The Snow Prince - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,8

cloth was rough and dry as she scrubbed at my face more than she needed to. It was like she was trying to rub a stain out of a dress. “Unacceptable in every way. What if someone saw you?”

“See you tomorrow, Sebastian,” Henry said, leaning to whisper in my ear as he squeezed the small of my back where my mother wouldn’t notice.

“Don’t go—”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Henry repeated to my mother before he took off across the street. My heart felt empty without him nearby, already.

“Why are you even here?” I finally managed to muster.

She froze, her eyes boring into me like twin icicles. “You’re coming home with me to the castle.”

“I’m going back tomorrow,” I said.

“Tonight,” she said, her voice final. “Right now. And you will stay in the castle. No more of this village nonsense. You’re a prince, and it’s finally time to act like one.”

“What?” I protested, feeling like all the blood was leaving my body at once. “But you said until I was eighteen I could come to Berrydale—”

“You’re never coming back here,” she said.

“No,” I said, the word coming out more like a feeble whimper.

“The decision is made. And it should have been a long time ago,” she said. She shook her head, giving me a bitter glance. “What would your father think of all this?”

My chest was tightening more now, like it was slowly and relentlessly being crushed under a heavy weight. One that would never go away.

All I could think about was how wrong Henry had been.

None of this had been his fault. It was all me. Every part of it, from coming outside past curfew to kissing him on the ground.

It was my fault that I wouldn’t get to spend time with Henry anymore.

The castle loomed in the distance like a pitchfork jutting out of the mountain, gusts of wind blowing sheets of snow all around it.

I hadn’t been cold before, when I’d been so close to Henry.

But now, as I stared at the castle that would now become my permanent home, I finally started to shiver.

1

Henry

Eleven Years Later

They say you can never really come home, but they don’t know a damned thing about the village of Berrydale.

When I stepped out of my truck in front of my mom’s old beat-up cottage, eleven years after leaving Berrydale, it felt every bit like coming home.

My stomach churned as I looked at the house from the sidewalk.

Nothing had changed. There was still the broken shutter on my old bedroom window, hanging slightly lopsided, neglected for years. Mom’s old white Buick was still parked out front, paint chipping, the right-side mirror cracked. The place still looked more like a cabin than a regular house, wood stained from years of rain and snow, like the house itself was trying to give up.

Only one thing had changed. The tiny little pine tree that Sebastian and I had planted eleven years ago was fully grown now. It was a beautiful, lone tree, right on the line between his aunt and uncle’s property and my mom’s. On a snowy day like today, it almost looked too perfect, half covered in plush white snow.

“So all this is mine,” I said flatly, watching as a wind blew a pile of snow off of the dilapidated roof.

“Far as the eye can see,” Tracy Hershel said, putting a hand on her hip as she stepped out of the cab behind me.

I was numb as I looked at the front of the house from the sidewalk. The kind of numbness that sits on top of an ocean of feeling, stirring deep inside like a pressure cooker. I felt like I could blow at any minute, but all I could muster was a shrug.

“Well, my eye can see a lot of repairs that need to be made,” I said.

“I’m sure you’ll do a great job. You always were good at fixing stuff,” Tracy said.

Tracy was one of the only lawyers in town, and she took care of every tiny problem the Berrydale townsfolk had. She’d been the one who tracked me down and called me last month to let me know that my mother had passed away, peacefully, in her sleep, and that the house and the Buick had been left to my name.

Mom and I had barely spoken at all since she sent me away to boarding school in the mountains eleven years ago.

I’d been furious. I had never wanted to leave the village. But when the Queen of Frostmonte herself had given