Page 77 of Cinder
And again.
Thirty-One
Cin felt the sick terror in his stomach before he could form a coherent thought. He didn’t have to force his eyes open to know the cooling bodies of his pigeons were splayed beside him: one silky and gray, one splotched brown and white. If they were alive, he would not have felt the snap in his chest, like a cord between them had been cut short.
A cord of magic, withdrawing from their tiny bodies, and returning to Cin’s.
The magic they’d been using: it was never truly his flock’s, Cin realized. It was always his own magic, only he’d given it away, unknowingly spreading it around in little hopeful pieces until he hadn’t even known he was the origin. Amongst his birds. To the only living creatures who’d cared for him after his birth mother passed.
The only creatures, except Emma.
She sobbed for Cin now, and as he forced his eyes back open, he could blearily see her, struggling against their siblings.Manfred wrenched her back so hard that she spilled into the counter, toppling to her knees.
“Stop!” Emma gasped.
Manfred grabbed her again, clamping a hand over her mouth as she tried to scream.
A fire lit in Cin’s chest, seeming to burn through his grief and turn it to anger, to rage. Something rattled in the chimney, but no one else seemed to notice. Cin heard it, though, the first clatter, and the second one. Hisses and flaps echoed with it.
Manfred wrenched Emma onto the table, Floy holding her legs while Louise searched for a kitchen tool that would achieve her desired foot-stretching, however pointless and unwanted that might be. Emma locked eyes with Cin. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Their father stood over her shoulder, patting her head while she struggled.
“Listen to your mother, Emma,” he said, soft and dead-eyed.
Cin hated him most of all.
He didn’t try to run at his family again, though. As much as he wanted to plunge his knife into their flesh and see the world turn right for once, that was not the way. Because justice should not have had to be a thing that slipped quietly into backs.
It deserved to be loud.
Behind and above him, the chimney sang like a storm, and Cin’s flock poured out of it.
Dozens upon dozens of birds—pigeons, doves, songbirds, even a few crows—flooded through the chimney in a shrieking, sooty cloud. They descended on Cin’s family, too dense and violent for Cin to make out more than the screams, but he could feel their actions like they were extensions of himself, hearts and minds linked through his magic. From amidst their fury, Emma scrambled out on all fours.
She hugged Cin’s leg, shaking as she she held onto him. A single scratch ran the length of her jaw to her forehead, a trickle of blood running like a tear from one eye. But she was safe.
She would be the only one.
Cin’s flock swelled and raged around him as he swept up Lacey and Rags’ small bodies into his arms, Emma still clinging to him fiercely as he cradled his lost pigeons, their unbeating hearts warm against his chest. Tears slid down his cheeks, but he held his chin up, letting the shrieks of his family echo through him. Slowly, the sounds of torment died to whimpers.
His flock began to pull back, still swirling and dancing through the kitchen like a feathered storm. The paths vacated by their claws and beaks revealed a terrible scene.
Manfred moaned where he slumped across the table, the flesh of his hands picked down to the bone. Shiny tendon strings from his partially intact wrists and streaks of blood crisscrossed the wood beneath him, but each finger had been stripped to sparkling whiteness. Beside him, Floy shuddered, their jaw hanging open. Cin could see every one of their teeth, from gum to tip, where their lips had been stripped away in jagged chunks, what remained of the flesh there flopping against their chin. A fresh drizzle of blood slid free with each of their ragged breaths. A whisper came from Cin’s father where he sat on the floor, two deep, bloody holes where his eyes had been, blood welling in the pits and dripping down the long ridges of the gashes that extended into his cheeks.
What Cin could see of his stepmother seemed whole in comparison—her eyes dull from pain, her mouth open in her gasping, her fingers clenching the edge of the table. But as she pulled herself up, Cin could see where the front of her gown was gone, her under-dress hanging in tatters across strips of muscle and fat where the birds had ripped away the front of her chest. The bone of her sternum gleamed where it met ribs. Beneaththem sat the erratic pump-pump of a heart. Each beat came slower than the last.
Cin held Rags and Lacey’s bodies all the tighter.
He wanted to finish this.
He wanted this to end.
Hewanted…
Louise’s exposed heart went still, and Cin didn’t knowwhathe wanted.
Through the chaos of his flock, a shadow shot toward him.
Arms wrapped around Cin, Lorenz’s hands grasping at him, pulling him close. Not a spot of blood was on him, but the front of his shirt had been ripped open by the claws of birds, his crown lopsided upon his tussled hair and stray feathers caught in his clothing. Cin could see the faint impression of the bonds around his heart. The prince ignored the carnage, holding onto Cin so tightly that Cin could feel the press of the metal in his chest, the subtle thrum of a heartbeat beyond.
