Page 50 of Cinder
Cin had come this far on trust and hope and desire. He feared turning back now would leave a gap in his soul forever.
As they neared the border river, Cin’s flock-creature strode confidently off the path, into the forest depths. Despite the deepening woods, no branches hit him. Bugs and birds twittered, and in the distance he caught the howl of a lone wolf. The forest drew darker and thicker still. Just as Cin worried he’d lost track of time and the night was setting in, the branches thinned and the light pierced back through. The rush of a far-off river resounded, the melody to nearer bursts of frog-song.
Despite the chill of fall, the air turned summer-thick, muggy against Cin’s skin and dense in his lungs, and Cin’s flock-creature broke free, stepping into a spotty swamp. At its center rose a stairway to the hulking outline of an ancient, crumbling structure. Stone spilled from high walls and the lush tops of craggy trees sprouted within half-toppled rooms. It was asgorgeous as it was eerie, a haunting fixture that loomed over the dark pools of the surrounding swamplands.
This was a place of magic, if Cin had ever seen one. A shudder ran across Cin’s shoulders. He could still turn back. But whatever the cost, he’d committed to this—to trusting his flock. To trusting in magic.
Hopefully that magic would provide him deliverance, not destruction.
The chorus of croaking frogs died down as his flock-creature walked purposefully toward the ruined structure. Cin twisted his fingers into its mane and held there, watching, waiting, trying to calm the anxiety fluttering through his chest with each slow breath he took. When his mount stopped near the edge of the ancient building and stamped a hoof, he carefully slid off.
His skin prickled. His knees felt weak, his head light and his ribs still aching, and he grabbed onto the vine-strewn well at the stair’s base as he ascended the first step. Somewhere, or everywhere, a frog croaked. Cin’s heart skipped a beat. The world went eerily quiet again.
There had to be someone—or something—here. A sorcerer, a witch, a korn demon; this far west, perhaps even Herr Candy of Falchovari, using his shapeshifting magics to lure in his prey before devouring them. His flock’s endorsement did not necessarily equate to safety, only the possibility of something worth the risk.
Cin cleared his throat, and with one hand tucked behind his back, wrapped around the hilt of his knife—for whatever good it might do him against the magic of this place’s keeper—he called out, “Hello? I come seeking the inhabitant of this castle.”
Cin’s voice echoed, leaving a quiet behind it as though he had carved through the sounds of the frogs and the babble of the water and cast them away. Deep within the crumbling structure, he swore something shifted.
“Hello?” Cin repeated, half-hoping amidst the anxious flurry in his gut that no one would respond at all.
Just as he was about to release his breath and turn back, a scratchy masculine voice replied, sliding through the air like it was as thick and sultry as the swamp, impossible and inhuman. “And here I was thinking I’d have a peaceful day,” the creature said, “free ofannoyances.”
Cin shivered at the sound, and with the way the words grasped at him, he had a feeling that, one way or another, he was not getting out of there until the ruler of this putrid place had finished with him... whatever that entailed.
Twenty-One
Cin swallowed against the fear gathering at the back of his throat. He glanced from the gaps in the castle’s crumbling walls to its hollow windows and the long gash of its front entrance, to the dark water surrounding it on all sides but the one he’d come down, yet he could find nothing in the shadows: no menacing silhouette or sparkle of magic that might give him a hint as to who he was speaking with. Worse, he couldn’t tell where the voice had even come from.
Keeping his flock-creature at his back, he decided to hope for the best; his birds would not have brought him here had they thought this swamp creature would be the death of him.
Carefully, Cin answered, “I can leave, if you wish.”
“Would you really?” It was hard to tell from the way the voice creaked and echoed—so inhuman—but Cin thought he was being laughed at. Mocked. “And here I’d thought you’d come for a reason.”
Cin pushed back the flood of shame that accusation birthed. He had not wasted all this time, left his family to fend for themselves, only to leave at the first sign of struggle. If he was going to be here, then he was going to be here for himself. He would have what he’d come for, whatever the cost.
For once, his sacrifices were going toward something selfish.
Cin felt every hope for his body blooming beneath his too-present breasts. Tears pricked at his eyes. He cleared his throat, trying not to look as though he was still a heartbeat and a half away from fleeing, and stated, “I have. I seek your magic.”
The swamp creature seemed to scoff at him, the sound echoing like a flurry of bullfrog croaks. “What do you have to offer me in return?”
It was the same question the elves had asked him, but as with them, he still had very little he could give. His flock’s humble offerings had been enough for kind-hearted Elias. Cin wasn’t so certain they would work on such a creature as this shadowy king of the swamps.
But he had to try.
“I have magic of my own—my flock, who brought me here, to you. Our services are at your disposal.”
“At my disposal, are they?” The growl rumbled through the space, everywhere and nowhere at once. “What good are birds to a lonely prince such as myself? There are creatures small and large aplenty here, and many are already mine.”
As the swamp dweller spoke, the water around them swelled. Cin took an instinctive step further up the stairs as a hundred eyes pressed out of the dark water—frogs, staring up at him. They leaped along the side of the well below and the empty brick sills of windows above, their eyes as sharp as Cin’s pigeons’. Not the mythical Herr Candy, not a sorcerer, not even a demon—Cin should have guessed from the swamp alone, but the hundreds of frogs finally slid the last of the puzzle into place.
This was the realm of the one they called the Frog Prince, the elusive, young monster born in the last decade. He was said to spy through every pond, his powerful magic requiring an equally powerful sacrifice.
Cin had to find something he desired. Something worth the magic Cin wanted more than air—had wanted since the day he first cut the binding around his chest.
“My blade, then?” he shouted, glancing from one of the crumbling castle’s many gaps to the next, wishing he might catch a glimpse of the creature he was bargaining with through the foliage and the shadows. “If you have enemies, I can do my best to deal with them.”
