it had been one more mistake, in a long series of mistakes, asking him to stay for dinner. Genoveve had given him a clean suit to wear to dinner, and it fit impossibly well for non-tailored clothing.
He looked great, actually. Henry could fill out cheap flannel or expensive qiviut, and either way, he was stunning.
The moment Emma had started asking him about his time living in the mountains, dinner had turned into the Henry Show. He told tales about snowstorms, snakes, and now bears.
“Didn’t you ever get lonely, up there all alone?” Genoveve asked, turning her head to one side.
“No,” Henry said. “Well… yes, but I’m sort of always lonely, in a way. Being up in the mountains on my own didn’t feel any lonelier than boarding school had.”
“Not a single soul was there other than you?” Timothy, the castle’s head of staff, asked, his brow furrowed.
“It wasn’t complete isolation,” Henry said. “There were other people who lived on the mountain. A couple who lived about a mile down from my cabin. Another man, Gareth, who was a few years older than me. Gareth taught me a lot about foraging nearby, and also taught me that I couldn’t rely only on foraging, and that I was going to have to get used to doctoring up a can of beans every now and then.”
“Sounds like a good friend,” the princess said.
“I considered him even more than a friend, for a while,” Henry said.
“A best friend,” Timothy said.
“Well, we kept each other happy, and warm in bed, sometimes,” he said. “He left to go back to city life after a year of my living out there. Haven’t spoken to him since.”
My chest was suddenly tight. I clutched my drink glass, bringing it to my lips and sipping. Timothy raised an eyebrow, but ultimately shrugged.
I had no reason to be possessive of Henry, certainly not when it came to men he may or may not have been with, years ago. I had even slept with a couple of women who had visited the castle, because they had smelled lovely and it had been yet another secret to keep, a secret that made me feel alive when I had felt dead.
But my heart had never been in it. Not even for a moment.
Jealousy curled through me hot and slow like the scotch I’d been putting away all night. I hated thinking of another man sleeping next to Henry in bed.
When I looked up, Henry’s eyes were on mine.
“Enough about me, though,” Henry said, taking a deep breath and leaning back. “I’ve been running my mouth all night. Sebastian, I want to hear about what you’ve been doing all of this time.”
“You two were friends as children, yes?” Princess Emma asked.
I nodded. “Best friends. Neighbors.”
“We saw each other every day. Then I didn’t see him for eleven years,” Henry said.
“How sad,” Emma said.
“I’ve been learning how to be a prince,” I said, trying to sit up straighter in my chair but finding that all of my bones felt heavy. I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling in a sharp breath of air through my nostrils. “The Prince of Frostmonte is a title that used to imply power, lawmaking. It held meaning. Now it primarily means that I’m the face of Frostmonte, a representative of not only this mountain but the villages below, a symbol across the world for the people that live here.”
“Which means…?” Henry asked.
He was calling me on my bullshit. I didn’t know if I’d rather punch him or put my mouth on him.
“Which means,” I said, “that I show up, I look good, and I eat very fancy food.”
Genoveve giggled. “Prince Sebastian is shy about his accomplishments. He has met with countless international dignitaries. He’s demanded environmental stringency for all of the villages nearby when meeting with local politicians. He’s helped bridge diplomacy between two small countries that had hated each other for years.”
“Well, that all sounds very impressive,” Henry said.
“Not as impressive as defeating a bear in the wilderness,” I said.
“Sebastian used to be deathly afraid of bears,” Henry said, picking up his own drink glass and taking a big swig. “One weekend morning, he came running over to my house to tell me he’d had a nightmare about one terrorizing his aunt’s backyard.”
A pang of sweet nostalgia hit me. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
That morning had been close to my heart. It was one of the rare times that my aunt had allowed me to walk down to the