FROST
Chapter 99: The Cross-Dressing King

Chapter 99: The Cross-Dressing King

A towering, manly demon with rippling muscles dusted in ash and old blood. His obsidian horns curled upward like blades, and a long reptilian tail whipped behind him in surprise.

His long, peach-colored hair caught the wind like an advertisement for expensive shampoo, and his violet eyes widened with aching, unrestrained hope. He wore only a thin white cloth tied precariously around his waist—barely managing to hide his pride and joy.

"Lucrezia... my sweet moonflower... is that you? Have the stars returned you to me?" Mathias cried, falling to his knees with the force of someone who probably did that a lot.

Caspian blinked back more tears—partly from guilt, partly from the chili—and turned slowly, just as Seravine had instructed.

"Yes... it is I..." he whispered, voice high and trembling, "I have returned... because I... forgot the keys to the gate..."

Mathias gasped again. "You still remember the gate?!"

Seravine, somewhere behind the boulder, was biting her own fist to keep from laughing.

"Yes, my love." Caspian went on, taking a dainty step forward, "and I can only rest if you... give them to me."

Mathias wailed, tail thrashing, muscles flexing like a tragic sculpture of grief. "Then take them, my beloved! Take all that I am!"

He threw the heavy iron key—an ornate thing carved with weeping faces and vines—toward Caspian, who caught it with a yelp and an un-princesslike stumble.

"Bless the Moon," Caspian muttered, clutching the key. "Let’s get the hell out of here."

But it wasn’t over.

Mathias lunged forward, desperate. "Wait! Wait! A kiss! One final kiss before you vanish with the wind once more!"

Caspian froze. Seravine froze. Even the mountain seemed to hold its breath.

"Seravine," Caspian whispered, not turning his head, winking as a signal, "how fast can you throw smoke bombs?"

"Faster than your dignity can run," she whispered back, already lighting one.

In a puff of violet smoke, Caspian vanished like the melodramatic ghost he was pretending to be, leaving a wailing demon clutching his heart and howling into the stars.

Mathias remained on the peak, utterly heartbroken, kneeling with his arms spread wide to the moon, his voice trembling with raw, over-the-top emotion.

"Oh moon, you virgin eyeball of the sky,

Why must you witness me ugly-cry?

She came in lace and left in smoke,

Now I’m just a half-naked joke..."

He clutched his chest, then hurled himself dramatically against a boulder. "Take me, rocks! But gently... I bruise easily!"

Caspian and Seravine crouched far below in the bushes, watching the entire scene unfold like a tragedy written by a lovesick squirrel.

"Poor Mathias," Seravine murmured, lips twitching. "Didn’t even get his kiss."

Caspian, busy yanking pins out of his hair, tossed her a look. "You’re welcome to do it anyway."

He stood, pulling the pearl-studded veil from his head and loosening the corset with great relief. The white dress fell off his broad, muscular frame with a soft whoosh, revealing scars, sinew, and taut abs that glistened faintly under the moonlight.

Seravine’s mouth dropped open.

"By the screaming stars," she whispered, eyes wide. "You’re like... a cursed bridal god."

Caspian gave her a lazy glance as he shook his hair out of its styled waves. "Don’t fall in love. I’m emotionally unavailable."

Meanwhile, Mathias had begun his second poem.

"Oh vermilion winds, hear my sigh,

She left before I could say goodbye,

My love, my ghost, my lady fair,

She even took my underwear—wait. No. That’s still here."

Caspian sighed. "We should probably go before he starts doing interpretive dance."

"I give it five minutes," Seravine said, still staring. "Also, you’re not allowed to wear anything else ever again. That dress owes me spiritual damages."

"Noted," Caspian said, buttoning a shirt like it was a personal insult.

Behind them, Mathias howled once more.

"LUCREZIAAAA—!"

Caspian and Seravine exchanged a single glance—the kind that screamed "Run before heartbreak turns into homicide." And then they bolted.

Their feet thundered down the slope from Vermilion Peak, leaves rustling and startled night creatures scattering as they tore through the darkness. Behind them, Mathias’s anguished wails echoed like the world’s most dramatic opera.

"LUCREZIAAAA—! WHY DID YOUR SPIRIT HAVE SOFTER SKINNNNN?"

At the foot of the trail, just outside the ancient iron gates, stood Eclipse—Caspian’s ever-dignified obsidian stallion. The horse raised his head, stopped chewing his last pathetic strand of grass, and exhaled loudly, as if bearing witness to yet another Chapter of his master’s increasingly ridiculous life.

"Don’t look at me like that," Caspian muttered as he slid to a stop in front of the gate, pulling the silver key from beneath the ridiculous Victorian bodice still half-clinging to his frame.

With a satisfying click, the gates creaked open, ancient gears groaning in protest—less from age, more from disbelief at the absurdity of how they’d been unlocked.

"Did you just pickpocket the key off Mathias while he was mid-stanza?" Seravine asked, breathless and impressed.

Caspian gave her a half-smirk. "I’m a man of honor, woman. I’d never do such a crime."

"Meh!"

From the distance, Mathias’s tragic cries still carried:

"The moon, my witness! The stars, my grief!

Her skin was silk, her feet like beef!"

Seravine blinked. "Did he just say beef?"

Caspian didn’t stop to confirm. He swung up onto Eclipse with all the elegance of a man half-dressed and emotionally traumatized.

As the gate groaned open and the path beyond beckoned, Caspian mounted Eclipse with swift, practiced ease. Their deal had been simple in exchange of the demoness’ help—clear-cut.

He’d go in alone, retrieve the Scarlet Gem from the dungeon nestled along the winding road to the hidden realm where Yami was said to be sheltering. Seravine wasn’t supposed to follow. She’d made that clear.

"Just get the gem," she had said. "I’ll wait outside. I’m not stepping into cursed soil for free."

But as Caspian reached to nudge Eclipse forward, a sudden weight landed behind him—soft, warm, and annoyingly smug.

"What are you doing?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder in disbelief.

Seravine gave him her most innocent smile as she wrapped one arm around his waist, the other not-so-innocently brushing across the ridges of his bare abdomen, still glistening from his recent sprint in half a corset.

"Oh, you know," she said airily, pressing her cheek against his back. "Changed my mind. Thought I’d tag along. It’s not every day I get to cling to a gloriously sculpted warlord riding a horse into certain doom."

Caspian exhaled sharply through his nose. "You said you weren’t going."

"I lied, demons do that," she whispered sweetly, fingers casually tracing the lines of his abs. "Also, I’ve decided that your core strength deserves to be appreciated in motion."

He groaned. "You’re impossible."

"Yet here I am. Behind you. With both hands full of motivation."

Eclipse snorted with a long-suffering huff and began his reluctant gallop forward, hooves echoing through the now-unlocked gates—toward shadows, secrets, and a future Caspian suspected would only grow more ridiculous by the hour.

The moment he and Seravine crossed the threshold, the ancient gates creaked and groaned, beginning to shut behind them with an ominous finality. A heavy clang echoed through the air, as if the realm itself was sealing them in.

But just before the gates could close entirely, a swirl of lavender mist pulsed in front of the threshold—and out of it, Mathias materialized like some lovesick apparition summoned by moonlight and melodrama.

His long peach-colored hair fluttered with ghostly elegance in the wind, purple eyes wide with stunned, trembling hope. "L-Lucrezia?" he choked out, voice cracking like cheap porcelain. "Is it really you—?"

Then his eyes dropped. And so did his jaw.

"W-Why did you lose your... m-melons?"

Somewhere along the winding path past the gates, Caspian—still recovering from emotional whiplash—suddenly sneezed, sharp and violent.

"Bless you," Seravine offered sweetly from behind him, still holding onto his waist like it was a personal indulgence.

"I don’t need blessings from a demon, thank you very much," Caspian muttered, sniffling and adjusting his posture with all the wounded dignity of a man who’d just been mistaken for a flat-chested ghost.

"Oh, forgive me, Your Lunar Majesty," Seravine cooed, leaning in dangerously close. "Would you prefer a sinful offering instead?"

"If that offering is silence, then yes," he snapped, clicking his tongue as Eclipse trotted faster—trying, in vain, to outrun the embarrassment trailing him like a ghost named Lucrezia.

Suddenly, the air shifted—sharp, cold, and heavy like an omen. Even Eclipse, Caspian’s usually unbothered steed, stopped mid-step. His ears flicked, muscles tensed beneath the saddle, and he let out a low, uneasy huff.

The once vibrant trees flanking the path, lush with green and humming with life, began to wither as if drained by an invisible force. Leaves curled and blackened, dropping like ashes to the earth. The grass beneath them browned and crunched, and the wind lost its warmth, carrying instead a scent of iron and old ruin.

The sun dimmed behind a sudden veil of clouds, and the sky itself seemed to draw breath and hold it.

"Something’s not right," Caspian muttered, hand drifting instinctively to the hilt of his sword.

"Congratulations," Seravine whispered, her voice laced with a thrill that sent a chill down his spine. "You just crossed the border to where legends rot and nightmares remember."

"Well," Caspian said, exhaling slowly, "that’s comforting."

Eclipse snorted.

"Even your horse thinks we should turn back," Seravine added with a smirk.

But they didn’t. They couldn’t. The gates had closed—a point of no return. How they would leave was a problem for another time, one neither of them dared to voice aloud.

Eclipse pressed forward, hooves thudding against the path with increasing reluctance. A few more strides... then he stopped dead.

The stallion snorted sharply, ears pinning back, eyes wide with white-rimmed panic. His flanks trembled. He tossed his head, jerking the reins, and let out a shrill, choking neigh that echoed off the skeletal trees. One hoof stomped the ground repeatedly, refusing to go any further.

"Easy, boy," Caspian murmured, dismounting in one fluid motion. He stroked the side of Eclipse’s neck, feeling the tension thrumming beneath the skin like a taut bowstring.

"Well, I guess we continue on foot from here," Seravine mumbled, adjusting her cloak and inching closer. "Can I still hold you like this while we walk though?"

Caspian shot her a sharp look, hissing under his breath. "You stay here then. Guard Eclipse, and I’ll bring back your precious gem."

Seravine blinked, taken aback. "Wow. Reject me and assign me guard duty. You’re really the full package, huh?"

"Package you could never unwrap," Caspian muttered as he moved forward, the shadows swallowing him with every step.

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