Page 26 of The Autumn Prince

On the second day, just as the sun began to set, we arrived at the king’s ruined castle. It really was cut in fourths by the thick glass-like structures of the barrier. Maybe the castle had been beautiful once, but now it looked like the crumbled remains of an ancient civilization. And though the barrier going through it was weird, weirder still was that there was no village surrounding the castle like at Incendis’s. Villages had lined the roads we’d traveled, but then it was just a wide open field with the king’s castle.

“Why was he so isolated?” I asked Incendis as we walked closer.

He was glowing with his fake fire, letting us use that to light our way as the stone walls cut us off from the warm tones of the setting sun. Compared to Incendis’s castle, this place felt cold and…empty. It very literally had nothing inside but cracked and fallen walls, wide open doors, and broken windows.

“Before he made us,” Incendis said, “his castle was the center of the Seasonal Court.”

“But there’s no village.”

“Oh, yes.” He cleared his throat. “Father made the ground absorb the village about a week before he cast the curse.”

I gasped in horror. “All those people… Murdered.”

“Goodness, no, they were fine!” He stopped on top of a part of a ceiling beam that had fallen to the floor. “I mean, he made them relocate, but they weren’t killed or anything so heinous.”

Well, that was a relief. I took his offered hand to get over the beam. “Why did he make them leave?”

“He didn’t want witnesses.”

There were times when I understood the king and times when I just wanted to hit him with something hard. And though I wanted to say something about how he must’ve known he was doing the wrong thing if he didn’t want witnesses, I held my tongue for Incendis’s sake. He felt bad enough without me rehashing it after the fact.

I did hope the castle was missing paintings, furniture, and literally everything else because the villagers had looted the place before they left. That only seemed right.

Thankfully, the center of the castle where the king was encased was on the ground floor, because some of the staircases we passed were destroyed or looking way too rickety to even attempt. Going under all of this mess to a basement was not something I wanted to risk either. Honestly, the old man should’ve had the ground eat the castle, too, because this was a wreck on top of a wreck.

I understood now why the guards had hesitated to let us come in here alone.

But then, there it was. I was a little ashamed that my first thought upon seeing him was to remember the mosquito in amber from the Jurassic Park movies. He didn’t look like a bug, but he did look startled and frozen in place with his hands up. My second thought was…

“Well, hello there, Lars.” The portrait was one thing, but here he really was right in front of me. Every gray hair, wrinkle, and stitch of thread was perfectly preserved inside a cylinder of amber.

“I wonder why he chose that name,” Incendis murmured as he looked around the space.

“He’s not King Lars?”

“No. King Citron.”

Weird. “I suppose if I’d known him as that name, we’d all have figured out who he really was a lot sooner.”

“True.” He peered around another pillar.

“What are you looking for?”

He stopped and shrugged.

My heart broke a little as I realized he might’ve hoped Lars would appear to him here. Incendis had wondered why he hadn’t shown himself to his son. Why me? Why not him?

“Maybe he can only be seen by someone affected by the curse.”

“I’m affected.”

“Okay, wrong word. Someone who’s been baked into the curse?”

“Oh. Yes. Maybe that’s why.”

I was walking over to him, wanting to offer comfort since it was clear he was disappointed when something snapped overhead. I stopped and looked up only to gasp as a large curved piece of stone and a huge wooden beam started falling.

They were going to crush me.