Frosted Roses Tour: Character Spotlight: Wickham from Runaway Lyrics

 Let's meet a facinating character from C. O. Bonham's brand new book baby, Runaway Lyrics.

Character Spotlight: 

Prince Wickham

By C.O. Bonham

Wickham is the younger half-brother of Prince Bayare. They share a father but not a mother. He is okay with not being king, preferring science and magic to politics and diplomacy. As a result, he is very knowledgeable and doesn’t care who knows it.

He is very close to his older brother, who insists on calling him Wicky. Wickham pretends to hate this, but is secretly glad. His brother is one of the few people who treats Wickham like he’s normal.

Wickham’s mother treats him like he’s breakable. She’s always asking if he’s okay, trying to get him to rest. Never wanting him to go anywhere or do anything. She would keep him beside her at all times, if he would let her.

When Wickham was younger, he suffered from a mysterious draining illness that sapped his energy for days at a time, leaving him bedridden off and on, until his late teens.

Fun fact: history actually inspired the idea of having an ill prince. The royal families of England and most of Europe suffer from hemophilia (google it, it’s fascinating). This was going to be my reason for the younger brother to not be in the story much, but that didn’t feel right, so I made him a shape-shifting character named Wicky. 

Despite his love of studying and his vast store of magical knowledge, Wickham does not appear to possess any magical abilities. Though he has a hazy memory of showing his mother a crackling purple spark that arced across his fingertips.

He started attending the university in the fall of his eighteenth year and was taking many of the same political and diplomacy classes that his brother had before him. Wickham made a deal with his mother that if he did well in these boring classes, then she would let him take alchemy during the summer months. Alchemy class does not go as he expects. Wickham’s search for answers directly leads into the events of Runaway Lyrics.

During Runaway Lyrics, Wickham finds himself drugged, kidnapped, lost in the woods, and transformed into a great forest owl.

Wickham never had much interest in girls, worried that they either just wanted to marry a prince or that they would smother him the way his mother did. But then he meets an outgoing girl named Rose that shares his love of magic. 

Has he finally found someone who can see past his outward weakness and help bring out his inner strength?