Five #2
It was like being seen for the first time, a hundred gazes rolling down him, from the feathered crown braided into his white-blond hair to the sweeping length of his feathered half-cape, to the exquisite embroidery of his white and gold suit and the tall gray boots his pants tucked into.
Beneath the glamorous frills, he could still feel the flaws of the clothing he’d been wearing back at the garden before his pigeons had swept around him in a spiraling tornado to leave a sparkling masterpiece in their wake, but even the tear in his shoe and the tight pressure of his chest binding seemed like they couldn’t hurt him now.
He was alive, and he was here, jealousy and delight on the faces of everyone who looked upon him.
This time, he was being measured, and he was the one they all wanted to be or to beat.
Lucky for them, Cin wasn’t here to challenge anyone’s claim on the prince.
As he thought it, he remembered to scan the room for Floy and his siblings, but they hadn’t arrived yet—unlike him, they’d have to drive their carriage around to the few streets that had been cleared of pedestrians in order to make their way up to the castle.
That meant he had a quarter-hour, perhaps even a half, to enjoy himself here before absconding to one of the less prestigious parties outside the castle proper.
As much as Cin wished otherwise, he had known the moment his birds descended on him that he couldn’t share this glory with his family. There would be too many questions, too many demands. And Floy had already been acting suspicious with his pigeon feathers that morning...
Tonight was for him, and him alone.
Cin made a lap around the massive room just to take in the scene, letting himself wonder at the motions of the dancing guests while counting the observing watch members in the back of his head.
They seemed no more interested in him than the guards out front, however, and after his second sweep through the room, he let himself breathe out the little fear he’d been harboring of them.
They were here to protect the royal family and their castle, and Cin meant harm to neither. He was safe.
Safe to enjoy himself.
His initial sweep finished, Cin sampled every morsel of food presented on the long, elaborately decorated royal tables before returning for his favorites.
He slipped tiny meatballs between his lips and savored the sweet burst of strawberry cakes as he sipped on a warm glass of spiced wine.
He basked in the music and exchanged a few short words with other singles at the ball, mostly over the beauty of the place and the quality of the food, staying to the sidelines and avoiding any conversation where it seemed the gossip might turn to talk of the Plumed Menace.
The more he watched, the more he realized that not all the eligible individuals were there solely for the prince either.
Some seemed just as distracted by their wonder as he was.
Others hounded each other for conversations of business or danced as though they were committed to coming home with a partner whether the prince wanted them or not.
It was beautiful and unreal and so gloriously perfect.
He only spotted the man he assumed to be the newly crowned Prince Lorenz a few times, each from a distance—once only the top of his dusky brown hair and elegant silver circlet as he danced through the bobbing crowd, and later his back, as he was walking out of the central ball-space with a guest on both arms, one of the ornamented watch members trailing dutifully behind him.
It left such a sense of mystery that Cin almost wanted to see him up close before he left.
He was casually scanning the room again when instead his gaze caught on the entrance: on three specific people arriving there.
His heart ricocheted, and he took a few steps back, sliding into the shadows along the room’s edges.
Besides the entrance, there were two great doors out to the gardens, but that would require Cin to move back through the well-lit spaces to reach them.
A few other doors and spiraling stairwells led to the upper level where the shadowy, theater-style balconies were, but he had managed to find himself spaced equally far from any of them.
Maybe if he just stayed here, his siblings wouldn’t notice him?
But that wasn’t a chance he wanted to take.
Cin glanced to his left and right again, then up to the balcony. If he could get there without stepping through the brighter parts of the room, then none of his siblings would be able to spot him from below...
Grooves ascended along the wall where an ornamented pillar curled up under the edge of the nearest balcony. Peeling off his gloves, Cin slipped his fingers into the pillar’s lines. This could do fine.
Cin gave one final look toward the watch members in view of him, but none seemed to be paying any attention to his shadowy balcony’s underbelly.
Taking as deep a breath as he could manage beneath his binding, he pulled himself up.
The centralized lantern-light would have barely glinted off his outfit, and as he climbed, the magic overlaying him seemed to shift in color.
The silvery gleams in his feathered coat went gray and the folds in the fabric flared and swirled, casting him in a ghostly haze.
He slid his fingers along the curves of the balcony, tucking the sides of his toes against the frame for support, and hand over hand, Cin rose above the crowd.
As he reached the top, the tear in the side of his boot—the ordinary one, beneath the magic—snagged.
He slipped, catching himself at the last moment with both hands on the banister.
A sharp reminder of the state of his ribs speared through his sides as he swung himself up to the balcony’s safety.
He landed with the tiniest sound: the pop and tear of another stitch in his boot.
Cin grimaced. He didn’t have much time to think about the repercussions this would have on his regular life, though, because the balcony wasn’t as empty as it had appeared from below. And the couple already occupying it were grunting.
One of them swayed against the other with an energy far too frenzied to be following the moves of any dance, his hands on their hips as he pressed them against the wall and— Oh. They were fucking.
They might have still been fully—more or less—clothed, but they were definitely fucking.
Shit.
The couple seemed to notice Cin at the same instant he realized it.
They slowed, and Cin’s eyes had adjusted enough to the low lighting to make out the blush on the face of the probably-woman as she held to the lifted edge of her dress with one hand and what she could reach of the very edge of the balcony railing with the other.
The probably-man pulled back just enough for Cin to catch the silhouette of his hard cock between the folds of fabric around the couple’s legs—and he was a man, Cin knew, because Cin vaguely recognized him.
As the man’s dark gaze settled on Cin in the low light, his eyes narrowed, scanning up Cin’s body like he was devouring him, adding up every glimmering piece of Cin’s facade and measuring it against his own want.
.. and somehow, not finding Cin lacking.
Not yet, at least, not draped in magic and shadows.
“Why, hello. Aren’t you a pretty little dove?” Prince Lorenz smiled, the flash of teeth in the low light so similar to that of his circlet: cold and arrogant but breathtakingly beautiful. “You want in?” he asked. “I think we can make room for a third.”