Reardon’s cloak was wrapped around him as he rode full pelt, ahead of David and the others, toward the ensuing battle. Once they had neared the castle, he couldn’t lie in his wagon anymore.
Every gallop made more tears spring to his eyes, and calling to Jack with such force had come out more like a howl of pain—because it was one. He couldn’t let his own anguish stop him, however, not when he could see wounded soldiers and friends littering the expanse around him that he knew could so easily become casualties.
“Stop!” Reardon cried, riding past familiar faces on both sides, and in their surprise to see their prince, the soldiers who’d followed Lombard gave way and let him through. “Stop this! Lombard betrays us! These people are not our enemies!”
Many of them dropped their swords and stared, but enough kept fighting that Reardon knew he had to reach the gates to end this for good.
Jack was there, and Lombard was already moving into the courtyard.
As Reardon pushed on, he could see Shayla amid the soldiers, whirling like a graceful dervish with her daggers, Caitlin tripping up horses and men alike as though she too were a born fighter, and the tall, angular elf, Raphael, atop one of the horses, fighting bravely to drive the invaders back.
Subject after subject of the Frozen Kingdom was defending their home, including the female couple Reardon remembered best from his first night in the castle, one blond and one dark, working in elegant tandem as lovers should.
Reardon wanted that too, to at least reach Jack, even if he could barely raise his swords to fight beside him. He was so close but still felt leagues away.
It was at the sound of a wild, hysterical howl that Reardon looked up, seeing the court members first, floating above the chaos to rain down their elements or offer support, but then, soaring through the air from beyond the castle walls, came the source of that war cry .
Nigel , flung as if from a catapult—no, a trebuchet—hurtled into the throng with his own sword and dagger drawn. Reardon thought him absolutely mad, coming down far too fast, only to hit a cushion of air and float gently the rest of the way down like the wind had caught him.
The wind had.
Reardon watched as Nigel joined the others, brought into the battle by his love, who floated with the rest of the court to keep from touching anyone directly.
“Don’t you see? They wish you no harm if you’d only stop!” Reardon tried once more as he rode that much harder forward, reaching Jack at last and sliding so swiftly from his horse that the jostle pitched him to the side, and he nearly fell into the snow.
“Reardon!” Jack rushed to him, almost forgetting himself and grasping Reardon’s shoulders before he stopped.
He couldn’t touch him. If he did, Reardon would turn to ice like the awful garden of evildoers in the courtyard. The same courtyard where Lombard stood, right where he needed to be upon the cursed grounds, looking back at Reardon with a nasty grin.
“Ahh!” Reardon dropped to his knees, his cloak falling open to reveal the dagger, glowing and burning inside him with a white-hot pain even worse than before, as Lombard’s lips began to move, speaking his promised incantation.
“Reardon!” Jack cried again, dropping to his knees in kind to be closer to Reardon, so that, with the snow beneath and Jack right there in front of Reardon, all he saw was white.
And Jack’s beautiful blue eyes.
Far beyond the gates, up on the ramparts, Reardon caught a glimmer of Barclay, looking distraught and trying to call to him over the battle. Reardon couldn’t hear the words, but he didn’t need to. He understood now what the vision meant. He knew what he had to do to save them all, even if all might not mean him.
His friends were all around him, some above, all fighting so hard while trying not to cause harm to their attackers. The fighting seemed to quiet, though, and Reardon couldn’t be sure if the Emerald soldiers were stopping or if the pain of Lombard’s spell was making him deaf and blind to everything but what was right in front of him.
“I… love you,” Reardon choked out. “ You . L-Lombard tried…. ”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “I love you too. What has he done to you?”
“Promise me.” Reardon cringed. The pain was growing so excruciating that he knew his time was short, but he had to ensure that he saved Jack and the others like he’d promised.
“Reardon, we need to—”
“ Promise .”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Forgive yourself. B-believe… you’re a good… king… and move on.”
Tears tried to form in Jack’s eyes, but when they crested his cheeks, they froze. “I showed everyone my face.”
The pain forced Reardon forward onto his hands, yet still he smiled, because hearing that gave him a brief, stuttering beat of peace. “I’m glad… but say… y-you promise.”
Reardon could hear Lombard now, though he didn’t think anyone else could. The voice seemed to come from the dagger, echoing into his head, words he didn’t understand but that were unmistakably malicious.
More tears spilled onto Jack’s cheeks and froze like fissures. “I promise.”
“Thank you,” Reardon gasped, and using the last of his wavering strength, he heaved upward against the pain, reached for Jack’s face with both hands, and kissed his icy lips.
Jack
Jack couldn’t express the horror of having Reardon kiss him, knowing what would happen.
It was unfairly slow, Reardon able to pull back and smile before the ice washed over him, freezing every part of him, sword belt and cloak and all—but not the dagger.
Thudding to the cold ground, the dagger was the only part of Reardon spared, because it was enchanted and had no place killing him anymore or fulfilling whatever sorcery Lombard had planned.
Reardon was already dead.
A howl exploded from Jack, so earthshattering that he almost expected Reardon to crack. The wail echoed long after he’d stopped releasing it, but afterward, everything else was silence. The soldiers, Jack’s subjects, they’d all stopped fighting, staring in wonder and horror at the frozen prince and the monster who would mourn him .
The dagger had been glowing while pierced in Reardon’s chest, but now it lay dull and dormant on the ground. Jack picked it up, and in his grief, he found rage, spinning around to see a similarly seething Lombard, who had rushed back to stand beneath the ruins of the castle gates. Whatever he’d been doing, Reardon’s sacrifice had stopped it.
Jack launched himself forward with a vicious cry, not trying to use his touch, just the dagger, and when the blade struck Lombard’s barrier, it didn’t bounce but caused a glowing crack to form like a bolt of lightning hanging midair.
The snarl vanished from Lombard’s face.
Jack struck with the dagger again, relentlessly stabbing into the shield as fiercely as he had tried to pummel Lombard before, and with each blow, the cracks in the magical armor began to multiply.
“Stop!” Lombard tried to scramble backward, but Jack kept at him, hitting again—again— again .
The shield shattered like translucent glass, and in one fierce movement, Jack grabbed Lombard’s shoulder, digging his icy claws into flesh, and stabbed the dagger downward into Lombard’s chest, piercing right through his metal armor like the blade was a white-hot poker.
Lombard was too stunned to cry out, Jack’s touch finally doing to him what it did to everything else. He froze right there with terror in his expression, a counterpoint to how Reardon had let it happen with a smile.
Finally, this time, the dagger too turned to ice. With the force of Jack ripping it free and tearing his claws out of Lombard’s frozen shoulder, Jack broke the ice that made up that awful man until he crumbled into pieces.
It should have been satisfying, dropping the frozen dagger onto the chunks of his enemy, but all Jack felt was numbness. He stared downward, not wanting to turn and see the statue of Reardon outside the gates.
“Majesty,” Oliver called, soft but also strangely loud with the battlefield silent.
Jack looked up, and Oliver, who had been on the ramparts with the archers, stood before him now, bow in hand. The court had all floated down too, in an arch surrounding Oliver, waiting on Jack’s next order.
“What say you?” Oliver asked, an arrow nocked and ready should Jack tell him to raise his bow and fire into the soldiers outside .
Now Jack had to turn and see how bad the damage had been to everyone else.
“If even one of our people has been maimed or killed…,” Branwen warned, his grumbling voice making many Emerald soldiers cower now that the energy of battle had dissolved.
But there were no prone bodies, only people limping or holding small wounds with the light pressure of a palm. The only casualty among the innocent was Reardon—smiling still like he was made of crystal instead of ice.
Stepping back out the gates so everyone could see and hear him, Jack rose as tall as he could. “Did you follow that man out of loyalty or fear? Because I never asked for the sacrifices you sent me. I took in your rejects and made them welcome in my home. You might see monsters, in them and in us, but you were also following one, and your prince chose to sacrifice himself to stop Lombard’s plan. I don’t even know what that madman wanted….”
“Immortality!” an unknown voice called.
All heads on the battlefield turned toward it, as a man came forward on horseback, leading all those who had joined the fray behind Reardon. When he stopped in the middle of the converged soldiers, he took his helmet off to reveal elven ears.
Those who had been with Lombard shared further looks of confusion.
“I am David, house of Zheck, a castle guard for Emerald. Prince Reardon told us everything he could. Lombard sought immortality, and as someone born without magic, he believed acquiring it from others was his only way to continue cheating death. I am happy to explain the rest to you, Majesty, but I say to you others, the Ice King speaks the truth.”
Others who had come with Reardon shed their helmets to proclaim their lineages to their fellows. Reardon had gathered his own army. He must have been so relieved, so proud, to have found allies in his own city.
Jack was still angry, still deeply grieving, but he knew that the one who deserved blame was already dead. “Throw down your weapons,” Jack called to the Emerald soldiers, “promise peace and no one else needs to die.”
He wasn’t sure if that would be enough, or if a few would be so terrified and bigoted against them that they would continue to fight or try to run .
None did, and after the first few dropped their weapons into the snow, others followed. Jack would invite them all in through the gates, but first he had to face the one part of this that he wasn’t sure he could stand.
Looking upon Reardon, glittering in the sun, Jack had to say goodbye. His eyes felt hot, but his tears were unable to become anything more than icicles on his cheeks.
Slowly, he walked back toward Reardon and spoke aloud, not trying to hide how his voice caught. “I am so sorry, my love. You asked me to forgive myself and move on, to see in me what you always did, and I will hold true to that promise. I am a good king, and I will be a good king hereafter, for you, for them, and for me.”
As gentle as he could, Jack reached his clawed hand to Reardon’s cheek, wishing he could feel its warmth one last time against his skin, but all he had to touch him with was ice.
Jack gasped at sudden cold— cold because he was touching ice, but his hand was starting to melt, and beneath was his human hand.
Snatching his hand back, Jack gaped, seeing the ice melt away rapidly. The relief was instant, the jagged edges and harsh cold of the ice that normally encased him vanishing from his body far more dramatically than he had ever seen it when night fell. In mere moments, he stood in the snow, naked but human.
“Jack!” Josie called, and when he looked back, he saw that she too was human—and so was everyone in the court.
They stood there—dressed, since their forms had always turned their clothing to their elements—gazing down at themselves in jubilant disbelief. They had changed forms just like Jack, and so too did the ice sculptures that filled the courtyard, melting away into nothing to join the dampness of the snow.
Those vile villains, along with Lombard’s pieces, returned to nothing because they deserved nothing, like the thief Jack had shattered the day he met Reardon—and the first thief who taught him about betrayal.
There had been others, though, too many, who had suffered the effects of an elemental touch without deserving to go up in flames, or fizzle, or turn to gold. Jack faced the courtyard leading to the castle and saw the doors as they burst open to let out not the archers or anyone remaining from the ramparts, but familiar faces that had once been thought dead, their remains shut in the cellar.
Even the Emerald soldier who Liam had touched appeared right where he’d been slain, at the edge of the courtyard wall.
Then a gasp, like an echo of Jack’s before, sounded from behind him, too close to be any of his subjects or the Emerald soldiers. Jack almost dared not turn, but he had to know.
Reardon was melting, not into nothing like those who had earned their fate, but having the ice melt from him, leaving him damp but whole again, standing before Jack with a relieved sigh and that same sweet smile.
Before Jack could move, Reardon tackled him, without any trace that the dagger ever existed save a tear in Reardon’s shirt. He threw himself at Jack so fully, they almost toppled over, but Jack steadied his feet upon the cold ground and held Reardon tight.
“You did it!” Reardon sobbed into his shoulder. “I wasn’t sure if it would work, if it would be enough, but you did it! You finally believed in you.”
Jack squeezed Reardon tight and kissed the side of his neck. “I did, but only because you believed in me first.”
As soon as Reardon lifted his head with that glorious, tear-stained smile, Jack kissed him. He kissed him as fiercely as he ever had and wished upon every power that existed that this not be an illusion.
Reardon’s warmth, his soft lips, his lithe body against Jack’s, felt better than any time before, standing in the light of the sun.
“Y-you’re naked!” Reardon exclaimed when they parted, hurrying to remove his cloak and wrap it around Jack.
Jack clasped it closed but couldn’t bring himself to care that dozens of people from two different kingdoms had just seen a naked Ice King with all his scars.
A triumphant holler came from the courtyard, and Jack and Reardon looked back to see Barclay finally having descended to join the others, Josie close at his side, as they were surrounded by the happy faces of the people returned to them—including the elf who had once tried to save Josie and paid for it.
At last, their curse was truly and finally—
Light erupted in the center of the battlefield so blindingly that, even though Jack and Reardon had been turned away, they still had to shield their eyes. Once it began to fade, they looked to where it had originated, and where the light dimmed stood a figure.
Her.
“Now,” the Fairy Queen said, in all her beauty and finery, “ that is the ending I’ve been waiting for.”