RELEASE BLITZ
Book Title: The Prince
and the Ice King
Author: Amanda
Meuwissen
Publisher:
Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: Kris
Norris
Release Date: August 3,
2021
Genre: Fantasy M/M
Romance
Tropes: Fated love, enemies
to lovers, cursed, slow burn
Themes: Destiny, fate,
redemption, legend, overcoming prejudice
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 300
pages
It can be read alone but is the
first book in a series.
This is book 1 of Tales from
the Gemstone Kingdoms.
Buy Links
Only true love can melt a
frozen heart.
Blurb
Every Winter Solstice, the Emerald Kingdom sends the
dreaded Ice King a sacrifice—a corrupt soul, a criminal, a deviant, or someone touched by
magic. Prince Reardon has always loathed this tradition, partly because he dreams of love
with another man instead of a future queen.
Then Reardon’s best friend is discovered as a witch and
sent to the Frozen Kingdom as tribute.
Reardon sets out to rescue him, willing to battle and kill the
Ice King if that’s what it takes. But nothing could prepare him for what he finds in the Frozen
Kingdom—a cursed land filled with magic… and a camaraderie Reardon has never known.
Over this strange, warm community presides the enigmatic Ice King himself, a man his
subjects call Jack. A man with skin made of ice, whose very touch can stop a beating
heart.
A man Reardon finds himself inexplicably drawn to.
Jack doesn’t trust Reardon. But when Reardon begins
spending long days with him, vowing to prove himself and break the curse, Jack begins to
hope. Can love and forgiveness melt the ice around Jack’s heart?
Excerpt
“Jack, is it? Far better than ‘Ice King,’ I suppose.”
The king frowned.
“I’ll call you Majesty until we trust each other. But on that
day, I will call you Jack.”
“Is this a game to you?” The Ice King straightened. Reardon
stood almost directly before the throne now, chilled and shivering but without any creeping
frost on his hair or clothes. “What do you hope to accomplish?”
“My father is wrong for what he does, but seeing this curse
on you makes me wonder if he is right about magic’s corruption, despite all the wonders it
can do.”
“Magic alone did not curse us!” the king roared. “One
person who wielded it did, and I brought her wrath upon me myself.”
That gave Reardon pause. There was so much he didn’t
know. “You could tell me your story.”
“It is a long one, little prince, and I grow weary of your
presence already.” He stood, crunching down the steps between Reardon and the throne
and bringing a gust of icy wind with him.
Reardon sensed how close he was to death but stood his
ground. “I only want to bring my people home.”
“And where are they supposed to go? Home, you say. The
thief who almost lost her hands because she was starving, the man who lusted after the
wrong noble’s son, your friend who has visions—do they have a home to go back to when
their own people cast them out as villains?”
“I didn’t.”
“Good for you. You only cared once it finally affected
someone you knew.”
Reardon’s fists clenched to be called a heartless coward,
but he’d called himself worse this past year.
He also couldn’t overlook the example of a
man and a noble’s son.
“I suppose you’ve taken in all the corrupted, haven’t
you?”
“You call them corrupt”—the Ice King stomped another
clawed foot closer—“yet ask for leniency?”
“I only speak as I was taught. I don’t agree with it. I don’t
believe they’re corrupt. Not any of them. I don’t want to. If my father
understood—”
“He’d still keep up the status quo. Your kingdom shuns
what they don’t understand because of my curse, yet they don’t even remember the time
before.”
“So tell me! Let me know the truth so we can learn from
our past instead of continuing to repeat it.” Reardon stepped forward—too close, he
knew—but like before, instead of reaching out and ending him, the Ice King backed away.
“You’d really let them all go, wouldn’t you? If they wanted it?”
“They don’t, but you are welcome to ask them, including
your friend.”
“Then I am not a prisoner either?”
“That is up for debate.”
If Barclay had seen Reardon’s death in his vision, it couldn’t
be now. Not yet. “Give me the chance to prove I will go back and change things for the
better. I’ll stay for as long as it takes, but once you believe me, once you know me and I
know you, let me go.”
“And what if I never believe you? You’re the prince. You
could bring an army to my door after learning my secrets.”
“If you never believe me… then you either have another
servant or another statue to crush. But that means you take an audience with me every
day.”
The king scoffed, turning to stomp back up to his throne
and throw himself onto it with an elegant ease that should have been impossible. “Sounds
frightfully dull.”
“Yes, I can see your calendar is quite full.”
He rumbled with laughter like a brewing winter
storm.
For a long stretch of minutes, he stared at Reardon with his
uniquely human eyes—different from his companions. The Ice King was more tied to his
humanity, even if he’d lost the feeling of it in his heart, and more cursed and tortured
because of it, perhaps.
Yet still he said, “Fine. But make no mistake, little prince, if
you prove unworthy or attempt to betray me, I will not hesitate to turn you into frozen
rubble like that thief.”
All Reardon could do was return his stare and
wonder—What was this curse? Why had it been cast? And what had the king been like
before it changed him and his kingdom? He had to know, even if a mysterious and
frightening future stretched out before him.
Love, death, and blue eyes in a sea of white.
Whatever that might mean.
“You have a deal, Your Majesty.”
About the Author
Amanda Meuwissen is a
bisexual author, with a primary focus on M/M romance. As author of the paranormal
romance trilogy The Incubus Saga
and several other titles with various publishers,
Amanda regularly attends local comic conventions for fun and to meet with fans, where she
will often be seen in costume as one of her favorite fictional characters. She lives in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband, John, and their cat, Helga.
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