Four
C in had never seen his stepmother so excited—at least not over anything that had come out of his mouth. She pushed back her long brown hair, half spinning in place with unbridled energy.
“You mean the prince’s partner has not yet been announced? And they’re reserving space for eligible young people of good character in his sphere?”
Cin could have just not said anything. Was six meals really worth this? “I’m not positive. I could barely hear—”
But Louise flung herself away from him, shouting across the sitting room to where her eldest birth-child sat at the front window, ankles crossed as they read the day’s newspaper—conveniently the one from the capital; Cin had memorized the nearby press’s names in order to retrieve them, even if he couldn’t decipher much else in print. “Floy!”
Floy’s hair was perfectly arranged into coils that wrapped up and around their head, despite having very little help from anyone, even Cin, though he recognized their clean, pressed outfit of riding-style pants and a fitted vest as one he’d tended to last night just before leaving.
They delicately flipped over the page they were on. “I’m not really interested, Mother.”
“Not interested in becoming queen ?”
That caught Floy’s attention. They lowered the paper an inch, their sharp blue gaze and delicate brows peeking over. Cin’s father had remarked once, under his breath, that Floy’s eyes looked a bit like Cin’s, despite their lack of blood-relation, and Cin had never been able to unsee it.
“Dear,” Louise continued, “You must see the providence in this. You have all the necessary qualities.”
“I would do the role justice,” Floy agreed, carefully folding their paper.
“I have the grace of a royal with the knowledge of an academic—I can speak all three languages of our largest trading partners.” They said it as though they were talking themself into a position of leadership with each qualification.
“There would be so much more to learn on the job, but it would hardly be a problem, not with my foundation.”
“What if I want to be king?” Manfred cut in from the parlor entrance, his growling tone so opposite the phrasing of good and gentle on the announcement.
Louise looked disappointed at the thought. “Well, you can certainly try.”
“And me?” Emma shouted, the volume of her voice battling with the clunk-clunk of her falling her way down the stairs.
She emerged in the hall entrance, her hair hanging half out of her braid.
Three of the buttons on her dress were popped open, despite Cin being certain he’d done them all properly this morning. “Could I marry the prince?”
“Why not!” Louise exclaimed, tossing her hands into the air.
Cin didn’t offer himself as a fourth potential prince-wooer.
He, at least, knew who his family was—a broken mess whose ancestors might have been somebodies, but who’d squandered all chance of that long ago.
There was a reason no one Louise deemed worth their time would dream of marrying any of her children, step or otherwise. A prince would respond no better.
Cin carefully fixed Emma’s buttons as she jabbered at Louise.
“Imagine living in a palace! I’d have ten rooms, and fifteen maids, and a hundred little cakes, and—”
“Yes, yes, we would be rich,” Louise said, as Manfred mocked, “a thousand stupid ass thoughts all those fucking maids would have to listen to.”
Floy rolled their eyes in a way that somehow made the childish action look refined.
“I’d just like to go for the food,” Cin admitted, so softly he wasn’t sure the rest of his family could hear him.
“You, Cinder-child?” Louise inhaled.
The chaos of the room seemed to grind to a halt.
Cin swallowed, feeling certain that he’d done something wrong, even if he couldn’t place what this new sin was yet. “It’s said to be a fine dinner.”
Louise looked mournful. “But this party—it’s at the palace, isn’t it?
That’s a part-day’s trip. With how late we’ll be there, someone will need to stay here to keep to the home, prepare for our return, see to the horse when we arrive.
” It sounded as though it hurt her to say, and Cin wanted to believe that—wanted not to feel the pain and anger twisting terribly in his gut.
“I’d ask Penrod, of course, but he’s not meant to return until next month—and it’s not as though you’ll be going there to meet the prince, anyway. ”
The prince. The prince who would never have any of them—certainly not Cinder, or Emma, or Manfred.
Perhaps Floy had the smallest chance... What were royals like now, anyway?
Arrogant, calculated, disdainful? As a child, he would have sworn that Hallin’s queen and king were nothing of the sort.
They had once been kind and open rulers, like the queen’s parents before them, and grandparents before that, going back for generations.
They were not without their faults, but they had always connected with their people, listened and offered aid, given more than they’d taken.
Prince Adalwin’s disappearance had changed that.
Rarely now did they venture beyond their own castle, sending out their watch to do their bidding, stiff and unwavering.
They were not cruel, certainly, but neither were they compassionate.
These balls would mark the most they’d offered their people in ages.
Perhaps that was a good sign. Perhaps it meant the royal family was changing; healing.
Someone good, someone gentle , their announcement had claimed, but what was genuine and what was just for show?
Whatever the case was, they certainly did not want a ragged homemaker as a future leader for their kingdom.
No one would want Cin: not gentle, not regal, not brilliant, not good.
None of the virtues Mother had wished from him.
And if they discovered what he did in the dark…
Cin could go unnoticed long enough to feast and be gone, but with the price on his head, there would never be a permanent place in the castle for him even if he possessed every one of Floy’s skills and more.
Not even he could hide who he was for a lifetime. His run-in with Dorthe was proof.
“Please, say you’ll stay for us, dear,” Louise asked.
It would be safer to agree. Gentler. Kinder. His birth mother would have. But all that seemed able to come out of Cin’s mouth was, “I don’t...”
Around him, the conversation had resumed between his siblings, flitting somewhere around the prince’s looks and if he liked tea—that was Emma—and how well he fucked—that was Manfred—but it all felt distant.
Abstract. Louise stepped in, and Cin didn’t step back—couldn’t step back—not as his stepmother’s fingers so gently cupped the side of his face, her other hand squeezing his shoulder.
Softly, she pleaded, “You’re the only one I trust for this besides Floy, and you understand that Floy must go, don’t you?
They have a real chance at elevating our status.
” Her brows knit, her thumb caressing Cin’s cheek.
“You wouldn’t take that away from us for a bite of food, would you?
Surely the royal’s reserves won’t be enough for all in attendance anyway.
I doubt we’ll get more than a few morsels at best.”
It was all too much suddenly, and a rush of hot, violent emotion rolled through Cin.
He jerked back, making his stepmother squeak in surprise.
The moment her hands were gone, though, the fire that had overcome him turned to a void.
All he wanted to do was fall into her embrace—fall and never get up.
He rubbed his hands over his arms instead, swallowing through the thickness in his throat.
Louise smiled weakly. “We’ll discuss it more later.” She clapped twice, pausing the chatter happening in the rest of the room. “We all have our chores to attend now, don’t we?”
And one by one, they left the sitting room, as though each of them had chores indeed.
As though all chores were equal. As equal, at least, as their prospects.
E very day leading up to the weekend, Cin stopped in the square to squint at the capital, hoping for a glimpse of the palace towers.
The crown’s watch had funneled back to the castle and the Plumed Menace seemed to have slipped everyone’s minds, replaced by their excitement for the royal ball.
It was the talk of the town, and the talk of the Reinholzes’ household—even the voice inside Cin’s head couldn’t seem to shut up about it.
He daydreamed of the food, but his desire went beyond that.
This would be a night to simply enjoy himself.
There hadn’t been a proper party in any of the nearby towns in months, much less one he’d be invited to.
Cin wanted this one: wanted to disappear into it and, for one night, cease the constant list in his mind of everything that needed attention back home and everything he might have done wrong.
To momentarily stop searching for all those who cried in the night and left their homes with inexplicable bruises.
Their misery clung like ash to the edges of Cin’s conscience, brittling into anger and guilt.
It felt as though by setting foot into that castle, he could somehow stop being the Plumed Menace the crown was searching for.
Be his mother’s child instead: good, if only for a night.
Louise was never around at the right time to discuss the matter, though, and by the morning before the ball, Cin was anxious with the energy.
“Hearth, Cinder!” Louise called down the hall, a yawn in her voice. “It’s gone out again!”
There wouldn’t be a better chance than this.
The cold wood floor seemed to creak with the ghosts of all the winters past as Cin knelt beside the hearth in Louise’s room, tucking fresh firewood around the morning’s embers.
The flame seemed to burst to life beneath his hands before the flint could even bid it come.