Page 51 of Cinder
“What enemies of mine do you think can catch me here?” The frog prince seemed bored by the very thought.
“Please, I came all this way.” Cin tried not to sound as desperate as he felt. “There must be something you can take from me in trade.” They were dangerous words, but now that he was here, now that he’d admitted to himself what he wanted, even if the creature of the swamp didn’t yet know, he found he couldn’t leave without giving it his all. Even if his all turned out to be everything.
“And some have come farther for more,” the frog prince replied. Something within the castle’s main entrance shifted, a glint of green and then a sliding shadow, before the gloomy interior settled again. When the voice came again it still echoed from everywhere. “What are you here for, Pigeon Prince? Wealth? Power?”
“What would I do with either of those?” Cin asked. His family had been wealthy once, and squandered that perfectly fine the first time. They’d been powerful once too, and now they were all but forgotten. Even princes—the regular, mortal ones—like Adalwin could be vanished or killed in an instant despite everything they had, or sometimes because of it.
Still, the frog prince made a sound of disbelief. “Easier said than lived.”
“The whole of the eligible kingdom is fighting for the prince’s hand like he’s worth nothing more than his privileges,” Cin replied. “I have sought neither from him, even if he might have offered them to me.”
A moment of silence stretched, even the frogs hushing as though with an intake of breath, and Cin worried he’d said something wrong. When the monster of the swamp spoke again, it was softer, a bristling hush to his voice. “What do you know of the Hallinisch Prince?”
Cin could feel a sparkle of magic in the air, like the tension before a great storm. It felt like a test. One he could not risk losing.
Yet, he could not lie to the Frog Prince either.
“I know that Prince Lorenz is kinder than he appears, as thoughtful as he is witty and as empathetic as he is flirtatious. He is so much more sensitive than his persona would imply. Where others are concerned, he is far braver than anyone notices, yet he’s not selfish enough to stand up for what he deserves,” Cin said, hoping with every word that Lorenz knew it. “He’s worth more than any of those power-hungry bastards vying for his hand. He should be able to choose a partner in his own time, and not one right for the kingdom, but one right for him.”
Just as quiet and strained as before, the frog prince asked, “And you think that should be you?”
The thought was a spear between Cin’s ribs, running deeper and more miserable than any physical pain his own chest could produce. “He wouldn’t—”
The frog prince cut him short. “So, you’re not here for power or wealth. You’re here for love.”
“I would never force him to love me.” Cin shook his head, a shudder crawling up his spine. “I know he won’t care for me as more than a friend, but I wouldn’t ask him to feel anything that isn’t in his nature. He deserves better than to be bound by magic into something he’s not. I would never ask that of him.”
“You are truly his friend.” The strain seemed to break partway through the frog prince’s statement, turning gentle with a croak and a snap. A shadow swayed within the castle’s main entrance.
For a moment, Cin imagined he could see the swamp’s monster, rotting away in this dying place. Alone. Whatever happened, Cin prayed that never became the case for him. “I am,” he said, and wished it could always be the truth.
“What, then, do you want, Pigeon Prince?” It sounded less like a demand now, and more a question, simple and solid.
“I wish for my body to feel like a home, instead of a house.” Cin took a breath, dwelling in the unwanted weight of his breasts, the pain between his ribs, the wrongness of it all. “Have you ever felt that? That there’s some part of you that isn’t right for you to inhabit? But you’re forced to bear it anyway, by some ruthless twist of fate, to be reminded every minute of every day that you are a foreigner to your own flesh?”
The shadow moved again, and this time, Cin could make out a silhouette against the darkness: long, gangly legs and spindly fingers, his head and torso hidden by the foliage. The frog prince’s voice, as inhuman as it was, sounded pained as he spoke. “How do you know this new you will feel right?”
Cin closed his eyes, and imagined everything he wanted coming to pass. He felt, as always, so many, many things. And as always, one of them was fear. Fear he didn’t want to admit to; fear that regardless of what he did, nothing could make this right. That it was an affliction trapped deep in his bones and it would just come back again.
He knew this present, its pains and its flaws, and there was comfort in that.
But not enough comfort.
“I don’t know whether it will be right for me,” Cin said, finally, and the fear drained with each word. “But it can’t be more wrong than this. So I have to try.”
He had to try—to try for a better him, a better future, one he wanted. If it was a sin to be selfish in this, then damn him. Cin would find what was right for himself, one way or another.
“Then take this.” The shadow shifted once more, and from within the castle a small, round object rolled forth. Dirt and moss slipped from its sides as Cin hesitantly retrieved it. Beneath the grime, he was met with a shimmer of golden magic.
Another test?
“Drop it into the well,” the frog prince commanded.
A test, or a trick. Cin had little hope for anything else. But that little hope was bright in his chest, pulled taut between his own wants and the way this mysterious monster had reacted to them, as he too knew what it was like to be something he was not, and Cin clung to that. “What will I owe you?”
The shadow of the swamp’s monster shifted again. “From you, I will ask only that you continue to care for that prince of yours,” he said. “Prove that he is worth all that you say.”
Cin’s body for... his continued befriending of the prince?
