Page 21 of Cinder
He took the prince’s hand.
He was pulled immediately closer, Prince Lorenz’s other palm sliding around his waist and guiding him away from thegarden patio’s railing. It wasn’t the closest they’d ever been, and the firm touch was so respectful it seemed less sensual than most of their other contact, but the way the prince smiled sparkled of magic, like if Cin caught his eyes at just the right angle, he might see into the depths of Prince Lorenz’s soul. And, as it turned out, the prince knew how to dance well enough for the both of them. He led with a graceful command, giving instruction with both his voice and body as he stepped Cin back and forth, in and out and around and back again.
It made Cin think of the prince’s body directing his in other ways, hands guiding and pressing, voice low and purposeful. The idea burned through him like a flush, and he swore his cheeks were on fire, but Prince Lorenz only smiled at him, giving him a final twirl as the music pouring from the ballroom came to a momentary close. The prince pulled Cin closer, his arm wrapping firmly around Cin’s waist, and despite the subtle pain it set blooming between Cin’s ribs, he couldn’t make himself pull away. He’d made a promise with his lips that he had no desire to back out of—especially after a week spent daydreaming of it every chance he got.
“How do you like dancing then, my dove?” Prince Lorenz asked.
Cin gave a tiny shrug, trying to hide how breathless the constant movement had made him. “It was acceptable. For your first time with me, anyway.”
The laugh that burst out the prince was beautiful in the way that he was, dark and light, odd and intriguing; a little bit magical. He tipped his head against the side of Cin’s, grinning so broadly his smile seemed to consume his face. “Cheeky,” he murmured, light from the ballroom cresting down his jawline.
From the ballroom windows, the other guests were watching them, the prince’s personal watch member still standing guard. For all the various servants and security they’d put into place,it seemed Prince Lorenz’s was the only higher ranking watcher present. It made Cin wonder... “Your parents are throwing these elaborate parties for you, but I’ve yet to see them?”
The prince seemed to wilt, grunting as he pulled away. Through not very far away. “They’re out in the city, for once—took half the watch with them, I swear. They claimed they wanted to give me ‘space’ and be ‘visible to the people’ at the same time.” He mocked them with the emphasis of his words, but his tone held an odd gentleness that Cin could not have imagined coming from himself or Floy or Manfred when they spoke poorly of their own parents. Prince Lorenz sighed. “I do believe they’re truthful about wanting to be seen by the people—staying so secluded seems to take a toll on Mother it never has on me—but space? That is not particularly of what one thinks when they contemplate being forced to choose a life partner in six weeks. Besides, they have their spies here, watching and reporting in their place, calculating how to push me into their desired match.”
It wasn’t that Cin hadn’t known the prince’s fate, but it hadn’t quite sunk in before then: the misery of being pressured into a life role one didn’t want for themselves. In the prince’s case, a permanent one. He pressed his palm to Prince Lorenz’s arm, squeeze it gently. “Are you really going to let them force this on you?”
The prince shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “How do I say no? They’re my parents.”
Not,they’re the king and queen. Yet, theywerehis parents, too. Cin felt that like a sharp pinch in his chest, because he understood. Their families might have been worlds apart in power and wealth and, from the way Prince Lorenz spoke, the hatred that the Reinholzes harbored for each other was oddly lacking in the royal family, but they were still both just children of two people they didn’t always want to obey, but were forced toby the world and their circumstances all the same. For the sake of a family. For the sake of a kingdom. For their own sakes.
“Let’s not speak of dreadful things neither of us can change, shall we?” Prince Lorenz stepped back in a dramatic slide, thrusting his arms out as he spun. “It’s a beautiful night! We have the present, and that’s all we need.” He lunged back in to grab Cin’s hand, pulling him into a loose embrace.
Cin caved to the touch, and to the joy Prince Lorenz was putting out a little more with each second. But he realized with a growing dread that their onlookers had been accumulating. It seemed as though the gathering crowd was about to burst past the watch in the hopes of sweeping the prince away with them. Floy would be among them soon.
As Cin squinted into the sea of shifting bodies, he swore he caught a glimpse of their hat. The way his stomach churned then put every one of the little anxious flutters Prince Lorenz had imposed there to shame.
Cin turned his back on the crowd, hiding his face in the shadow as he held Prince Lorenz’s hands. “Can we...”
He didn’t want to be the one to suggest that he and the prince leave together, though—he didn’t want to imply anything more than what he was ready to give, which was... he wasn’t even sure. His mouth, perhaps. His fingertips...
But Prince Lorenz seemed even more eager to get away from the overflowing party, the dark side of his face twitching uncomfortably. “Food and music and dancing is all fine, but you said you also enjoy pigeons?” he asked, brushing his hand over Cin’s cloak.
And the back of Cin’s mind whispered: Plumed Menace.
But the prince only asked, “What do you say we go visit some?”
Ten
Cinder had bemoaned the size of the Reinholz home every time he carried firewood across the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs, and through the length of the house, but that trek was simple compared to the complexities of the royal Hallinisch castle.
Prince Lorenz led Cin through the gardens, both of them laughing as they stumbled in the darkness, and back into the castle building through a side entrance, his personal watch trailing a little ways behind them. From there, they wound through a series of halls and sitting chambers, down stairs, across a bustling kitchen where the head chef threw a tomato at Prince Lorenz—he caught it, grinning, and took a bite before offering it to Cin. Three of the kitchen staff cheered. The chef waved a ladle at them, complaining good-naturedly to the prince’s watch member, who only shrugged, then winked at the prince.
Cin had managed to put the danger of his vigilante activities to the back of his mind after noticing how little attention the palace guards paid him, even covered in all his feathers—or perhaps because of them, some mysterious aspect of their magic—but the casual way Prince Lorenz’s personal watch interacted with him in that small moment, out of the public’s eye, made Cin’s insides tighten back up. He was traveling through the bowels of the castle with the prince, and that was good, joyous. But it was also dangerous.
He needed not to forget that.
Cin tried to keep the tiniest hint of that tension within him as the prince drew him into a far hall, up a stairwell. They walked down a long corridor, each tall, slim window showing a view of the front of the castle once more. A trail of arrivals made their way up the front steps. Cin hurried past, and the prince took one of the colored lanterns from the wall into a small doorway where a spiraling staircase ascended into the darkness behind.
He held his hand back toward Cin, a smug quirk to his lips. “Are you coming, dove?”
The prince’s watch-person hovered somewhere behind them.
Cin glanced up into the tower’s center. All the times he’d stood at the town’s square and looked out at the very spot fifty feet above them, and never once had he thought he’d get to stand beneath it, much less look down from its heights. And now, he was doing so with the prince, of all people. What must he have done for God to smile upon him so? Nothing he could imagine; the price on his head agreed with him.
It made him feel all the more breathless.
Inhaling against the tightness of his chest binding, Cin took Prince Lorenz’s hand for the second time that night, and up they went, leaving the prince’s only guard behind.
