as well.
“He’s safe then, at that castle?”
“He is.”
“There hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought of him. I knew, so much longer than I admitted, about his visions. I didn’t want to turn him in, but a customer was beside me when Barclay saw something and blurted what he’d seen without thinking. I feared if I didn’t act first I’d be called a conspirator. I am so sorry….” He was a good man, always had been, if somewhat stern. Now he looked filled with the shadow of regret.
Reardon understood. “He forgives you, but you owe him, happy though he may be, and he is happy. If you don’t trust me… trust him.”
Wells gave a solemn nod and helped Reardon to his feet. “I will,” he said, and seemed as though he might try to pull the dagger from Reardon’s chest.
“You can’t.” Reardon pulled away from him and moved to the door. “But I swear my mind is my own. Thank you,” he said, before hurrying outside.
A solid body stood in Reardon’s path, and he crashed into it and nearly ended up on his knees again.
“Highness!” the guard cried, seizing his shoulders.
Reardon had to keep him away from Wells, or risk the cure never reaching his father. “I… I must see Lombard!”
“He’s left to slay the Ice King in time to free you and your father,” the guard said, eyes widening at the sight of the dagger’s hilt. “It’s true…. Please, Highness, you must— ”
“No!” Reardon fought to shake him away, but his vision spun again, everything around him a bright blur in the morning light—or perhaps that was the many colors of the crowd beginning to gather. “He lied to you!”
“You’re delirious—”
“I’m not!” Reardon fought that much harder, but realized quickly how futile it was, because he looked every bit the madman, and struggling only made him weaker and the pain that much worse. “I… I must reach the square. Let me tell the people what is happening. Then, if you’re still against me… you can take me to wherever Lombard told you.”
Through Reardon’s hazy vision, the guard looked sympathetic, as loyal as any could be after whatever lies Lombard spread. “I suppose it can’t hurt to let you speak, but… the state of you—”
“I’ll manage,” Reardon said, allowing the guard to loop an arm around his waist and carry him toward the center of the city.
It was only him and that single guard. The small crowd that had gathered at their exchange gasped and whispered, but whatever they thought the dagger in their prince’s chest meant, they followed with eager interest to learn more.
Allowing only a furtive glance back, Reardon saw Wells slip out of the shop and head for the castle entrance. That was one burden lifted, even if Reardon failed the rest.
Other guards they came across went silent at the sight of Reardon. There weren’t many. Lombard likely had most of them with him as part of the legions headed to conquer the Frozen Kingdom.
Word spread of the wild, wounded prince before they reached their destination, and by the time the guard brought Reardon to the center of the square and up the merchant platform, the streets were crowded and the din of voices hushed.
“Your prince is not dying!” Reardon called, weak but forcing each word to be as loud as he could. “Whatever you’ve heard… this dagger is enchanted, and it will kill me, but not from the wound. And it is not the Ice King who wielded it.
“General Lombard betrays us. The villain is him, not me, and not our neighbors. He wielded this magic and means to take more from the Frozen… from the Sapphire Kingdom to the north. Yes, that is where I’ve been these many weeks, but I am not bewitched. ”
“Then where are our men?” someone called—a woman, old enough to be someone’s grandmother. “Two men went missing looking for you!”
“I know. I saw one of them die,” Reardon admitted, “and I am so sorry for it. So is the man who killed him. The soldier threatened a member of the castle at sword point, and her love merely meant to protect her. Would you have not done the same?”
The woman might have been that soldier’s mother, or the mother of the younger soldier, but though grief claimed her features, she didn’t speak again.
“The other was killed by Lombard to prevent him from telling my father that I was safe. He is your enemy, not the Sapphire Kingdom or its people. I have seen our loved ones that were cast so cruelly there, and for what? Magic? Destitution? Love for another that does not fit the molds of the many?
“If you need to steal to survive, then you have not failed your kingdom. Your kingdom failed you. And who someone loves or what power resides within them, however frightening it may seem, is not worth condemning. I… I have no magic, but….” Reardon closed his eyes to take a breath and steel his nerves to finish this, though it was not the same as admitting his deepest secret to a kinder kingdom weeks before. “Should I be your king someday, I would stand before you with a prince or other king at my side, not a queen.”
“Deviant!” a voice said in alarm, and when Reardon opened his eyes to look, he could not say who had cried it, for many more rose up to call similarly punishing things.
“Corruption!”
“Cursed!”
“The Ice King controls him!”
“ No ,” Reardon snarled, lurching forward from the guard who held him and nearly toppling right off the platform. “No… I am no more worthy of vile words or banishment than any other! And I know I’m not alone. Not only in my passions, but magic exists among us, as prevalent as in any age before.”
He said it without thinking but knew it to be true as soon as the words left him.
“Lombard uses magic in the despicable way you fear, but he did speak one truth before he plunged this dagger into my chest. He said I was the rare one, having no magic at all, which means far more of you than those put in chains or sent from our kingdom as exiles and sacrifices have magic within you, right here amongst us.”
That stirred the crowd to cast their accusations on each other.
“Do you wish to hide? To pretend forever? To wait for Lombard to return victorious, claim the throne, and continue to pick you off? If you have elvish blood or some hidden ability you think dooms you, know that I will never allow someone to be sent to the dungeons for such things again.
“Speak! Show yourselves! Please…. And we can be a larger army than those who call us corrupt. If you don’t… then I have no one to help me stop Lombard, and when he destroys our neighbors, he will destroy us too.”
Reardon sank down on weak legs, but the guard was there to catch him. Expecting a few more volleyed insults, Reardon was surprised to hear only silence, eerie within the square when it was usually so bustling.
Perhaps silence was worse….
“I have magic,” the guard blurted.
Reardon tilted his head up at him, and the guard shucked the helmet from his head, revealing a handsome elf as the glamour lifted from his ears, rippling like the veil of the Mystic Valley, to show how they were pointed.
“My whole family are elves, taught to hide it until a time when the ruling power would learn sense. I’m also in love with a fellow guard.”
Reardon laughed. He didn’t mean to, but he’d never expected—
“Me too!” someone called. “Well… not the guard part, but I’m a half-elf! Most of my family is at least a quarter!”
“I see spirits!”
“I can transmute without alchemy!”
“I want to court the grocer’s daughter!”
The chorus grew into such a frenzy, louder than the jeers against him, that Reardon hardly caught it all, but his smile continued to grow. The racket wasn’t without dissension and wary glances from magicless humans, especially when more and more pointed ears were revealed, but the silent majority wasn’t being so silent anymore.
“Please!” Reardon tried to hush them.
“Quiet!” the guard yelled, and the chorus fell to a murmur .
“Master Wells delivers a cure to my father, but the only way to save me and our kingdom is to stop General Lombard. I must give chase. And so I ask you all, as your prince….”
He’d feared for most his life admitting half the truths he’d spouted today, but without anything hidden from his people any longer, he saw most of them looking back at him with pride.
“Who will join me?”
Jack
Not aging made it easy to ignore the passage of days, never truly feeling them, but for Jack, waiting on his prince, the days since Reardon’s departure moved at a crawl.
Barclay’s vision never once changed, save to say that the shadow over Reardon seemed darker as the expected time for the prince’s return grew close. Whether that meant good or ill, Barclay didn’t know.
Even so, with the castle fortified and Jack’s people as ready as they could be for whatever might be coming, everyone had a remarkable way of staying in good spirits.
It was in realizing that the approaching night might be Jack’s last, his final moment to be the man Reardon believed him to be, that he asked Josie to meet him in the passageway behind the great hall after sunset.
“Are you certain?” she asked, taking his arm. “You haven’t shown any of the others yet. I didn’t tell them you’d shown me. Not even Zephyr.”
“You don’t think he knows?” Jack grinned, dressed in a simple blue doublet, saving the one crafted by Reardon until his prince was at his side again. “If he doesn’t, he’s about to find out, and everyone else with him.”
Together, they entered the hall through the doorway that usually only admitted the court on the first night of a new sacrifice. With stalwart steps, Jack walked with his sister to his center seat at the head table.
The rest of the court was out amongst the people, feasting and drinking as one. As a hush fell over everyone gathered, Jack sought out Branwen, Liam, and Zephyr first.
It was no surprise to find them with their loves—all three at the same table with Caitlin, Shayla, and Nigel respectively. Barclay was with them too, though contrary to the surprised gapes they all wore, he was smirking .
“I may have told Barclay, though,” Josie whispered.
Jack shook his head at her, but he was smirking too, because for the first time since they’d been cursed, he stood before his kingdom as himself and didn’t feel the need to hide his face. “What are you staring at?” Jack called, making sure to maintain a pleasant tone. “Aren’t we here to enjoy dinner and drink, or are you going to gawk all night?”
Without being asked, Oliver and Amelia rose to fill fresh plates to deliver to them, and Jack allowed the gesture, since they looked so pleased to offer it.
Barclay came forward too, bringing goblets and a jug of wine.
When Josie curled a finger at him to join them at the table, the young fortune-teller retrieved his plate and wine to sit at Josie’s side.
“I think this calls for a toast!” Nigel stood, raising his glass, to which everyone followed. “Not only for our king’s handsome face, of course, but for whatever tomorrow brings. Hear! Hear!” he cried, and again, everyone echoed him.
“Hear! Hear!”
“Also!” Nigel said before the growing mutters could rise to a normal dinner din. He set his goblet aside and moved to approach the head table, bringing his hands behind his back where Jack couldn’t see and then bringing them out again with a flourish. “I believe this belongs to you, Majesty. No idea how I acquired it.”
Jack’s crown —glittering silver with inlaid sapphires.
He hadn’t seen it in decades. He’d grown more used to his crown of ice.
Josie rose to take the crown and gently placed it upon Jack’s head. It weighed more than he remembered but felt strangely… right.
“What say you, Majesty?” Nigel bowed. “Shall I spin a tale?”
Only one came to mind, since it was the beginning of this adventure and seemed fitting to be part of the end, whatever tomorrow brought. “Let’s hear once more of the fletcher,” Jack said, and a cheer rose up like always, with Oliver bowing his head from where he’d reclaimed his seat.
Fitting indeed.
Even more so the next day when it was Oliver, the first sacrifice, who sounded the alarm.