Page 47 of Cinder
Nineteen
In the shadowy, dank space, with everyone but Cin and the prince now gone from sight and sound, the room seemed hollowed out, each sway of the lantern light creating new caverns between the grimy dark stone blocks of the walls. Cin broke first, the tiniest sniffle yanking him back to the present.
Then suddenly Prince Lorenz’s arms were wrapped around him again, scooping him up in a hold so perfect that Cin couldn’t even care that his ribs still ached in sharp rhythmic intervals. He could feel the soft trembling of the prince’s breath, and for the first time, he realized how scared Prince Lorenz had been. Scared, forCin.
“I am sorry I was not here sooner, my dove,” he whispered, lips pressing into Cin’s hair and neck. “When I learned tonight that my parents were planning something for you should you arrive, I didn’t know what to do but turn you away at the gate and hope...”
It was everything Cin had wished to hear and more. He drew his fingers along the prince’s jawline, gently pressing his head back until their eyes could meet. “You took the blame for my actions.”
“I couldn’t let them condemn you without hearing your side or seeking to understand why.” Prince Lorenz cringed, turning his face away. “All week, I’ve made myself dwell on that night—and not simply the way it ended, but all that you shared with me. And don’t misunderstand; I still hate what you’ve done. But in drawing back from the emotion, I have realized that I am not you. I’ve not lived your life. I cannot say that I wouldn’t have made those exact choices were I walking the world in your shoes instead of my own. And so, too, I can’t judge you without knowing more.”
The sheer compassion in the prince’s voice felt like a balm on a wound Cin hadn’t realized went so fiercely deep. He was seeing Cin, not simply from the outside—a feat many had already failed—but searching for the soul behind his actions, recognizing that Cin had his own well, his own depths, contradictory and indefinite. Who had ever sought them out before? And here was this man, thisprince, acknowledging the complexity of Cin, even if he could not understand every last hidden crevice.
Being willing to sacrifice for that unknowable, nameless soul.
“I came in the hopes of telling you anything—everything,” Cin said. “Just ask.”
Prince Lorenz swallowed visibly, “What you said back when you killed Von Achenbach, it was that you had to, to stop him from hurting me, because you’re not… strong enough to fight him?”
When Cin slowed and thought back through his memory of the night, he could see how the prince had come to that conclusion. He shook his head. “It wasn’t just to protect you, though that was part of it. Every time I kill, it’s to protectsomeone, but also to protecteveryone—everyone who would be harmed by them in the future. I did it to prevent further pain for you in that moment, but also the next elf he would get his hands on. I’m not strong enough to fight, you’re right. But if I could simply beat these bastards up, it would still be wrong, and it might not save anyone—or it would only protect them so long as I was there.”
“So you want to prevent the future pain as well…” Prince Lorenz’s brow knit. “But we have the watch. If you or I had subdued Von Achenbach, we could have brought him to them, to be dealt with justly, both for the harm he’d caused me and the violation of our kingdom’s law against elvish enslavement.”
“Yes.” Each breath felt like inhaling through a pincushion now that Cin’s terror had passed, the pain his climb had ignited between his ribs excruciating. “I didn’t— It didn’t occur to me, then. It’s not normally like that, with the people I kill.”
“Like what? That they’ve committed provable harm? Because you just said that you kill the guilty—”
“Guilty isn’t a word I used,” Cin protested, tugging mindlessly at his shirt, like that might stop the agony between his ribs. What right did he have to profess guilt or innocence, when he was guilty himself? Pain was his expertise, not piety. “But regardless of what they do, the crown’s watch doesn’t come to the villages unless there’s something in it for the crown.”
Prince Lorenz snorted. “They would, surely. If they were asked.”
“Should weneedto ask?”
“Well… no,” the prince concluded, shaking his head. “No, you’re right, you should not. Not from your leaders, nor their watch. But that justifies a fight not with these villains you kill, but rather withus.”
That made Cin laugh, somehow, a tight, awkward sound strained by the searing ache between his ribs, but a laugh all the same. “Would youliketo be stabbed, Your Royal Highness?”
“Perhaps that depends on the weapon in use.” Prince Lorenz sounded almost jovial himself, a tiny smirk peeking at his lips, but the good humor faded with a sigh as he cupped the side of Cin’s face. “Would you consider letting the Plumed Menace be the one who dies next?” He ran his thumb over Cin’s cheekbone, down the corner of his mouth, his gaze so deep, and yet soft beneath, as though a fall there could break nothing. “You could let him go and just… be you? This burden should not be yours to bear.”
Cin choked on a lump in the back of his throat, and tried to look away, but he found he couldn’t. He could only fall. “I don’t think I get to make that choice,” he whispered, not sure how else to put it. “I know I’m doing this all wrong. I’m not a hero, nor a judge, nor a god. I have no right to decide who lives or dies. My hands are covered in more blood than can ever be washed clean. I’m a bastard just as much as anyone I kill, but I—I can’t just walk by what I see and do nothing, even if that means I am worthy only of the same pain.”
“My dove,” the prince said, so tenderly it hurt, “life is complicated, and there’s no way to be just good or just gentle, but that means that sometimes our victims aren’t good or gentle either, and their villains are complicated.”
Cin traced the prince’s hand upon his own face, and all he could manage through the wave of his emotions was a soft, “Complicated, like me?”
“You’re not a villain. But you are complicated.” Prince Lorenz met Cin’s gaze once more, this time fierce in every way he’d been tender before. “And youaregood. Perhaps not all your actions are such, but they’re a manifestation of you, and you aregood, my Cinder-Ella.”
How could that be the thing he saw in the depths of Cin? Amidst so many shadowy monsters, the prince picked a ghost. “I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Cin admitted. “But I thank you for saying it.”
“May time prove me right, then,” he said. The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You still have one last week to stab me through the heart.”
“If it means you don’t trade your choice of partner away to your parents, perhaps I will.”
“Oh please.” Prince Lorenz snorted. “Have you seen the shallow and power-hungry bastards who fill my ball? If I’m to be cursed with one of them, at least I can guarantee a little more time with you before then.”
It sounded like such a romantic notion for a man so determined not to marry Cin. He fought back the ache from his earlier rejection with the same sad fact: Cin could not marry Prince Lorenz anymore than the prince could transform his lust for Cin—or any other—into romantic desire. Cin had been the one to tell him they’d need to part ways eventually. The one to ask for this momentary arrangement.
“A little more time,” he whispered back.
