Page 32 of Cinder
“Luck,” Cin whispered, “or magic,” knowing it was both. “When I was standing here earlier today, a woman from town asked me nearly to marry her.”
Prince Lorenz pulled away so suddenly that Cin stumbled, and the prince grabbed him by both shoulders, staring at him in confusion. “You were proposed to? You have— Are you— But we—” He seemed to be trying desperately to put together a puzzle that was making less and less sense to him with each moment, and Cin stopped him before he could twist himself into knots in the confusion.
“I’m not engaged, and she hadn’t been dating me,” he clarified. “Her husband died recently. I believe the idea was more of a business arrangement, but with the potential to grow into more.”
“Oh,” Prince Lorenz responded, still looking confused. He nodded slowly, and pulled Cin closer once more. “All right then.”
Cin narrowed his eyes at the prince. “Why? Do you think no one could possibly be in love with me?” It seemed simultaneously like the truth of the world and also a thing that Prince Lorenz was unlikely to think of anyone.
The prince snorted, and the edge of his lips quirked. “I think it would be impossible for anyone to know you and not love you, if they were presently capable of the feeling.” He said it in such a way that seemed to implyhewasn’t, but Cin didn’t have time to press him about that before he continued, “I merely suspect you are not one to be in a serious relationship while letting the prince of the realm finger you in a dovecote. By which I mean, you would be just as terrible at orgies as I am.”
Cin felt himself flush. “I do think I might be made for one person at a time… if any.” He looked back out toward the distant gleam of the castle lights. “I understand why you don’t want tomarry. How can anyone decide to end one life and begin a new, a new person, a new future, when they can’t know what will come of it? What they’ll lose in the process?” He did not add, “what will fall apart the moment they’re gone from that old existence?” But he felt it, just as strongly as the moment Dorthe had asked for his hand.
Prince Lorenz said nothing. He looked out toward the castle, his face unreadable in the starlight. Soon, the prince would have to accept a vow of partnership with someone whether he wanted to or not. And Cin’s life would go back to what it had been.
The ache that left in his heart was too unbearable to sit with.
He wrapped his arm through Prince Lorenz and tugged gently. “Where should we go now?”
The tiny pull seemed to drag the prince out of his stupor, and his expression transformed from darkness to light, grin sharp and eyes sparkling. “Can I see your home?”
Panic shot through Cin, and then he realized, with a dry humor,what did it matter?
The state of their home wouldn’t change the prince’s desire to suck on Cin’s lower lip or get off on the feel of Cin’s swollen nether regions. He wasn’t going to marry Cin, no matter how much money the Reinholz family had, or had lost.
“Why not?” Cin laughed. “I’ve seen yours.”
“Not all of it.” The prince smirked, and swept back up onto Cin’s mount, this time planting himself in the saddle. He reached a hand out to help Cin up.
Cin crossed his arms. “Do you know where you’re going?”
The prince only grinned wider. “You’ll tell me if I’m offtrack.”
“Now that’s cruel.” Cin took his hand.
Prince Lorenz pulled him up. “Reasonable, I’d say.”
As Cin wrapped his arms around the prince’s waist, pressing his face to the places the prince had done with him, he could only smile and hold on while they raced out of town.
There was surely no way this could go wrong.
Fourteen
The darkness hid much of the Reinholz estate, particularly its flaws, for which Cin was grateful. It looked mildly imposing in the night, its long main building of two stories—three in the center—surrounded on one side by the garden and the other by the carriage house and the barely used barn and storeroom. Compared to Prince Lorenz’s castle, it was a hovel, but the prince—who was not marrying Cin—was also not marrying for money. Nor fucking for it. Cin wondered what hewastruly marrying for, other than the gentle goodness his parents had advertised, but then Lorenz dismounted and strode toward the manor’s front door, and Cin was distracted by following him.
“It’s locked—there’s no one home,” Cin warned him, realizing only too late how many bells that would set off.
Prince Lorenz turned, lifting a brow. “You let all your servants attend each ball night? That’s very good of your family.” He sounded genuinely proud, which made Cin feel all the worse.
“It’s... well, it’s only us now. The famine has hit us particularly hard”—therewas a lie, at least; the famine hadn’t helped, but their family’s fortunes had been flailing for years prior—“and Mother let the staff go. We’ve been getting along all right on our own, though.”
This seemed to confuse Prince Lorenz. “You don’t even have a cook, then?”
“I do the cooking.” Cin shrugged. “It’s come fairly easy to me and I enjoy it.”
The prince looked like he was trying to fit that into his idea of the Cin he’d known so far—the wealthy, chaotic gentleman who raised a royal dovecote’s worth of pigeons. It didn’t seem, at least, that he was finding it distasteful, only odd. “And who tends the horses, then?” he asked. “And the gardens? Your family does that alone as well?”
“I do most of it, but I don’t mind,” Cin reassured him. “It’s actually rather relaxing when you’re in the mood. We only have two horses, and the crops have been small, so it’s less work than you’d think.”
