Ten
C inder 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.
He needed not to forget that.
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.
The single lantern cast odd shadows on the tower’s brick walls and tight stairs, but the prince tucked Cin close, guiding them up one flight after the next as he explained, “The dovecote has been up here since the castle was rebuilt after the fires in 1310. Old Martha Beth takes care of it, with the help of a few apprentices. Their birds send and receive messages from all across the continent.”
“Fascinating,” Cin replied. “They sound far better traveled than mine.”
“Oh, I’m sure after seeing their fair share of the world, they’d rather be back here, cozy with their flock.”
“Like you.”
“I never said that,” the prince protested, weakly.
Cin laughed, a little winded by the layers of binding around his chest. His right side was beginning to ache. “No, but you mentioned the toll that sequestering yourself in the castle has had on your mother, but not on you. And I’ve certainly never seen you visit so much as the town next over.”
“Yes, well...” Prince Lorenz slowed as they reached the top of the stairs.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Since my brother’s disappearance, I’ve had good reason to keep as near the castle’s walls as I can.
But regardless, if I did, there’d be a thing made of it. That’s so much work, you see.”
That single moment of vulnerability over his brother’s loss made Cin want to backtrack to it, but he knew what else lay there: who the royals still blamed for his sudden demise.
Besides, the tone with which the prince continued was a clear sign to move on with humor instead.
“Ah, so you’re not going to christen all your shirtless statues in person, then? ”
“I can’t begin to imagine what form that christening would entail,” the prince replied, grinning like he was picturing exactly how he might perform such a ceremony in his hypothetical orgy world. With a wink, he pushed open the dovecote door.
A flutter of wings and coos greeted them as the pigeons shifted in the nooks tucked across the circular wall between tiny windows.
Two of the birds swooped out to land on Cin’s head and shoulder, then a third, and a fourth, giving him playful nips and nuzzles.
He laughed, scratching them behind their little downy heads.
Prince Lorenz—who remained completely untouched by the birds—whistled under his breath. “You truly are a pigeon-whisperer.”
Cin made a noncommittal noise, though inside he felt himself beaming. “I suppose we have similar souls, them and I.”
As he spoke, he scooped one of the birds up on his finger and transferred it to the prince’s shoulder. It hopped forward, nuzzled the side of his neck, then gave a happy coo. Instantly half a dozen other birds joined it.
Prince Lorenz grinned, and Cin swore a slight flush came over his cheeks as he tried his best to awkwardly support the birds as they inspected him. “You’re also are gorgeous, curious, good-natured, intelligent, and far too accepting of me, you mean?”
Cin snorted. “Shows how little you know me.”
He could feel his own cheeks heating for certain now.
Had he really come off like that, or was the prince merely flattering him?
Perhaps the glamorous clothes distracted from his sharp, pale features, and he had been curious enough to sit down with the prince that first night—not that anyone else at the party would have refused—but good-natured and intelligent?
Accepting... He supposed he could see that, so long as one knew nothing of all the bodies he’d left in his wake.
“Just don’t take it as a sign that I like you,” he added, trying to lighten the mood with a half-grin and a nudge in Prince Lorenz’s shoulder.
“Hardly. People only abscond to quiet dovecotes with those they despise .” The prince winked. He held one of the birds up to his face to give it the tiniest kiss on the beak. “Tell me, then, why would you say you’re like these little beasties?”
That felt too raw a place for Cin to venture, but swathed in the gentle coos of the pigeons, and the darkness broken only by their single lantern, with the prince’s strange smugness inviting Cin to join in some kind of absurd reality where the world conformed to them both, he decided to try.
“I’d say, not beautiful, but functional.
Not intelligent, but reasonable. Not good-natured, but.
..” He held the thought in for a moment, attempting to transform it from a huge integral piece of himself into simple speakable words.
“Trying, I suppose, not to put more bitterness into the world than I take in. To exist in the background, in anyone’s way but my own, yet letting nothing stop me from doing my duty. ”
As he spoke, all but one of the pigeons fluttered their way back into their nooks. Prince Lorenz watched Cin, his brow tight. Softly, he said, “That sounds good for the world, perhaps, but taxing for you.”
Cin chose not to acknowledge the quiet accusation. He lifted the final bird that had lingered on his shoulder up to its nook. It gave a coo, and hopped in. “And,” Cin said, “I also always know my way home.”
However much he hated that home, he knew it: knew its hearth and its routines, its pains and its fears, knew it like it was a part of him. Ugly, but stable.
“Where might that be?” Prince Lorenz asked. He glanced out the nearest window. “Where is this town I should have been visiting?”
Cin had to look through a couple of different windows before he found the smudge of it on the horizon. Despite the clear autumn night, the lights of his little town were nearly masked by all the lanterns in the city. He pointed in its direction. “There.”
Prince Lorenz slipped in beside him, and Cin was about to move when the prince’s arm wrapped around his waist, casually holding him as they gazed out. “It looks lovely.”
“It looks like a scattering of random lights,” Cin protested.
The prince scoffed. “Most scatterings of lights do appear beautiful at a distance.”
“Clodpate.” Cin should not have been able to call his own prince an idiot to his face, but as soon as the endearing insult had left his lips, he found he could. He could deny Prince Lorenz, and dance with him, and tease him. He could kiss him, once.
Maybe, even, he could do so again.
But a catch in his chest stopped him. There was something festering beneath their friendship, even if the prince wasn’t aware of it.
But the longer they stretched this out, the more Cin knew that he couldn’t just set the other pieces of himself to the side for one more night, even if that release had gotten him here in the first place.
Casually as he could, he swept a pigeon’s lost feather off the sill beside them, twirling it between his fingers. It was indistinguishable from half the gray-toned selection within his own cloak. There was no delicate way to bridge the gap, but he had to try.
“When we first met, you thought I might be a fanatic of the Plumed Menace.” Cin asked. “Are those really a thing?” It wasn’t the question he needed answered, but perhaps it would get them there.
So far as he could tell, the prince didn’t think the question odd.
They were in a dovecote, Cin supposed. “So I’ve heard.
One of my watch—Gisela—she claims her brother wears a necklace with feathers in support of the Menace.
He was in the watch himself, at its founding.
Thinks they should be doing more of what the Plumed Menace does.
Hunting the kind of people he claims the Menace is killing, instead of the Menace. ”
“And you disagree?”
The prince watched Cin through tight eyes. “What do you have to say on the matter?”
Cin felt his stomach tumble in on itself. His thoughts of his darker self were no more outright flattering than the ones he’d already shared with the prince, but he doubted they aligned with the prince’s—not when his parents had put such a high price on the Menace’s head.
Prince Lorenz softened at Cin’s hesitation. He pressed a hand to Cin’s shoulder. “I don’t want your opinions hidden simply because we might view the world differently,” he said. “I want the chance to see what you see, too.”