Page 44 of Cinder
“Adalwin.”
Cin cursed the miserable panic that was turning his thoughts to chaos. Prince Adalwin, of course. The queen and king wouldn’t be here for a random aristocrat, and if something had happened to Prince Lorenz in the last week, they would have turned the kingdom upside down the way they had for their eldest son before they found his bloody crown, pigeon feathers stuck like ornamentation to the dried red crust.
Cin felt the blood drain from his face. He shook his head, tiny short motions, as though the more times he could deny it, the more likely they were to believe him. “I had nothing to do with that, I sw—”
“Youarethis killer they call the Plumed Menace,” Queen Idonia insisted. “We know what you did to Brando Von Achenbach. Had you intended to take Ren from us, too?”
Fueled by Cin’s already growing panic, flashes of such an end for the prince whirled through Cin’s mind: the blade slipping, tearing into Prince Lorenz’s chest, his blood welling over Cin’s hands to cover the stains of every other murder—to replace them tenfold. Cin felt sick. He needed to see Lorenz; needed to pull him close with soft hands and feel that he was still in one piece, that no terrible imagining on Cin’s part could hurt him.
But the queen and king were here instead. “Do you deny it?” Queen Idonia asked.
“I could never harm the prince,” Cin cried, though everything in his chest screamed yes, he might, who was he to claim piety? Cinder-whore, Cinder-freak. Cinder. Sinner. “I would never—to either of them! I’m not...”
The sentence choked him before he could finish, a sob clamping down his lungs. He curled forward. The tension between his muscles and bones was so strong that it seemed all he could do to keep his skin from splitting open.
“I’m not...” he managed again, and nothing more.
“Don’t lie to us.” Queen Idonia stalked toward Cin. Her guards took a step as well, as though they might try to stop her, but the ferocity in her charge must have scared them off, because they all simply watched as she grabbed Cin by the hair, snarling like a warrior queen from days long past. “Tell mewhy.”
Cin could feel the bite of her nails and the heat of her breath and yet all he could focus on was the speck in her eyes, one twinkle of the brightest green in the sea of brown, the same hue he’d seen before in Prince Lorenz’s. In her son’s.
This wasn’t merely the queen. She was Prince Lorenz’smother: a woman who had pointed him toward distant goals and told him to be good and prayed to see him live on when it finally came time for her to slip away. And all she wanted was to know that the villain who’d taken her eldest child away from her could no longer take her youngest.
Cin felt for her; felt for her son. And somewhere, deep beneath that, he felt jealous, too. But it was an afterthought, that ache pressing down beneath the sight of her pain; the same pain Cin had seen in Prince Lorenz. He couldn’t let that fester. Couldn’t let it consume her. Couldn’t let it hurt anyone else. “I’m sorry,” he choked out. If he was going to be condemned either way, perhaps he could at least save her from this. “Adalwin—”
“—didn’t die by his hand.” The prince’s voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, slipping out of Cin’s imagination in a tantrum of emotion. He stole the attention of the small, packed room as he surged through it, and then he was there, pressing himself between Cin and the queen, one hand on his mother’s shoulder. “Mother...”
He was so soft with her, so purposeful and focused, that just seeing it, seeing him in all his gentleness, his love, emerge here only to reach for someone, someone that wasn’t Cin—it hurt.
It hurt.
“We both miss Alwin, but this is not the way...” the prince whispered, pulling her from Cin and into his arms. He clutched at his heart, looking lost as she broke against him, and Cin could see the fear reverting from anger back to its original state: to grief. King Warner joined them, his arms cradling under his weeping wife’s as he drew her in.
Cin wanted to grieve with them. He could have at least taken the blame to give them peace, if he was to be condemned anyway. But Prince Lorenz hadn’t asked. He barely seemed to see Cin.
Sagging forward, Cin closed his eyes against the sight of a love he would never have, even should they call his own family in for a final farewell. Perhaps Emma would come for him. Perhaps.
Through the haze of his misery, fingers traced up his cheek and cupped his head, a voice murmuring in his ear, “Oh, my dove, what have they done to you...”
And suddenly, Prince Lorenz’s arms were wrapped around Cin instead, holding him. There, present, caring. For him.
Cin released a sob.
He curled into the embrace. It seemed at first only to open a deep gash in his chest—the feeling that this was what heneeded. What he’d always needed, every time his soul sought to implode. This was the cure.
This was everything.
Then Prince Lorenz stumbled and pulled back as two of the crown’s guards tried to push in between them. Behind the prince, Queen Idonia shouted, “Ren!” Her voice clear and sharp once more. “Get away from him.”
“No!” Prince Lorenz shot back, just as fierce as his mother. “You’ve made a mistake.” He pushed off his family’s watch, and while he didn’t drop down to his knees again, he stood his ground before Cin, looking as regal as Cin had ever seen him.
Queen Idonia did not seem cowed by her son’s display. “I know you may think you care for this man, but he has much blood on his hands.”
The prince held up his hands in protest. “I will not have this conversation with them in it,” the prince snapped, waving his hand at the guards still flanking him.
Somewhere between the queen and king’s arrival and now, the original watch members who had captured Cin had left the room, but four of the crown’s personal watch remained, their weapons as fine as the ornamentation on their green uniforms and their tension clear in their stances.
Queen Idonia scowled, but the prince snorted at her as though the expression alone was one side of a silent conversation. “He’s bound to the cell and weaponless—how much safer could I be? Remember, I’ve ridden out of the city with him.”
