The Snow Prince - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,16
from him so long ago. The yearning that used to inhabit his gaze was replaced with a tight caginess, like he was a starved wolf, protecting himself no matter the cost.
Time had done beautiful and awful things to Sebastian. But the boy I’d once known was clearly gone.
“The tangerines, please,” Sebastian said to one of the servants that had come to his side, displaying a tray full of options for us to snack on. She placed the bowl of fresh fruit on the table between us.
Sebastian had swiftly taken me through the stone halls of the castle the moment we’d arrived. In the car I had been so focused on watching him, getting angrier with each time I looked his way and found him furrowing his brow and looking down at his notebook.
He’d barely even glanced at me for most of the drive up to the castle. When we’d finally arrived, I stepped out and looked at the castle up close for the first time in my life.
It was colossal. Seeing it so close felt like a dream. I’d stared at the thing from down in the village for so many years, but I’d never been nearby. It had felt malevolent, somehow, like a place I had always been better off staying far away from.
It still felt that way. There was no denying its beauty, but Frostmonte Castle was no place I wanted to be.
I’d gotten chills up my spine as Sebastian took me through the corridors. I hadn’t thought about ghosts in years, but Frostmonte reminded me of every night I spent as a kid, being afraid a ghost was lurking around every corner.
Even if the castle didn’t have real ghosts, Sebastian himself felt like one to me now. A relic of my past. Something that used to be so alive, so kind, but now existed only as a shadow of himself.
We were sitting in a small room now. The walls were all stone, of course. The decorations were ornate, with beautiful dark red drapes around small windows, pulled back to reveal breathtaking views of the lands and villages below. The chairs we sat on were soft burgundy leather, framed in some expensive-looking dark wood.
The room was dark other than the pure light coming in from the window at our side.
Nobody could have looked as haunting just eating a slice of tangerine as Sebastian did. I had forgotten how much his presence changed a room—back in the day, he seemed to make any place quieter and more peaceful, but today…
Today everything felt charged. Like Sebastian knew how much power he had, and he wasn’t afraid of it like he used to be.
“So is this why you made me get in the car?” I said.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“So I would sit here and watch you eat orange slices?” I continued. “You must be even lonelier than I thought, Sebastian.”
He eyed me, and I swore I saw him trying to hold back a smile. “I knew you’d still be the same, Henry.”
“You don’t know me at all,” I said quickly, my voice rising a little despite my best efforts to seem unperturbed.
I curled in on myself. It was cold in the castle to begin with, but this little room was drafty, and I couldn’t stop feeling like Sebastian himself was radiating ice.
“They’re Temple tangerines,” he said. “Not oranges. There is only one place within hundreds of miles where Temples are available, and they deliver to us every other day.”
“Sorry about the mistake, Prince.”
He puffed out a sharp breath. “I’d rather you excoriate me like you were doing in the car than call me that,” he said.
“Doesn’t everyone call you that now?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Sounds different when it’s you,” he said. “So how was life in the mountainous wilderness, Henry? Did you fulfill your dreams?”
“Life in the mountains was just peachy,” I said. “My favorite part was being shipped to boarding school against my will.”
“You didn’t enjoy boarding school?”
I stared at him. “No, Sebastian, I can’t say I did. And I’m not in the mood to relive the past right now.”
“It was an all-boys school. I’m sure you made some good friends. Maybe even got your first boyfriend?”
My teeth clenched. “So that’s why you brought me up here? To ask me if I dated people in boarding school?”
“I asked you to the castle because I was bored, Henry. Don’t read too much into things,” he said, eyes cast down as he picked up another slice of tangerine.
“Yes, I was the resident