Chapter 3 #4
“I’ve been out here, trying to find a way out of this marriage arrangement, but as much as it pains me to admit that my mother is right, this time I’m afraid she’s not wrong.
Marriage is the last thing I want right now, especially to an Unseelie Princess I’ve never even met.
But aligning ourselves with King Maelthar seems like our only option against the Isogrim. ”
“What about our allies? Surely Wysterlind will come to our aid.”
“Allies? No one supported Skadgard’s attempt to overthrow Yulreth. My mother poisoned the Winterbloom Woods to weaken the magic, affecting all the Northern Realms. No one is coming to our aid, Syl.”
“This is what she wanted; you know that? Why she promoted me to captain. It wasn’t for merit or because she felt I deserved it. My father’s legacy means nothing to her. She promoted me so I could keep an eye on you, and so I could convince you to wed the princess.”
“What?”
“But it seems I didn’t even have to. It seems you’ve already made up your mind.”
“You think I want this marriage?”
“I think your mother is a master manipulator. Marrying back into the Unseelie Court has been her plan all along. You’ve been trying to deny that part of your heritage for so long, and now you’re just going to…” I couldn’t even finish my sentence.
“Syl, what do you mean, my mother wanted you to convince me to wed the princess?”
Swallowing hard, I took a gentle step away from him, the world feeling like it was tumbling around me. When I’d come searching for him, I hadn’t formulated a concrete plan of how this conversation would go.
I thought we might spar and maybe get some of our frustrations out on each other.
I thought maybe he’d tell me the whole truth of his absence, that knowing the heavy burden on my shoulders now, he might share with me who the mole was because he knew, as captain, it was my job to know.
That I might be able to confess what his mother had told me, and that together, we’d find a way to protect our kingdom in a way that didn’t revolve around him marrying into the Unseelie Court, while still being able to protect my family.
Yet, despite my attempts to get him to open himself up to me, he’d still chosen to keep me in the dark, sharing only the parts that benefited him.
But the worst part of it all was that he’d chosen to wed the Unseelie Princess without even talking to me about it.
It made me feel foolish. Made me question everything—our friendship, the love we had for each other.
This whole time I’d believed us to be…more.
But looking at him now, seeing the cold determination in his eyes, the utter stillness of his muscled shoulders, that regality he wore so effortlessly despite always trying to convince me he cared little for his royal lineage…
The totality of who Jack Frost truly was hit me like an iceberg.
There was only one truth—there had always been only one truth—and it was the only one that mattered.
Jack wasn’t my friend, not wholly. He was the Son of Ice, the Frost Prince, and he belonged to the crown, the realm. Not to me.
Whatever fantasies you built in that little head of yours, end now…
He took a step toward me, his hand reaching for mine. “Sylvi, what’s going on?”
I pulled my hand away before he could touch me because I feared if he did, if I felt the warmth of his skin on mine, I might devolve into nothingness before his eyes.
“Makes no difference anymore, Jack. What matters is not why your mother promoted me, or how I feel about us, or what I thought our friendship meant to you. What matters is our duty to our people. Our job is to protect the realm, and if you marrying the Unseelie Princess is our only way to accomplish that…” I squared my shoulders and adjusted the silver emblem on my uniform.
Meeting his gaze, I tried to calm the shivers raking my body, but it was impossible to keep from trembling when the blood coursing through my veins felt like liquid ice.
The thought of him marrying the princess shouldn’t have affected me like this.
Yes, the unseelie were untrustworthy. The last time our kingdom aligned with theirs was when the queen married into Skadgard’s crown, forever changing our realm.
Jack had tried so hard to avoid tapping into his unseelie magic, refusing to let it consume him, and now he was not only aligning with the Unseelie Court, but marrying into it.
But what made my heart pound like it wanted to punch out of my chest, what had me crumbling into infinite pieces wasn’t any of that.
The blow that threatened to knock me unconscious was the suffocating heaviness twisting in the center of my body like a jagged knife—the notion that this was it. This was the moment I would lose him.
Walking past him, I didn’t bother to say goodbye, couldn’t bear the weight of those words.
I needed to get away from him. Needed to get away from that labyrinth and the heart-wrenching memories etched into its hedges.
I ran and ran back to the palace, my lungs aching, knowing fully well that what I was truly running from was the truth. The godsdamn truth.
And it was the one thing I had tried to deny to myself since the day Jack and I turned fifteen and a new awareness bloomed between us. When, for the first time in my life, I saw him not as my childhood friend but the beautiful, powerful male I knew he’d one day become.
My body shook with shame and self-pity. The queen had been right.
She’d been so fucking right. She’d seen through my poorly erected facade.
The words she’d spoken in that hallway had been sharpened daggers aimed straight for my heart, and she’d not missed.
Every single one had hit its mark with expert precision.
Wait… You didn’t think his heart belonged to you, did you? Her voice echoed in my head like rolling stones.
I’d been so na?ve to believe our friendship would last forever, that this thing we had could survive anything that was thrown our way. But now I knew. My heart, my soul, would never be able to bear seeing him with someone else. Crack after crack rocked through me as I found my way to the stables.
I’d hoped to find Eira and gallop out of the palace, but the instant I saw Varik sharing a smoke with the stablehand, I was reminded that I was no longer a simple guard.
My entire body flashed with heat. I’d run from the grove like some school-aged child who’d found out her crush liked someone else—or in this case, was going to marry a princess—meanwhile, a real threat loomed, and it was my job to keep our city safe.
Time to face reality.
“Captain,” Lieutenant Varik called as soon as he spotted me walking from the gardens. “Out for a late-night stroll, I see.”
“Had to clear my head after that never-ending battle debrief.”
“I heard the prince stormed off.”
“Something like that.” I drew closer and gestured for the stablehand to bring me my mare.
Once we were out of earshot, I said, “Listen, we need to assemble the guard and tighten security. The queen is expecting the Unseelie Court’s envoy in a week, and with everything that’s been happening—the failed battle, the unrest among the people, and now the possibility of a mole in our midst—we can’t afford any slip-ups. ”
Varik exhaled a slow stream of smoke, the embers of his pipe glowing in the dark.
He studied me with an easygoing smirk, his relaxed demeanor a stark contrast to the concern that had etched across his face earlier in the day.
“Already ahead of you, Captain. I put the night watch on double rotation and ordered extra patrols near the palace gates.”
“Good,” I said, folding my arms. “I also want the intelligence unit pulling every whisper from the streets. If there’s a traitor among us, we need to find out who they are before they do more damage.”