Six
P rince Lorenz, most eligible bachelor in the kingdom, soon to-not-be a bachelor at all, was looking at Cinder and... he was...
Oh no, oh fuck, oh fuck .
Cin felt his mouth turn to cotton and a burn shoot across his cheeks. His head went light in a rush of nerves. It made the room spin, and suddenly Cin’s legs weren’t quite underneath him. The banister was, though, then empty air, then—
A pair of strong hands circled around the collar of his suit jacket, pulling him back onto the balcony with a sureness that Cin had not felt from anyone’s touch in ages. The prince helped steady him, one arm slipping around Cin’s waist. His breath was warm against Cin’s forehead.
Cin yanked his hand off Prince Lorenz’s chest as he found his footing. Had he grabbed Prince Lorenz back? The heated embarrassment in his cheeks doubled.
The little smile, so smug and dazzling, appeared back on Prince Lorenz’s lips.
He stepped away, shifting to take gentle hold of Cin’s wrists, like he was worried if he let go entirely that Cin might launch himself back over the railing.
“There now. If you wish to reject my advances, there are easier ways, you know?”
Cin’s heart pounded in his ears. Should he pull away? Did he want to? He had to, he decided, just to ensure the prince understood his intentions.
But then Prince Lorenz let go instead as the woman he’d been fucking—her dress hanging back around her ankles—asked, softly, “My prince?”
He turned toward her, casually buttoning his pants back up as he did.
They were well tailored, Cin noted, displaying his trim waist and toned backside and the curve of what seemed to be a still half-hard erection.
“Sorry, love, I think we lost the mood,” the prince said, but he reached for her as she made to leave, tucking a stray piece of her hair back with a soft, “I’ll see you later though, hmm? ”
She gave him a tiny bow. “It would be my honor.” It genuinely sounded like she meant it.
Floy was already behind on the competition, it seemed, and this particular competitor was clearly getting a little something extra for her trouble. Cin promptly forced himself to stop thinking about that, because unlike the woman, Prince Lorenz had not left.
He stood beside the padded bench that filled much of their balcony’s central space, casually leaning one knee against it as he fixed his elegant ruby-toned vest, realigning the delicate embroidery.
His outer jacket was draped on the bench beside him, but he made no move to retrieve it, smiling over at Cin like they were conspirators in some great adventure.
“You know there are better methods of telling a gentleman he’s not your type than leaping from balconies. .. even if he is me.”
“You'd call that leaping ? Your royal highness, you humor me.” Cin decided then and there that he would just stop blushing. Enough willpower had to work, didn’t it?
“Then humor me ?” Prince Lorenz retorted, and sat onto the bench. He patted the empty space at his side.
The thought repeated in Cin’s mind: could he chance saying yes? This man’s family did have a price on Cin’s head, even if no one had connected the Plumed Menace’s actions to Cin yet. The ball had been a risk, but this...
The Prince of Hallin .
Attempting to leave would raise just as much suspicion, wouldn’t it? There was surely the ornamented watch member just outside the balcony.
“Please, sit,” Prince Lorenz repeated, tapping the bench again. Cin found his body following orders, and he wasn’t sure which of his questions that answered.
The submission earned him a dazzling smile, which faded into a distant thoughtfulness—cold, not for lack of warmth, but for the depth, like looking down through the darkest water and seeing nothing shining back but a reflection.
Even in the low light, Cin could make out just enough of Prince Lorenz’s face to tell that the couple of renderings Cin had seen of him were wrong: they barely did him justice, but Cin could understand why.
No part of him was particularly outstanding on its own: his lips were on the thinner side, his mouth wide, his nose thick but straight, his eyes narrow and his cheekbones strong, eyebrows even stronger.
But his beauty came not from any or even all of his features, but the way he used them.
It was the light in his narrow gaze, the little quirk that never left his lips, the way his hair fell as though his simple, chin-length brown locks were eternally touched by a gentle breeze.
Potential Queenship or no, Cin could see why the woman had wanted to fuck him, even if Cin didn’t.
But Cin’s problem with the fucking had nothing to do with Prince Lorenz at all, if he was being honest. That was just not a bridge he was ready to cross yet, particularly on a balcony with a royal he’d known for sixty seconds, who’d be married to someone else in a few months time.
There were things he did want, could probably even want from someone like the prince, but. ..
Prince Lorenz broke their silence with a chuckle. “Did you really just come up over the side, or am I even more daft than previously believed?”
“No, I...” Cin hesitated. Making up an excuse would just seem all the more like he had climbed up here to spy on them. He tried not to look too guilty as he said, “There’s someone down there I wanted to avoid, and this just seemed like the easiest way. I had no idea you were up here, really.”
“Climbing fifteen feet of ornamented wall, in awful lighting, then over a banister, was your idea of easy ?”
It could have been a tease, or it could have been a taunt instead—climbing ornamented walls; isn’t that something thieves do?
—but Cin couldn’t tell beneath the cold mask that lay just under the prince’s joviality.
Prince Lorenz did act jovial, at least, so Cin decided that responding in turn was his safest option.
“My other thought was to fake my own death.” Cin tried out a smile as he said it.
The expression felt wrong on his face. “But you saw how poorly that sort of ploy works out for me. Too many heroic princes at these kinds of parties.”
Prince Lorenz laughed. He nudged Cin’s shoulder with his own. “Cute and funny. It’s a shame you won’t let me fuck you.”
The comment returned Cin’s flush in force, his decision to stop blushing be damned, but in the back of his mind, he could not help thinking of all the times in the recent past when the people he’d been keeping tabs on—mostly feminine people, people like him in body, if not in identity—had been sneered at like that, made into a joke meant for only one side of the party, then forced to comply with the wish regardless.
He didn’t think that was Prince Lorenz’s play.
But he didn’t know it wasn’t , either.
“It’s not you,” Cin said, choosing his words carefully. “Having sex with anyone—even you—is simply... well, it’s not what I’m here for.”
To Cin’s relief, Prince Lorenz looked intrigued by that. “What are you here for then, my dove, if not me?”
“The ball,” Cin replied simply.
“Ah, there you and I differ.” Prince Lorenz leaned a little closer, and Cin could feel one of his hands resting on the bench behind Cin’s ass. Not touching, just there. Waiting. “Do you want to know a secret? I found someone to fuck just to escape the party for a little while.”
“But this—” Cin gestured toward the ballroom below, where music still wafted, couples dancing and laughing. “This has to be the most lovely celebration in the kingdom. And it’s for you .”
The prince snorted. “To get me hitched.”
“That wasn’t your idea then, I take it.” He was still preposterously aware of how close Prince Lorenz was, and how Cin had continued, despite his own better judgment, to not avoid him.
“Hardly.” The prince smiled, a little sharper then before.
“Do I look ready to settle on a life partner? To commit to someone who will rule the fucking kingdom with me someday?” He turned slightly, and still he didn’t touch Cin, but he was somehow even closer, like they were friends.
Friends, or lovers. “It’s not simply the sex—I could find someone who doesn’t care who else I fuck—but what’s life when you’re bound to stay with someone regardless of the pressures or pains they place on you?
I’ve dealt with that enough already with my family, thank you kindly. ”
Pressure and pains: though he didn’t dare say it, Cin knew those well—far better then a pampered prince with his guards and servants, whose parents threw him lavish city-wide balls to find a partner.
“Did I overstep?” Prince Lorenz leaned back, and the shift bumped his knee into Cin’s. “I find that in the dark I best preoccupy my mouth with other things, or else my tongue overtakes my better judgment.”
Cin felt the heat of the prince’s skin as though the layers of cloth separating their knees wasn’t even there.
He didn’t know whether or not to pull away.
He hadn’t wanted to fuck—still didn’t—but perhaps just this, a touch of knees, a little flattery, was no different from the short-term relaxation and exhilaration he’d sought from the ball.
If he knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere. But he wasn’t sure how to ask a question that most people seemed to know the answer to on instinct.
So, instead of moving, Cin shrugged and said, “No, no I was merely thinking.”
“Ha! You think, I talk; we make quite a pair,” Prince Lorenz purred.
And he looked, in the low light, like maybe he was going to do more than that.
But the prince only nudged Cin with his shoulder again, soft and friendly.
“What do you want from the ball?” When he didn’t receive an immediate response, he continued, “I haven’t seen you at any of my parent’s other parties, though by the looks of your outfit, you’re of a status to be invited into the castle without too much hassle.
I don’t catch any accent from you, so you’re local, and yet. ..”