Page 37 of Cinder
Cin’s body knew itself even in his ludicrous glamor, this false pretense of regality and goodness, and his hands found the small blade that he’d tucked against his back that morning. He had it free in an instant. As though he possessed the very wings his feathered coat implied, he all but flew onto the man’s back, blade poised. A little voice, soft and mothering, told himno.
Be good, be pious.
But the man beneath his grip had not been, over and over and over, and no one else had stopped him. He was doing it again, despite Cin clamped to his back, one fist slamming into the prince’s stomach as he grabbed him with the other. No one elsewouldstop him. No one else, but Cin.
So he rammed his little knife into the side of the man’s neck. Flesh gave way beneath his blade as he tore, like cutting the wrong way through a freshly plucked chicken.
As though his puppet’s cord had snapped, the man lurched to a stop. He reeled once, his hands trying to reach for Cin. He grasped unsuccessfully at his neck, at his own blood, but as Cin wrenched free his blade, its sharp edges were what he found first, hand clamping down only to recoil with a howl. Then the blood started pouring. It spurted, hot and sticky over Cin’s fingers, and the man sank to his knees.
This time it was easy, the knife going back into that serrated muscle so smooth and sure. Cin drove it until the tip hit bone,and twisted up. The man’s growling and scrambling dissolved into a choke, then nothing.
Cin dismounted as he crumpled across the pavement.
Hands shaking, Cin stood there. Perdition dropped onto his shoulder. She nuzzled into the side of his neck, and somewhere above, behind, around, were Ragimund and Lacey’s gentle coos, too soft and melancholic for anything but a funeral. The fire that had fueled Cin—the surety so deep in his bones that reason couldn’t touch—drained away. His chest felt empty. Nausea turned in his stomach.
Yet again—yet again. How many times was this now? How many bodies...
Yet again, not pious, not good.
But this time, it wasn’t the corpse at his feet that disturbed him most. Not the stench of the dead man’s blood still dripping sticky and hot from Cin’s arms, nor the weight of the knife in his hands. It was the prince’s gaze, so aghast that Cin could feel the shock, each tiny, sharp breath he took before he spoke a miniature dagger to Cin’s chest.
“Did you—you just—you—” Prince Lorenz barely managed the words as he straightened, one arm wrapped around his bruised side.
And so awkwardly he seemed not to even know what he was doing, the prince took a step away from Cin.
Sixteen
With that single step back the prince took, Cin felt like his whole world was falling away from him. How had their blissful night turned intothis? He’d murdered someone—murdered with the rage of the Plumed Menace. Murdered someone in front of the third most powerful person in the kingdom, the man whose parents already had a price on his head.
Murdered someone in front of the only person who’d sought Cin out, tried to see him for who he was.
And now Prince Lorenz was clearly seeing something else entirely.
Cin reached for him instinctively, bloody knife still in hand. “Your Royal Highness—”
“Don’t,” Prince Lorenz warned.
Cin froze. What could he say now? What could he do? He could run—back to the house he’d just brought Prince Lorenz to.The royal guards would be there by the morning. But he couldn’t just leave his home, either. He couldn’t—
The prince took a deep breath, in then out, in then out again. He looked through the darkness, from Cin to the corpse and back, his hand clenched again his heart, fingers digging into the fabric. What he said was not what Cin expected; it was somehow worse. “You don’t even care...”
Cin felt his insides turn in on themselves. His skin burned, like God was here after all, that infrequent smile turned to a fatal glare.
“You don’t even care that you...” The prince repeated, a vague wave toward the dead man the best he seemed able to conjure.
He was attacking you, Cin should have said, orhe’d been assaulting that elf, or better yet,he said heownedthem, but what came out was the excruciating endpoint of all those, small and soft but not the least bit timid: “Not this time.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Wrong in every way.
“Notthistime?” The prince gave a tiny half-laugh, desperate and delirious. He ran both hands through his hair turning away, then back. “You’ve done this before?”
Cin carefully tucked the little knife against his chest. He could barely see through the panic rearing up inside him. Could barely think. “Not like this?”
Prince Lorenz began to pace, his arms trembling as he cupped the back of his head. “My God,” he whispered. “MyGod. He’sdead.”
“He was hurting you.” It came out so much softer than it felt in Cin’s head, almost like a whimper. A plea.
