No. No, no, no. No feelings, no pain.
She focused her energy on the feeling of ice around her heart that Lindy had told her about. Perhaps if she took that feeling and just pushed it hard enough…back through the ice to the other side…
There.
A whisper of regret remained, but she could deal with that. She let Freddy take her hand. “Good afternoon, Freddy.”
She could see his confusion as he searched her face. “Lizzie, what’s—”
Lizzie pulled her hand away and continued down the line to greet Queen Clarice.
I can’t love him,
Good.
Chapter Seventeen
Freddy
Lizzie’s words had frozen the air in his lungs.
She was cursed.
More than that, she had cursedherself.
Because of him.
“I was going to marry Prince Frederick.”
Lizzie seemed to have said all that she needed to in order to settle down and sleep, which was good, because Freddy didn’t think he could have formed a coherent word if he tried. Lizzie’s revelation was a knife in his chest, a punch to his gut that left him gasping for breath as he stared up at the ceiling.
He was the reason she was cursed.
He tried to find the bright spot, tried to look for another possible answer. Maybe Lizzie didn’t realize exactly what she was doing. Maybe it was a curse gone wrong. Maybe she had acted out of fear. Maybe the curse could be broken. Maybe…
No. Lizzie had said that shewantedthe curse. She knew what it did, and she didn’t want it to be broken…which meant she probably knew how and opted to keep it instead.
And shehadacted out of fear, if the thought of marrying him was what had prompted her to curse herself.
Despite all their years of friendship, she would rather be cursed than with him.
Freddy wasn’t blind. He had known for years now that she didn’t love him. But like a naive puppy, he had assumed that he would be able to win her over eventually if he just kept loving her.
It was different knowing that Lizzie didn’twantto love him, that she had gone to such extreme lengths to avoid the possibility of loving him.
She didn’t want to love him. She didn’t want to marry him.
Freddy couldn’t find the bright spot in that.
Freddy’s smiles were strained the next day, though he tried to put up a bright front for Lizzie.
She doesn’t know that her words destroyed me; she thinks it was Kai the wandering minstrel she was talking to, not Freddy, the prince she rejected twice. I know I need to tell her, but what’s the point? She’ll just reject me a third time.
He had enough coins saved up to hire horses for the rest of the journey. They traveled in silence most days, as neither of them were inclined to start up conversations about anything otherthan necessary details. He caught her watching him sometimes with a slight frown on her face, and he tried to meet her with a smile, but it never lasted long.
The nights grew warm as they neared Kysta, which he was grateful for as he slept under the stars. Even if Lizzie had offered the tent again, Freddy wasn’t sure he could share it. It hurt too much to be so close to her, to know that all of the love he felt for her would never be returned.
“Kai?”
