Page 58 of Cinder
Behind him, Louise shouted at Manfred and Floy to stop Cin, but they were both too slow. Cin galloped his flock-creature out of the yard, leaving his family behind.
God’s smile, wherever it might be hiding from Cin, was nothing compared to the grin on his own face.
At the front gates of the castle, the watch members barely glanced at Cin before waving him in. No soldiers came tearing around the corner to arrest him, though a fair number of the crown’s watch still manned an absurd number of posts, one person standing every three strides down the whole length of the castle’s entrance, as if they feared the prince himself might try to flee down it. They outnumbered the gueststhree to one now. It seemed, whether by Prince Lorenz’s request or his parents’, that the list had been cut down to the final few. Or, the final few plus Cin, anyway.
He’d glanced at the list as he passed, skimming just long enough to spot Floy’s name near the bottom. A short list, but still not lacking the one person Cin wished least to see. At least the rest of his family would be absent, and with the plethora of watch members lingering about, there was little harm Floy could cause to Cin’s person that wouldn’t be noticed and dealt with immediately.
To accommodate the change in attendance, the sides of the ballroom had been filled with other eccentricities, among them couches and potted plants, birdcages, a fountain that had to be magic.
It was easy for him to spot Prince Lorenz amongst the dozen or so remaining guests, his bright smile and gentle laughter lighting up the space all around him more clearly now that there wasn’t a throng of onlookers to drown him out. Cin thought he recognized a few of the remaining contenders for the prince’s hand: a shallow but kind lord a decade older than Prince Lorenz, the studious son of a wealthy business man, a pair of twins whose genders and identities Cin couldn’t tell apart but who seemed equally sharp-witted and rational, and the woman who had been fucking the prince the day Cin met him—an esteemed poet, he’d learned since.
They were all logical choices for the new co-ruler of Hallin. Cin didn’t—couldn’t—hate them for being here, for being selected as the best-of-the-best. Theywerethe best-of-the-best, after all. But that didn’t mean Cin wanted to stand to the side for the rest of Prince Lorenz’s life, watching them take over his time, his energy, his bed.
What made it all the worse, though, was that neither, it seemed, did his prince.
As he drew closer, Cin could see the shift in Prince Lorenz’s attention, the slipping away of the chivalry and arrogance and poise into a soft, bright smile. His eyes seemed to twinkle as he broke away from his conversation with the other guests to meet Cin halfway, both his arms outstretched towards him. He was such a joy to look at that Cin almost didn’t catch the frustrated and jealous glances from the guests Prince Lorenz had abandoned.
“My dove,” the prince whispered, taking both of Cin’s hands in his. “I’m glad you’re here. After you spoke of magic last week…”
It felt as though a flush went through Cin’s chest at the idea of Prince Lorenz thinking of him at the very moment he’d stood before the frog prince. He pulled Prince Lorenz a little closer, smiling as he teased, “Did you worry for me?”
“I…” Prince Lorenz’s gaze dropped, and he released one of Cin’s hands, his fingers pressing against his heart in a now-familiar way. Cautiously, Cin lifted his own fingers to set them atop the back of the prince’s hand.
“What is it?” Cin asked.
Prince Lorenz shook his head, his smile flashing back into place. “As I said, I’m just glad you’re here.” He pulled Cin to him, maneuvering them both into the small dancing space that remained in the large ballroom. The musicians rolled into a new song just for them.
Already, Cin could feel the other guests’ eyes boring into him, and the hour was still early enough that new additions were coming through the doors as they danced. He took a deep breath, reminding himself of what it felt like to have sought after what he wanted, what he knew was right for him—no pain, no fear. In its place was the joy that had touched him at the Frog Prince’s request: to care for his Lorenz.
He wantedthat, too.
Cin inhaled again, and when he released it, he let himself say the words. “I could always keep being here? I know the parameters I dictated at the beginning of this, but I’d like to continue seeing you, after tonight, in whatever capacity you’ll have me. I don’t want you to become a distant memory.”
The prince’s face lit up, whatever tension his original smile had masked fading away so quickly that it felt unreal after. “Yes!” He laughed. “I will do whatever you need—make a space for you here, or come to you in Darmburg—anything. Our friendship is the most important part of my life.”
Friendship. That was all it would be. All it could be. Even if there was a world where the kind of friendship they had, deep and true and lustful, could be forged into a partnership—even a marriage—there would still be no place at Prince Lorenz’s side for the Plumed Menace. And the idea of being a king of Hallin someday… Cin wasn’t sure he could even envision that, much less live it. Part of him was still thinking of the tasks he’d need to complete when he returned home.
The prince spun Cin around before pulling him back in close. His breath on Cin’s ear was delicious. “I must ask, though,” he said, his voice beaming with delight, “what changed?”
Cin could have told him of the Frog Prince’s bargain, but now, basking in the prince’s joy and the lightness of his own heart, he knew that had merely been the crack he’d needed to open himself up to the idea, not the reason for it. “I’d always yearned to,” he admitted, heat pooling in his cheeks despite everything he’d done to stand up for himself already that day. “But my family wouldn’t have approved it. They never wanted me here. All this time, they’ve thought that I’ve been home, tending the house, while they’re in the city for the weekly balls. When I finally told them I’d been here, all along…”
It broke my stepmother’s heart, Cin might have once said, and to some degree he’d have believed it, even if that heartbreakwas purely selfish, pushing Cin to prove his own dependability and trust tenfold. But now what he saw in his memories was not Louise’s devastation or his father’s empty sadness or his siblings’ jealousy, but wrath. Reassertions of control. Hands on wrists. Nails and slaps and deep, unhealing wounds.
Cin hadn’t wished for his family to see him here, because he hadn’t wished for his family to seehim.
If wedding rings could not go on invisible hands, perhaps neither could chains.
Horror hollowed out Prince Lorenz’s expression, and he seemed to miss a beat in the dance, barely picking it back up in time to swing Cin into the next move. “After all the work you do for them, they wouldn’t even let you...” He made a choking noise. “My dove, my— my Cinder-Ella, that is tyrannical! Abominable! You deserve admiration, respect,lovefor all you do for them, not… Notthis.”
“I believed they only wanted me at home because no one else can tend it well,” Cin said, and stopped as a fresh kind of pain spread through his chest, not the deep hurt he’d lived with for years, but a fire, hot and angry.
There was so much more to their mistreatment—Cin had seen it first-hand, as Louise refused to even consider the thought that Cin could both enjoy the ball and tend the house, or that he could teach any one of his siblings to help. Perhaps not born of outright malevolence—if Manfred or Emma had been a little more skilled and Cin a little less, perhaps it would have truly been one of them in his place, always pushed into the work, always expected to carry the burden. But it hadn’t been.
It had been Cin. The Cinder-whore, with the ashes of his family’s sins smeared across his cheek.
How the hell had he never seen this?
Cin hadn’t realized a tear had slipped free from the corner of his eye until Prince Lorenz wiped it aside, cupping Cin’s cheekafter, his gaze so soft for such an enraged expression. His thumb ran across the very place where soot had smeared six days prior. “If they don’t treat you as you deserve, you need never return there. You have a home here, a family here, whenever you need it.”
