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Princess Caitlin Snow did not like Len at all. That was fair, since her first impression of him had been of his twin brother, who had apparently preferred sleeping with the servants to actually talking to his possible betrothed. He could understand not wanting to join your kingdom to someone who probably had an illegitimate child already.
He also understood that her former betrothed, Sir Ronald, had died fighting in a battle her father had brought upon himself using dark magic to save his kingdom from ruin. Len knew (and so did Caitlin) that all magic came with a price. They both had control over ice, a birthright Len hadn’t considered genetic when he was living outside the city and using it to be a more successful thief. He knew, like the princess, that using the ice too much could destroy the mind, if only temporarily.
Everyone had heard the stories of the Killer Frost, the persona the princess took on in the early days after Sir Ronald died. Len had told his mother the stories around their fire, imitating her legendary eye color with his own to keep her spirits up.
“If we’re going to be married, you should stop trying to kill me with your gaze,” he said. They had tried to take away his accent at the court, but they hadn’t managed it. He’d spent more time around the knights, even one from Snow’s kingdom – Sir Michael, who preferred Mick and had an affinity for fire both in the magical and the more disturbing sense. Spreading rumors had been easier than it ever had been in the city (the courts really were the terrible gossips his mother had said they were), so his accent had been mostly explained. “I’d rather you did it outright, honestly.”
That got a little chuckle, a hidden snort, from his…
Betrothed.
His hands clutched the leather bag in which he had placed the plain gold bands his mother had insisted he take – his parents’ wedding rings, enchanted by his mother’s father so that love could be shared, as well as to fit any hand. Knowing that his father wasn’t his father didn’t change the fact that these were his, in a way nothing else here was. King Lewis had insisted he accept the engagement, when Len didn’t care for the idea of marriage at all, and his mother had refused him when he asked her to run. She was too old (really, they were both too old to run from fate these days). Caitlin Snow was thirteen years his junior, and a grown woman herself.
Her hand came up to touch the lock of white in her hair, an unconscious gesture, and she gave him a little smile.
(It was that smile that made Len hope that they could at least be friends, even if the rings would never give them romantic love. Magic couldn’t make something out of nothing, after all, and Len was uncomfortably sure that while he could find some form of love with anyone, his romantic inclinations pointed solely towards men and were not moving.)
“I… I don’t want you dead, Lucas,” Caitlin said. Len pointedly didn’t react in any way to the name. There was no reason to make anyone else suspicious. “My father seems to like you, at least now, and I trust his judgment. And Sir Mick likes you well enough. Why are we stopping?”
The carriage had ground to a halt, and Len looked out the window. There was a log along the path, and the hairs along the back of his neck rose. He’d never taken to the country with his thefts, but he could recognize the blind trap the rocks ahead made, and the thick cover provided by the trees.
“Stay here,” he said. He left the bag with Caitlin, trusting her general air of competence (as well as the spreading white along her hair) to protect her from any common thief. His hand was on his sword, the other held out, cold at the ready.
He was no logger, but even he could tell that the tree had been cut down, hadn’t fallen over naturally. He shared a look with Mick, and then there was a scream behind them.
Mick’s face went white, and Len jerked at the noise. There was a hooded figure running away from the carriage, faster than any human could run. Len and Mick shared a glance, and Len ran after the figure while Mick ran to the carriage.
Cold normally wasn’t helpful with speed, but Len had learned a long time ago how to use it to smooth his steps, make his movements faster. His vision was tinged blue when he ran full-tilt into the thief, knocking him on his back. What he could see of the thief’s face was blue with chill, which meant that Caitlin had attacked him, but while Len caught his breath he began to blur.
Flash, Len knew, otherwise known as Prince Bartholomew, son of the late Nora and Henry, and the most wanted man in this land. The new king, called the Reverse Flash because they shared power but nothing else, called him a traitor. The commoners all said he was the true heir to the throne, but never where the nobility, even foreign nobility, could hear them.
Len didn’t care. That was a very familiar bag in those vibrating hands, and he needed it.
But to a speedster, even someone as fast as a magical thief was like a statue, and in a blink of lightning the Flash was gone, and Len had fallen to the forest floor with his lunge.
But Len had been a thief for far longer than the Flash, and he had some experience with tracking (mostly so he would be unable to be tracked, true, but it still counted). The Flash left a clear enough trail to follow, even with his rudimentary attempts at stealth, and it only took a few hours before Len found himself standing outside a tree that had been hollowed out with magic. There were faint snuffling sounds coming from inside it, and Len rolled his eyes before fetching his bag.
It was empty, of course. Len sighed, and he set about making a trap for a speedster.
He also conjured up a wanted poster because his sense of the dramatic was impeccable.
Flash probably didn’t share his sentiment, hanging ten feet in the air in a net that couldn’t be vibrated through. Len smiled at him, and he knew it wasn’t pleasant.
“You moved the goods, which means you’re smarter than you look. Just tell me where you put it, and I can be out of your hair. No trouble from the knights, no undue scrutiny on you. It’ll be like it never even happened.” Though he was definitely going to be late for his own wedding, which he was not regretting in the slightest. This had actually been fun so far, and while that might be the cold talking, Len didn’t want to let it go just yet.
Flash glared down at him, vibrating just a little – and there was the creeping ice, the spell that would only make him colder the more he vibrated. The kid knew his weaknesses, at least, and stopped as soon as he started.
“Are you for real?” he asked, and Len raised an eyebrow. “Alright, Cold, I – look, I already sold everything in there. You can have the money if you want.”
Cold… cute. Len shook his head.
“Can’t do that, kid. Those rings in the bag were important. Can’t get married without them, you know how that goes.”
The red on Flash’s face disappeared. Gotcha, Len thought. The kid cared about people, about sentimentality, in a way that most royals didn’t. He nodded, mostly to himself, and held his hands out like he was asking the world what had happened to make it lose all sanity.
“They were a gift from my mother, too. Last thing she ever gave me.” He met Flash’s eyes, which were… okay, they were tearing up a little, time to dial it back. “Tell me who you sold them to, and I won’t tell the knights who you are.”
He held out the wanted sign. His hadn’t been this well done, but he’d always been careful not to let anyone see his face. Just another pitfall of being a noble, he guessed.
“Look, it’s not that simple,” Flash started, and Len felt the beginnings of his real temper creeping in. Flash flailed a little, arms stretched out, and the net moved in the air. “They were trolls, okay! They hate people. I only got the deal because they owed Ir – a friend of mine a debt. Her fiancé settled a dispute between them and a rusalka that wanted to drown them all. Look, I’ll… take you to them.”
“Because I should trust a speedster not to run off the second his feet touch the ground. A speedster wanted dead or alive.”
There was only so far sentimentality could take someone, after all.
Flash gaped, then nodded.
“Right, so, I’ll give you some leverage. I took something precious of yours, so… under the flat rock against the roots is a bag. It has a book inside of it. From my mother.”
Len picked up the stone, and sure enough, there was a bag underneath it. He strapped it to his side, then looked up at Flash for a good while. The kid rolled his eyes and flailed some more.
“Will you let me out of here, Cold?” The bite in his voice was precious, honestly.
“I do have a name, you know.” Not that the kid would ever know his real name.
“Cold suits you, trust me,” Flash said, completely earnestly. Len pulled out his sword and slashed it into the anchor for the whole trap, which deposited Flash onto the forest floor. He yelped, and Len hid his grin.
They were walking toward the troll bridge – and honestly, the kid was absolutely insane making deals with trolls, not even mentioning strange men in the forest – when he spoke up.
“You know, it’s not true. I’ve never killed anybody.” Barry (he’d insisted on the name) wasn’t looking at Len when he said that, staring out into the distance. He was fiddling with a pendant around his neck, though looking twice at it, Len thought it was actually a container. That he kept fiddling with.
Len snapped his hand out, and his back was against a tree. It would have been disorienting if he hadn’t been expecting it, but the panic in Barry’s eyes…
“Be careful with that. It’s not a toy,” he said, stepping away from Len like he’d been burned. They started walking again, and Len hummed, putting together the strange vibrations coming from the container, how there were no animals around them even now – there was only one thing that did both of those things.
“What are you doing with dark fairy dust if you’ve never killed someone, kid?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t kill someone.”
Len considered it. He could see Barry doing it, like most people could, if he was desperate or had to defend himself. More, he could see Barry doing it to defend another person, which was a rarer thing than people liked to tell themselves. He might not even feel bad about it, but cold-blooded murder without a reason was different, something Len had encountered only once in his life. And that was very much not Barry.
“You want the king dead because he’s responsible for your parents’ deaths,” he guessed, and Barry nodded. “Why does he want you dead, then?”
“I have no idea.” And Barry’s voice had hollowed out, so Len stopped talking. There came a point when it didn’t do anything for anyone.
The troll bridge was deserted, but the hairs on the back of Len’s neck made an appearance while they walked to its middle. Barry called for them, and they appeared like specters from underneath. Len had to work not to freeze them and steal back his rings.
“You brought a royal, Flash,” the seeming-leader said, and Len knew it had gone to hell then and there. That familiar wanted poster was brought out, and Len had to shove a troll over the bridge when it tried to choke him. He pulled out his sword, intending to fight his way out of this mess, and got a fist to the gut. He stepped away from the blow, taking it and breathing through it, and tried to think of the sword as an extension of himself.
If it had been a knife he would have been okay. He was used to fighting with those, with or without magic.
Still, he took down two more of them before they had him on his knees, and he’d be damned if he would die looking down, like he was nothing. They would look him in the eyes if they were going to kill him.
Barry was gone, of course. Len wondered if he thought Len had escaped, or if he’d just seen his opportunity. The book was still attached to his thigh, though, and Barry hadn’t been lying about his mother giving it to him. He wasn’t good enough at lying to do that.
Just an overconfident idiot, then.
“Hey!” came a voice, and the trolls turned.
They got a face-full of dark fairy dust for their efforts, and Len took no small amount of pleasure in the sounds they made while they fell dead to the ground.
Barry picked up his sword, handing it to him. Len nodded, sheathing it and rubbing his throat where there would most definitely be a bruise. Barry was flushed with exertion, and lit up from the side by the setting sun, and Len cursed his mind for where it had gone. Barry was even younger than Caitlin, to whom he was betrothed, and King Lewis would kill Len’s mother if he didn’t marry her and keep their kingdoms happy.
None of it stopped him from wanting.
“Let’s get back to the path,” he said, hoarse, and Barry nodded. He picked up the rings, and they were mostly quiet on the way back.
“Whoever you’re marrying…” Barry interrupted the silence, then bit his lip. “They’re pretty lucky. If you’d do all that for a ring and all, I mean, what would you do for someone you loved?”
Len looked at the ground.
“It’s an arranged marriage. She's in love with someone else, and I understand that. But thank you,” he said. They were at the path. Barry had the bag with the rings, and Len had his book.
“Oh.” Barry nodded. “I… hope she likes jewelry. It’s never been my thing, really.”
He was fiddling with the bag like he’d fiddled with the pendant, and Len didn’t know, honestly, why he did what he did next.
“Well, you did steal this one fair and square. Might as well see if you like it.” He slipped the ring into his palm, a move practiced over the years, and took Barry’s hand. The rings were the same width when they weren’t on someone’s finger, and the magic adapted to the person. Barry’s fingers were almost as cold as the metal he slipped on one of them, which widened slightly and then fit snugly at the join.
Len stared at it, sure he had just made a horrible mistake. Barry held out his hand, looking at it himself, and then he wrinkled his nose.
“Yeah, not suited to it at all, right?” he asked, self-deprecating, and slipped it off and into the bag. “Well, here you go. Good luck with your wedding.”
Book and rings exchanged, they took separate directions along the path.
When he looked back (and he had to look back), Barry was already gone.
“Who is he?” Lisa, little Michael’s birth mother, asked Barry. He was looking into the trauma ward, while his students decorated the main ward. The man there was in a coma, had been for years. Barry twisted a gold ring on his right hand that he vaguely remembered Dante Ramon giving to him as a gift, and he shrugged.
“No one knows his name. Sometimes I read to him. Hearing is the last thing to go, you know.”
Lisa had the most peculiar blue eyes, and they narrowed a little while she looked between Barry and the coma patient. She looked overwhelmingly like her son when she did that – and Barry had assumed that Michael got that look from his adoptive father (Barry’s cousin) Eobard.
She didn’t say anything, but her smirk did it for her. Barry rolled his eyes and pointed her toward the kids.
His eyes kept landing on that too-still figure, and he had to shake himself out of it before he took the kids home.
He was getting weirder every year, Eobard said. He was probably right.