The Snow Prince - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,63

worth it for this moment. I… I could hold you like this forever, Sebastian.”

“Please do?”

“I never want to stop.”

I heard him pull in a shaky breath. “I don’t have a plan, Henry,” he said, his voice weak. “For the first time in my life, I have no plan. No routine. Nothing.”

I squeezed him. “And for the first time in your life, you don’t have secrets, either,” I said.

“You’re right.”

“We will get through this,” I told him. “I don’t know how either. But we will.”

14

Sebastian

The next few days in Berrydale were surreal.

Each day was grey and dreary. Snow fell, blew away, and then fell again the next day. We didn’t get even an hour of seeing the sun. Time felt strange, like we were waiting and waiting for a storm to break, but nothing ever happened.

Almost nothing, at least.

Three days after I’d made my public statement, Emma made an official statement. The Princess of Beloria herself was the first royal person to respond.

“I support Prince Sebastian completely and with all of my heart,” she wrote. “We are still very good friends and we will be for life. Wherever Sebastian’s heart leads him, I am proud.”

I teared up as I read her statement in the paper. I called her that afternoon and broke down again, with gratitude for a person who didn’t need to support me but fully did.

Then the day after, something even stranger happened. A prince from a small country called Teralia came out as gay.

And then came out as being very, very interested in me.

It was probably a publicity stunt, but Prince Nathaniel of Teralia appeared on a local TV show in his own kingdom, cracking joke after joke about how much he’d love to end up in my royal castle. He said he’d had a crush on me for years, and never could have dreamed that I’d actually be gay, too.

It was strange, but also incredibly heartwarming.

I wasn’t the only gay prince in the world. It was something I’d always known must be true, but until I saw it right in front of my eyes, it had never felt real.

For once, it felt like I had done something. Impacted the world, in a much larger way than I knew possible. And it started to feel like it may have been worth it.

It wasn’t until a week after my statement that everything exploded.

“Sebastian,” Genoveve called from the front room after a knock on the door. “Your eleven o’clock appointment is here.”

I’d been taking small phone appointments all week. I ignored almost every other request from the media. Genoveve, Henry and I had all agreed that it was the best choice to lay low for a while. But I’d accepted one in-person request, from a small TV news outlet who simply wanted an unbiased view of how I was handling things after leaving the castle. I trusted the reporters, which was rare for me.

The interview was scheduled for tonight. If people were going to talk about me, at least I preferred it being calm, compassionate people talking to me instead of gossip-crazed hounds speculating wildly.

The two reporters, Mallory and David, were at the front door now, and I let them inside and took them to the living room.

“Wow,” Mallory said, looking around. “This is where the Prince of Frostmonte has been living?”

“Yep,” I said plainly. “Just a simple house. But if you wouldn’t mind, I would much rather have the focus of the interview be about my statement, and not at all about my living situation.”

David nodded. “Of course. In fact, Mallory and I had a proposal for you that you’ll hopefully find favorable.”

Mallory sat down. “We want the piece to be a response to your mother’s piece. But not in any sort of attacking way. Not as ‘revenge.’ We simply want the public to hear your side of the story. From you.”

“That’s exactly what I want,” I said. “Nothing catty. Nothing gossipy. Just… my viewpoint.”

“Perfect,” she said, smiling a mega-watt smile. “Let’s get started.”

For the next forty-five minutes, they prepared me for the interview. It was something I’d seen my mother do many times in the castle, but it felt different here in such a small house. The camera crew arrived shortly after the interviewers. Lights were set up. They powdered my face. Henry was incredible and offered everyone the drinks of their choice, watching in awe as they set up.

And finally, it came time to film the interview. It was going to be aired tonight, right in the