Reardon
Reardon was sore at the end of another long day, especially after his adventures in the training yard. Now he sluggishly wandered up to bed, Barclay having already retired, as well as Shayla and Nigel, though Reardon had stayed in the banquet hall nursing a cup of mead with Wynn while getting to know Oliver and his wife, Amelia, who he liked too much to be jealous of for having snagged the heart of the handsome fletcher.
Wynn was the castle’s main engineer, but she was a close second, and Reardon was enthralled to hear about everything the pair had invented to make life better here.
The hour was drawing late, however, and he needed rest to be up early for his next audience with the king. Reardon’s wing of the castle was quieter than others, less full, he supposed, with many of the rooms still empty.
As he neared his corridor, he saw Widow Caitlin leaving it, briskly moving in the opposite direction. He still hadn’t spoken to her and wondered where she was off to so late and at such a persistent pace.
He knew little about her and hadn’t thought it right to ask Barclay, like some meddling gossip. He hadn’t even known that her room was down their same hall, though it made sense, with quarters handed out as new offerings came to the castle, and she only having been there ten years.
Surely, more drastic measures were allowed with someone determined to avoid him. He was meant to discover the castle’s secrets, after all, and wanted to befriend and understand everyone he could.
Slowing his steps and glancing behind to be sure no one else was nearby, Reardon flattened himself to the wall before continuing. When he peered to see how far she had gone, he saw her disappearing down another hallway. Hurrying after her, quiet but swift, he peered around the next corner—but saw no sign of her.
“Spying, Prince Reardon?”
Reardon jumped a clean foot off the ground and spun to find her behind him.
How?
“Well?” Caitlin crossed her arms, clothed simply like everyone in the castle but with deep hues to her dark blue kirtle over a silvery-gray smock. She wore her long brunette hair down, with only the front few strands pinned back. She was a lovely woman but painted over with a sheen of severity.
“No.” Reardon straightened. “I was just hoping to talk to you, since you seem so set on not talking to me.”
“Do we have something to talk about?” Her words dripped scorn that would have deflated Reardon if he hadn’t accomplished so much today.
“You must hate me greatly, but I was only a boy when you were sent here. Let me understand—”
“Your father was not a boy. He was king, and he made a choice to follow the will of the people, despite my pleading.” The ice in her expression was indeed as piercing as the king’s, even with brown eyes, but she seemed to calm herself as she finished, “He was grieving, I understand, but so was I.”
“You were grieving?” Reardon looked through her veiled expression, realizing that the bitter cold was to shield a broken heart. “Of course. That you’re a widow precedes you.”
Her arms dropped, and she huffed a dejected sigh. “You lost your mother, and that same night, I lost my husband.”
“The same night?”
“That fact only condemned me further. General Lombard stormed my home, found my potions and teachings unsanctioned by alchemy, and called me a witch. They assumed I killed my husband and your mother, but they had no evidence other than magic in me.”
Reardon hadn’t understood how the offerings worked back then, but he remembered whispers of a witch—of many witches, then and in all the years since. “They’ve condemned others for my mother’s death, never sure, just speculation. I’m sorry that while you suffered your own loss, you had to suffer being blamed for it too.” It did not even occur to Reardon that either accusation could be true. “May I ask… who was your husband? ”
She hesitated, keeping her distance from him. “Stephen, a guard in the castle. I called him Stevie.”
“Stevie?” Reardon exclaimed. “I remember him! I knew he was married but not to who. I didn’t learn he died for months. They sent so many soldiers away after my mother’s death. He was a serious soldier, but when no one was looking, he would smile or wink at me or even crouch to play.”
The barest twitch of a smile touched Caitlin’s lips. “He always had kind words for your parents and fondness for you too. When I confessed my fears about starting a family, knowing our child could inherit my magic, he used you as a reason that it would be all right, saying the kingdom was in good hands.
“Maybe I was wrong to cling stubbornly to thinking otherwise…,” she said quietly, only for her expression to harden again. “But you haven’t changed Emerald yet, and actions speak louder than empty promises.”
“My promises are not empty,” Reardon swore.
She stared at him for some time, and then nodded.
He would have accepted that as a truce and let her pass, but the knowledge of Stevie’s death plagued him. Caitlin was young—or had been when she was sent here. Stevie had been the same, midtwenties, he remembered, not much older than Reardon now.
“Stevie dying the same night as my mother can’t be a coincidence. Do you know how he died?”
“He died as your mother did, the very same way.”
“What?” Reardon’s stomach roiled. “You know how my mother died? Was it magic as everyone feared? Please, I—”
“No.” Her hard eyes turned sympathetic, but she held out a hand to halt him. “There were components missing from my home. The High Alchemist reported some missing from his shop too. Science killed your mother, with elements taken from various sources to cover the killer’s tracks.
“Stevie must have seen them or caught them in the act, and they forced him to drink or be doused in whatever substance they used. I tried telling all this to Lombard, to your father when he questioned me, to anyone who would listen, but I was just a witch in their eyes, easy to condemn and dismiss.”
“But what exactly was it?” Reardon pressed. “What potion did the killer make? What did they steal to do it? ”
“Wormwood and rose petals were missing from the High Alchemist. Wormwood can be a poison, but Lombard would have detected it on its own. He said the bodies had no trace of anything, that only magic could be blamed, but I know it is more complicated than that.”
“What did they take from you?”
“Dried spider’s eye and wraith’s teeth.”
“Wraith’s teeth?”
“A fancy name for ice, key in many potions, and by raiding my home, they discovered my secret.” She turned her hand palm up, and tiny shards of ice began to form before Reardon’s eyes. “I make the ice myself.”
Elemental manifestations were some of the most common forms of magic found in the people sent as offerings. Those who could conjure water—and therefore ice—were considered the most dangerous, because everyone associated that magic with the Ice King.
“I don’t know exactly what killed Stevie and your mother, but it was science, not magic, and whoever used it was no one in this castle.” The ice retreated into her palm as if it had melted away. “They never told you any of this? Your father? General Lombard?”
“No.” Lombard never shared anything with Reardon about that night, and whenever he pressed his father, Henry looked so sad, voice catching as he tried to speak, that Reardon would backtrack and tell him it didn’t matter.
He’d always hoped it hadn’t been magic, but to learn so much more of the truth didn’t assuage him.
“Thank you for telling me now,” Reardon said. “Perhaps, one day, I can change the hearts of our people and get justice for all our loved ones.”
Like before, Caitlin stared at him for a long time, her subtle smile peeking through more broadly. “That really is all you want, isn’t it?”
“What else would I want?” He tilted his head at her, only in the crease of her brow recognizing that she had expected different of him, some other version of a prince, and looked—at least he hoped—pleasantly surprised.
“Keep on as you are, Emerald Prince. You’re faring well so far.” She nodded once more and moved to slip past him, heading back down the hall she’d initially begun to trek .
It had been a productive day, no matter how wary it made Reardon to finally know that whoever caused his mother’s death had gotten away with it, and he still had no idea how or why.
He also realized that he hadn’t discovered where Caitlin was headed, but he knew better than to try following again.
Jack
Jack didn’t need sleep. The curse saw to that, though occasionally he and the others still chose to, if only for a quieting of the mind.
Last night he hadn’t rested at all. He’d been too agitated, leaving his crumpled bit of poetry in the corner of his room for hours before he finally retrieved it, smoothed its edges, and left it back on his desk. He should tear it into pieces or freeze it to dust, but he couldn’t bear to part with it just yet.
Today he graced his throne minutes before Reardon’s arrival. He would not be beaten again.
“Follow me, little prince.” Jack got down as soon as the young man drew near, turning toward his secret tunnels. Where he wanted to have their audience today was somewhere he could only reach through the hidden passageways or risk icing far too many halls.
He saw the awe on Reardon’s face as they entered the initial corridor. Jack kept looking back as he led Reardon, since the space was tight. His own hunch and slow gait ensured Reardon also had to walk slowly or risk running into him.
Eventually they came to the room Jack intended, and he moved the hidden door aside.
“Do these tunnels lead everywhere in the castle?” Reardon asked.
“For the most part.” Jack backed away, leaving Reardon plenty of room to exit. “Go on. I have a feeling you haven’t seen this room yet.” He couldn’t come right out and say that he knew Reardon hadn’t because he’d been spying on him since he arrived.
Cautiously, Reardon ventured forth. Though the tunnels were slick and icy, his potion guaranteed steady footing, and he gave no sign of shivering, though a gasp did leave him once he’d cleared the exit and saw what lay on the other side.
The library was a masterwork, boasting the highest ceilings in the castle and bursting with tomes. The last two hundred years had only seen its shelves added to by works of the people here, which wasn’t many, but the original collection itself was vast. There were no windows, sparing the books from the power of the sun dimming their covers, but the great hall with its many rows was lit up brilliantly, one of the brightest rooms in the castle, because Branwen always spared a part of his power to keep it lit, just as he kept the castle warm.
Branwen came off as harsh, but Jack knew him to be an avid reader, as well as a contributor to their bard tales, though for prose only, not singing, and not publicly.
“You may leave the path,” Jack said. “It was made for me, since this is one of few rooms I was not willing to give up, even if I do leave an unfortunate wake.”
Only then did Reardon look down to see that he stood in a hollowed-out groove in the floor like a forest path, leading many different directions throughout the library. It kept Jack’s ice and subsequent melting from getting near the books.
Reardon turned to look at him with a boyish smile. “How clever. But how do you read if you can’t touch the books?”
Jack gestured ahead, and Reardon stepped gingerly out of the path to walk along the main floor. A few rows down was a pedestal with an open book, surrounded by one of Wynn’s clever contraptions. It connected to a pair of pedals on the floor, and with a simple step on one of them, the connecting mechanism gripped a page and turned it.
He showed Reardon by turning to the next page, and then stepped on the opposing pedal to turn it back. “I need assistance when the time comes for a new book, but this serves its purpose.”
“What is this one?” Reardon stepped up to the pedestal to investigate. “ The River Princess ? That’s a romance!”
“A king can’t enjoy some sordid fun? I thought we discussed that already. Admittedly, I prefer to reimagine most damsels as—”
“Stable boys?” Reardon teased. “Though I suppose in this case it would be a prince.” What he’d said seemed to catch up to him, and his sweet smile dropped. “I-I mean… uhhh….”
“I never had a prince,” Jack said. The words slipped free as easily as any confession to Reardon so far, because the bashful way he lowered his head and fluttered his emerald eyes, only to flick them back up and center on Jack, seemed to say his wants focused there too.
Not on Jack. It couldn’t possibly be that. But on a prince of his own .
Jack sat in an extra groove built like a bench, and Reardon pulled a chair over to sit close at the edge of the path. There was barely the length of a man separating them, and yet, in his trough to protect the world from his frozen form, Jack felt leagues away from Reardon beside that pedestal.
“How might a prince have changed things?” Reardon asked.
“Maybe not at all,” Jack said. He needed Reardon to understand that there was no changing anything—not here. “I wasn’t prepared for my father’s death. I thought I could put off the inevitable forever. I was young, like you, and felt invincible, constantly thwarting my father’s plans for me.
“When he died, I had a wicked and terrible idea. Thrust into my role as monarch and expected to marry, I vowed instead to change everything, to make a mockery of what my father thought a kingdom should be and create a land free for everyone to live as they pleased.”
“Wasn’t that a good thing?”
“Have you ever heard what the road to damnation is built with, little prince?”
Reardon’s twitch of a smile said he had.
“My intentions weren’t good. I was really only thinking of myself and the freedoms I wanted. I dismissed my father’s advisors, even the most well-respected ones, and chose my friends as my court. We did whatever we wanted, telling our subjects to do the same.
“Not to say my court isn’t each capable in their position, but back then, we had no plan or sense of gravity to all that fell under our rule. And let me assure you, there is nothing quite as dangerous as giving people exactly what they think they want.
“What happened wasn’t on them, however. They soon saw the folly of it all, that yes, everyone should be able to love and exist and pursue their heart’s desires—or at least most did—but there must be order and responsibility too. A kingdom should not rule every part of a subject’s lives, but freedom shouldn’t be a guise for apathy. There must be a balance between control and personal liberty or everything crumbles.”
“I understand,” Reardon said. “I wish to change the laws of the Emerald Kingdom, to not condemn anyone without a true crime against them, but not to abolish all law and tradition entirely.”
“Then you are far better than I was. A tyrant in power isn’t the answer, but giving everyone everything eventually collapses. Bandits arose, unrest, famine, and the people looked to me to fix it. But all I cared about was… my stable boys,” Jack finished wryly. “A system is only as good as its worst person in power, no matter how well-intentioned.
“More and more people left for other kingdoms, where crops were plentiful and soldiers dependable. Freedom didn’t matter when it came from a king who didn’t care—or certainly didn’t seem to. Eventually, my Sapphire Kingdom caught the eye of the Mystic Valley. The Fairy Queen had grown concerned about so many flocking to her lands, so she came to investigate.”
“The Fairy Queen?” Reardon’s eyes shot wide.
She wasn’t really a fairy. Fairies were myths or whispers of the Shadow Lands, but the Fairy Queen was such a powerful ruler of the elves that she had myths of her own. Elves of the Mystic Valley were said to be un-aging because of her magic.
Jack could see in Reardon’s eyes when he realized he should have guessed where the curse came from, since the castle’s inhabitants were un-aging too.
“She came with a small contingent of her people, and we threw a banquet in her honor.”
“That is the proper response for a visiting ruler.”
“Naturally, but at the time, my lands were half-abandoned, and the castle was a mess. We may as well have been drunken revelers, feasting from our stores, while the few remaining outside were starving.
“The Fairy Queen sat in silence through it all, as we made fools of ourselves. I even attempted to bed a human in her company who turned out to be her Prince Consort.”
“You didn’t.” Reardon paled.
“I did. It was clear that my kingdom would implode in months if not weeks, so, before the night was through, she stood from where we dined, and with a flourish of her hands, all the candles lighting the room snuffed out, and only she glowed, radiant in the center.”
Jack could still remember it so clearly, though he’d been well on his way to inebriated by that point. As he recited to Reardon what she said, he heard it in his mind in her powerful voice.
“You are not a king or a kingdom. You are a menace, even to your own people. Now I see why they come to me or run off to distant lands. I could let you continue wasting your resources and losing your subjects over time, but that would be cruel to everyone .
“Instead, I will give your people a choice—to stay or be welcomed into my lands instead, while you and those who rule beside you are taught a lesson.”
Her voice had resonated with even more power as she cast her spell.
“Your kingdom’s folly ends tonight and you will live until it’s right for you are cold and full of wanting like molten gold that burns without warmth and stinging power made for haunting the invisible that you forgot.
“Be what you are and have neglected until you find your way. See what you should be in your mourning before you rule again someday. ”
“I felt it then,” Jack said, “though I couldn’t describe it as anything more than a chill and tingle down my spine. She turned to my friends, as she sent her own people away, and said, ‘If you protect him and believe in him, you will see this curse through. When his heart melts and he is a true king, then the spell will be broken.’
“She warned me that a return to my father’s ways was not the answer. All power or no power is never the answer.”
“Balance.” Reardon nodded thoughtfully.
“There are things to be learned from all ways and all people. There is no single answer to how to rule well. I don’t claim that how this castle runs now is best, but it is ours.
“When the Fairy Queen left that night, Josie, the others, and I soon found ourselves alone, but we didn’t believe anything would come of her words—until dawn, when we began to change.”
“And all the people she asked to seek refuge?”
“Every last one of them accepted her offer and left.”
“Then came the story of the fletcher? ”
“Yes, though we had some years alone first. I suppose you could say that Oliver gave us a project, and we decided to stop wallowing in our solitude.”
With the story at its end, a reaction Jack had not anticipated burst onto Reardon’s face.
He smiled.
“This is such wonderful news.”
“What?”
“The curse,” Reardon said, serious but full of energy. “It’s only meant to be temporary. It has stipulations. It can be broken!”
“Don’t you understand? I allowed my subjects to starve and die while I rejoiced in my wealth and position.”
“I do understand. You and Oliver were very much the same. Do you hold it against him, the rich man’s son he once was?”
Jack wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“The only thing I don’t understand is why the curse still stands. Clearly, you have lived up to your end of what the Fairy Queen requested.”
“You aren’t listening,” Jack bit out sharply.
“I am. I have. She cursed you to find your way to becoming a better king, and that is exactly what you did.”
“If that were true, if that were all it took, then I would no longer be this.” Jack lifted one of his clawed hands, large enough that he could have gripped Reardon’s head with ease and crushed it. “Yet here I am. There is no cure. There is no end.”
Reardon’s need to rail back—to defend —rose within him, but then he exhaled with a slump in his chair. “Perhaps we simply need to find the right answer.”
He was foolhardy indeed, but not because he was wily and selfish. He was kind and wanted everyone to have what he sought.
“Maybe that’s for another day,” he said before Jack could answer, not pushing, merely leaning forward on his knees, as close to Jack as he could without being in the trench with him. “Tell me more.”
“More?”
“About your favorite tales, maybe? What tomes have been your favorite?” Reardon looked curiously around them, leaving talk of the curse behind as if it changed nothing of his opinion of Jack or his court. “What types of stories warm the mighty Ice King? Always romance? ”
Jack couldn’t express, didn’t dare, that the only thing that had warmed him in over two centuries was sitting right in front of him. “Have you never ventured into those depths, little prince?”
“I have. In books anyway.” Reardon blushed.
Jack didn’t want to inspire pity, but the truth was it was always romantic tales he pursued, because after years of dallying with no substance, now he could have neither, and substance was what he craved.
Though dallying still held its appeal.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken this freely. Not to Branwen. Not even to Josie. But with Reardon, it came so easy. “My favorite was a rare tale, because it wasn’t traditional romance, but the love story was clear between two knights who appeared to be best friends. The author must have been trying to tell the real story in secret. The truth was in the underbelly, waiting for anyone clever enough to see it.
“The knights, both men, never once kissed or intimately embraced, yet their passion and loyalty to one another was stronger than most obvious romances I’ve ever read.” Jack smiled to remember it, how the knights were the perfect examples of stalwartness, especially when protecting each other, and he’d often close the book while reading it to imagine unwritten scenes where they ravaged one another.
“What was it called?” Reardon asked, looking around again with an eager eye.
“I can’t remember. You’ll have to see if you can find it.”
“Seriously?” Reardon balked. “That could take years without knowing the title!”
The amusement Jack had been feeling, and the soft, wonderful warmth Reardon instilled in him went suddenly cold as he recalled that years wasn’t part of the bargain. “When do you plan to leave?”
Reardon startled, as the truth must have only then washed over him too. “You’ll… let me leave?”
Somehow, Jack had forgotten that he’d initially promised not to. “I require that you stay two weeks to prove you aren’t an enemy in disguise. After that, the choice is yours.”
Because after two weeks, Reardon would know the final secrets of the castle.
They spent hours trading stories, Reardon perusing the shelves and occasionally finding a tome that he loved and placing it on Jack’s pedestal for them to read his favorite passages. Jack could almost have forgotten that he was a monster in a ditch, unable to touch the young prince who stood just out of reach.
They might have stayed hours more if Reardon’s stomach hadn’t grumbled.
“Is it lunchtime already? Let me put your book back for you.” Reardon traded out the book he’d been reading from, careful to return to the exact page the original book had been on. “If it’s any good, Majesty, perhaps you’ll loan it to me. I can imagine a princess is someone else too.” He flushed, ever so quick, to slips of phrase that he didn’t seem to intend.
Jack stood to head back into the tunnels, while Reardon started for the door, but then the prince stopped with a glance over his shoulder.
“Oh, um… you could come with me, Majesty. I know you don’t eat but—”
“I have very specific places I tread, little prince, or it leads to messy cleanup. And we don’t have quite that much potion to spare for everyone.”
Reardon hadn’t shivered once during today’s audience, and he didn’t now, though his potion had to have worn off. “What company do you keep,” he asked, smiling as he finished, “when bothersome princes aren’t around? Oliver, I suppose? The other soldiers with Branwen?”
Reardon guessed that because they were the only people he’d seen Jack with, but the truth was… Jack was usually alone. “Not often.”
“Then…?”
Jack couldn’t answer, but Reardon didn’t leave him at a quiet stalemate for long.
“Then I look forward to tomorrow.” He bowed, and only after Jack nodded did he turn to take his leave.
Jack had almost made it to the entrance into the secret passages when he looked back and, realizing he was indeed— again —alone, decided he would stay and read, and maybe the title of that long-forgotten book would come to him.