Page 23 of Cinder
But a catch in his chest stopped him. There was something festering beneath their friendship, even if the prince wasn’t aware of it. But the longer they stretched this out, the more Cin knew that he couldn’t just set the other pieces of himself to the side for one more night, even if that release had gotten him here in the first place.
Casually as he could, he swept a pigeon’s lost feather off the sill beside them, twirling it between his fingers. It was indistinguishable from half the gray-toned selection within his own cloak. There was no delicate way to bridge the gap, but he had to try.
“When we first met, you thought I might be a fanatic of the Plumed Menace.” Cin asked. “Are those really a thing?” It wasn’t the question he needed answered, but perhaps it would get them there.
So far as he could tell, the prince didn’t think the question odd. Theywerein a dovecote, Cin supposed. “So I’ve heard. One of my watch—Gisela—she claims her brother wears a necklace with feathers in support of the Menace. He was in the watch himself, at its founding. Thinks they should be doing more of what the Plumed Menace does. Hunting the kind of people he claims the Menace is killing, instead of the Menace.”
“And you disagree?”
The prince watched Cin through tight eyes. “What doyouhave to say on the matter?”
Cin felt his stomach tumble in on itself. His thoughts of his darker self were no more outright flattering than the ones he’d already shared with the prince, but he doubted they aligned with the prince’s—not when his parents had put such a high price on the Menace’s head.
Prince Lorenz softened at Cin’s hesitation. He pressed a hand to Cin’s shoulder. “I don’t want your opinions hidden simply because we might view the world differently,” he said. “I want the chance to see what you see, too.”
What Cinsawwas blood, pooling as his victim’s heart beat its last. But what hethoughtof the matter was a different thing, one he could perhaps explain in a way the prince would understand. “I think the people Plumed Menace kills—any who are truly bastards, anyway—deserve to be brought to justice, and the watch isn’t doing that.” Under the warmth of Prince Lorenz’s gaze, admitting his own struggle to parse his beliefs felt far easier than he’d expected. “I don’t think the solution is to praise the Menace though, or to make the watch more like them. I just know something is wrong, and we should be doing more to confront that, whatever that doing may be.”
All Cin knew was how to climb the fences that bastards used to hide their sins and slide a blade into flesh. To become a sinner for the sake of others. With every body that dropped to his feet, he knew it wasn’t the solution. But it wasasolution.
Maybe that was why he kept tucking the blade into his belt, kept stalking the cruel and the greedy until they proved their atrocities to him. Or maybe he just couldn’t feel safe himself without it. Cin could never decide.
The prince nodded, slowly, his gaze distant and deep, iced over in a way that Cin couldn’t read. But as he spoke, he sounded thoughtful, not judgmental. “I certainly would not praise the Plumed Menace either. What they are doing is wrong—I can see no way around that—butthe watch clearly isn’t helping in that.They would never make it outside the capital if not for their investigations of the Menace’s killings. Perhaps my family has benefited from the extra guard. They are no more useful to the kingdom then the Menace is.”
It was thebutthat Cin clung to, hiding it deep inside his chest. Perhaps the prince held no love for the blood on Cin’s hidden blade, but he too knew the system they had now was no good. Someday, it would be him who had to deal with that. Him and his future partner.
Carefully, Cin asked, “Do you think they’ll ever catch the Menace?”
The prince’s expression soured, though perhaps it was the flickering of the light and the tipping away of his face that just made it appear so, because his voice was steady when he answered. “I don’t have much hope for that.” He shrugged, like he was pushing the idea away, trying to keep it at arm’s length. “It’s my parent’s obsession, anyway. They’re the ones who have to believe the Menace took my brother from us. They need someone to fight, someone to blame. Otherwise, it’s them who let him go on that diplomatic journey in the first place, and they can’t bear to doubt themselves like that.” The weak smile he gave was more like a grimace. “They are the king and queen, after all.”
“You don’t need to be the rulers of a country to cling to your own reasoning over the truth,” Cin muttered, thinking of the times his blade had been unsheathed because someone couldn’t let go of their own folly at the cost of the flesh and bones of those they had once loved. “But you’re not as certain as them?”
“No.” Prince Lorenz shook his head, quick and sharp, and his hand went to the center of his chest, his fingers curling against his heart. “His disappearance doesn’t fit the Plumed Menace’s pattern. Every other victim has been of middling or lower status, the body unmoved from the place they were killed.” He sounded pained but distant, as though he were looking through theendless pool of his own gaze to see that loss, instead of living it himself. “Parts of the forest between Hallin and Falchovari are dark places—who knows what one might stumble across there... What might follow you out, if you’re not careful.”
Cin pressed his hand to the prince’s arm. “Thank you for telling me.”
Prince Lorenz gave him a weak smile, shallow and a little haunted. “It’s not something I’d like shared around, if you please.”
“Your secrets are always safe with me,” Cin promised. He smiled back, hoping to offer a little joy back into the conversation. “Who else would I even tell them to? The birds?”
“See, that I cannot possibly believe,” the prince said, but he sounded more teasing, the somber tension fading from his voice. “How do you not have a line of suitors—friends, if you’d rather—trailing us down the steps?”
“People don’t usually notice me.” Cin shrugged, but the motion shifted his feathered cape and he chuckled. “I’m not often dressed like this, though.”
“I’d notice you dressed in anything. Or nothing.” Prince Lorenz smirked. “Nothingwouldbe preferable.”
It was such a ridiculous line that Cin couldn’t help snorting a laugh. “But why?”
“Well...” Prince Lorenz wrapped one arm around Cin’s shoulders. As he spoke, he trailed his fingers across Cin’s back, along his neck and through his hair, the touch so soft that it should not have left such a fire in its wake. “You know when someone just calls to you? Their body, their bones—it’s like magic. It’s a magic that makes me want to see inside you and be inside you all at once, and I could give you a thousand reasons why, but they’d all be insufficient.”
Cin tried to fight back the yearning that feathery caress had left in his core, to focus on the words instead—words thatworried him. “That sounds suspiciously like love, Your Royal Highness.”
“Oh, bah! I’ve never been inthatkind of love.” Prince Lorenz scoffed, his arm slipping down and around Cin’s waist. “My heart has never fluttered for anyone. I’m not swooning over you—no offense. Whoever I end up with, I won’t swoon over them either. It’s simply not in me.”
Cin took that in slowly, thoughtfully, trying to find the differences between his own experience and the prince’s, and those portrayed by the great lovers of the world. But he’d witnessed—if only in passing—the existence of both great sexual partnerships and deep friendships amongst those living in his town, and who was he to count them as something more or less than any romance? Besides, knowing the prince would not accidentally fall for him was better for them both.
“Heart flutters are for the weak,” Cin said. The prince’s honesty made it easy to keep talking, slowly unraveling a part of himself he’d never had someone to share with before. “I’m not certain I’ve ever felt one either. Though I suppose I’ve had far less opportunity than you to discover what swooning is like. I just know enough to be aware that it isn’t this.”
“This is a different kind of spark,” Prince Lorenz agreed, pulling Cin closer. He licked his lips, purposeful in a way that was excruciating to watch. “But I do make you feelsomething, too?”
