Page 50 of The Midnight Blizzard
His question wasn’t what I’d been expecting, and I looked down at where the lone slipper peeked out from beneath my gown.
“I…no,” I lied quickly, trying to surreptitiously kick it off beneath my skirts. If Jack discovered that they had turned warm for me… Breaking free from the warm embrace of Jack’s arms, I extracted myself from the coat then reached over and nudged the slipper away. “It’s been bothering me all night. It was so cold.”
Jack sat up and picked up the shoe, then stared at me. “It’s warm.” I couldn’t read his expression. Was he disappointed? Upset? From inside his jacket, he pulled out the other shoe. “Try them both on.”
I reluctantly slid my feet into the shoes. “They must have warmed up because their maker is here.” I held my breath, waiting to hear what Jack had to say.
“You love the prince,” Jack said in wonderment.
“No, I don’t!”
Jack met my eyes. “I think you do.”
“No, I don’t! I love you!”
There. The words that I’d so desperately wanted to speak were finally out in the open. They hovered in the air, drawing me to Jack. He had to know how strong my feelings were. “I love you, Jack,” I repeated, my hands rising to latch onto his face. My thumb stroked his jawline, and the brief contact acted as a catalyst, fanning my emotions into a bonfire. Unable to resist, I leaned in and brushed my lips against his. The second they touched, I knew one kiss wouldn’t be enough. I wanted so much more than a fleeting romance. I wanted a future with Jack.
He kissed me back, then pulled away and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Don’t you see, Noelle?Iama prince.”
I froze. “What? No, you’re not.” My brain had jammed, incapable of processing anything else.
“Only one who has feelings for a prince of this kingdom can wear the slippers without suffering frostbite.”
“But…you told me your mother died and your father left you.”
He shrugged apologetically. “That is the story I’ve been telling everyone my whole life, but it isn’t true. Stephen and I are twins.”
My mouth fell open. “But…people would have known.”
“Only the physician and the midwives knew, and my parents paid them handsomely to keep it a secret. With the laws the way they were at the time of my birth, they knew I could have been taken away. So instead, they put out the same story I told you, and everyone accepted it without question. My parents knew I’d never be accepted as aprince. They’ve worked hard to amend the laws to legalize magic since I was born, but the sentiment toward mages has been more difficult to change. It isn’t prudent for a nation to be governed by a leader whom no one trusts. It just made sense to have Stephen fill the role I could not.”
“But you said you were older than he is.”
“By seven and a half minutes, yes.”
Twins. Jack’s noticeably mage-like appearance had distracted from the other features that, now that I thought about it, did somewhat resemble Prince Stephen’s. They had similar eyebrow shapes, though Jack’s were white and therefore less visible than Stephen’s heavy black ones. They both had a dimple on the same place on their cheek and their heights were within an inch of the other.
“At least your parents never would’ve had any trouble telling you apart,” I joked, still in shock over the revelation.
“We have some familial resemblance, but we aren’t identical twins. One of us could’ve easily been a girl.”
“You’re a prince,” I said slowly, still unsure if I truly believed it.
“We planned to tell you last night. Stephen was supposed to bring you to my parents and I was going to do a grand reveal in front of you and the whole family, but it took longer than I expected to get the dogs put away, then you thought he was about to propose and ran away.”
I jabbed my finger into his chest. “In my defense, he certainly made it seem that way. If he’d wanted to keep me there, he could have just told me he wanted to hear about the school or something. I would have gladly stayed to talk about that.”
Jack laughed. “That would have been much more effective. If only he’d thought of that. He was in a full-on panic when he had to tell me that he’d scared you away.”
“So you were planning a big announcement last night?”
“I was. My parents really are thrilled. The plan to find Stephen a bride doesn’t seem to have yielded much in terms of results for him, but at least it helped me find you.”
Jack melted the ice structure and I found that the storm had blown itself out. Looking around, I saw that I hadn’t gone nearly as far as I’d thought from the castle. If Jack and I had been able to see the night before, we could have easily returned, but we had both been so turned around that we also might have wandered for hours without touching anything. I could still see bits of the frozen lake through the trees, where naturally growing mistletoe was frosted with ice and snow.
“I love how everything looks after a blizzard,” Jack told me, staring around at the landscape. The castle, surprisingly close for how far it had felt the night before, was veiled in a soft blanket of snow, the stone walls and turrets dusted with white. Large icicles hung from the battlements, glinting in the pale blue light of the winter sun.
The delicate foliage in the courtyard was bowed under the weight of the recent snowfall, and a serene silence met my ears. Other than the occasional creak of the ice from the distant lake or the softfloompof snow falling from one of the trees, the air was still. Each breath felt crisp and biting, and each exhale left a misty vapor in the cold.
