The Snow Prince - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,9

my mom a hefty sum of money to send me away to boarding school, far, far away, of course my mom had jumped on the opportunity.

That year, I was gone by the time January hit. And after a few years of boarding school in the mountains, with no communication from Sebastian and almost none from my mother, I vowed never to come back to Berrydale. I had been sent to the mountains, and that was where I stayed.

Off the grid. Away from anyone. Away from the home that had spat me out.

“This has got it all,” Tracy said, handing me a crinkled old yellow envelope. Inside were the keys to the house and car, complete with Mom’s old scratched up plastic Fish ‘n’ Tackle keychain. There was also a thick stack of paperwork that Tracy’d had me sign earlier this morning at her office.

“Keys to a new life,” I said, taking them out of the envelope.

“Or an old one,” Tracy said, giving me a wink. Her skin was wrinkled now, and her hair mostly dishwater grey. When I was seven, Mom had brought me along to Tracy’s office a few times to finalize papers after Dad had died.

Tracy had always been a kind presence back then. Kinder to me than my own mom had been. Once when I was in the general store all alone, on a night when Mom was out working overtime, Tracy had seen me in the candy aisle using my five-dollar allowance to buy a dinner of Snickers and Slim Jims. She’d taken me next door to the tiny Italian pizza shop and sprung for a large pizza and a container of marinara pasta to take home instead.

“Hey, is Rizzo’s Pizzeria still open?” I asked her now.

“Sure is,” she said, smiling.

“Maybe I’ll go there for dinner,” I said.

“It ain’t much, but it is tasty,” she said.

“I’ve been living off canned beans and homemade bread for years, now,” I said. “I’m sure hot pizza will be amazing.”

“You really were a mountain man up there, weren’t you?” Tracy asked, squinting at me.

“Not as fun as it sounds, I promise,” I said.

She smiled softly. “Never said it sounded like fun. You ready to settle in here in a real house?”

“My house in the middle of nowhere was real,” I protested. “It was just… tiny.”

“One room, you said?”

I nodded. “And an outdoor bathroom.”

“Yikes,” Tracy said. “Well, your old house here should feel like a mansion, then.”

Mansion wasn’t exactly the word I would have used to describe Mom’s old house.

Tracy left, and then I was on my own inside my childhood home. It somehow felt even smaller than my tiny little shack in the mountains had been. I was twenty-six now, but I felt fifteen again immediately as I made my way through the halls. I could remember how my mom screamed at me, how she’d told me one night that her pregnancy with me had been a regretful mistake.

Still, all I felt was numb.

The house was mostly empty. An estate sale had already happened. My childhood room was barren, and had long ago been turned into a dusty storage closet.

The first time I felt something was when I made my way to the den and pushed open the old blue curtains surrounding the big window.

There it was, far in the distance, capped in snow, big and towering above everything else. Frostmonte Castle imposed on the rest of the town from atop the hill miles and miles away. It looked small from down here, but as a kid, it had been easy to see through the half-functional telescope I’d snagged at the thrift store. Sure as hell had no clue where that telescope might be now.

I was looking at the castle, but all I could see was him.

Sebastian was the one person who had made me forget my home life. A person that loved me, as a given, unconditionally. I knew he loved me, even when I wasn’t sure anyone else did.

I could still remember the look in his eyes, the evening we had planted the pine tree. The look that I’d thought was sadness as we finished planting it, when in reality, Sebastian had been longing for me like I’d longed for him.

He hadn’t spoken to me since, and I likely never would talk to him again. But he had known me better than anyone.

That life had ended long, long ago.

Sebastian was in there somewhere, roaming the halls. And yet I’d never felt further away from him.

When I saw Sebastian’s