Twelve #2
“Well, Cinder - Ella ,” the prince said, his pronunciation playfully mocking, “I’m sorry to have disrupted your night so. Berit is a fool, but they have a good heart, I swear.”
“Do you know all the guard’s names?”
“I know everyone’s name but yours apparently. Cinder-Ella,” he repeated with a little laugh, before winking. “ My dove has a better ring.”
With the line now moving again, a new guest had begun ascending the steps behind them.
In that smooth way of his, the prince slipped his arm through Cin’s and walked them both down the hall toward the ballroom.
One of the nearer watch members broke off to follow quietly, but Prince Lorenz paid them no more heed than he had any of the previous nights.
He leaned toward Cin, his breath on Cin’s ear as he whispered, “How, pray tell, did you get in here, if not through the gate?”
Cin turned his face, letting their noses brush. “Couldn’t you guess?”
Prince Lorenz’s eyes scanned languidly down Cin’s body, then back up, as though he could possibly have found his answer there. “Did you trespass? You menace!”
It was not a reference to any plumed murderers, but Cin still had to quiet the sudden jump in his heart rate, swallowing down his tension to keep focusing on the prince he’d climbed a castle wall for.
The prince who’d been riled by Cin’s exclusion.
But what did any of that actually mean for them both?
Cin stopped Prince Lorenz before he could walk them into the ballroom, pulling him back and to the side, until they were both half-hidden by the decor of the elegant hall.
The prince took it with a little more passion then Cin had intended, pushing Cin up against the wall, one hand already on Cin’s hip and his other in Cin’s hair.
“Wait,” Cin insisted, and touched a finger to the prince’s lips before he could lean in for the kiss.
He pressed his mouth to Cin’s finger instead, taking Cin’s hand in one of his. “All right, I’m waiting,” he teased, watching Cin though half-hooded lashes as he peppered Cin’s hand in kisses.
“Rake,” Cin grumbled, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
This was exactly the attention he’d yearned for the entire walk away from the castle’s front gates.
It was also exactly the attention that would distract him from the conversation they needed to have.
Cin cupped the side of the prince’s face in his hand, holding him momentarily still. “Your Royal Highness, what are we?”
“Humans, last I checked,” the prince replied, “Though you’re as radiant as any mythical fae and devilishly handsome as any demon sorcerer.”
“You know what I mean.” Cin leveled him a stern look. “I’m not going to marry you—you still know that, right?”
Prince Lorenz looked minutely less cheeky as he answered, “I am aware, yes.”
“And you’re not going to grow attached to me and ask for my hand anyway, or something idiotic?”
The prince gave the tiniest eye roll at that, before returning to kissing Cin’s fingers between his words. “I’m not going to fall in love with you, or with anyone, remember? I don’t do that.”
“I don’t mean in love, I mean… just love . Platonic affection, or partnership, or whatever you wish to call it,” Cin clarified. “I can’t become that for you either.”
“We’re just here to enjoy each other for the moment, that it all.” Prince Lorenz lifted an eyebrow. “Satisfied?”
“But you do need to marry someone. And when that happens, I also can’t—I won’t be slinking around the castle interrupting your new partnership”—Cin could see the protest in the prince’s gaze, and silenced it with a scowl—“regardless of what your partner agrees to.” Just imagining the scrutiny, the time he’d need to get to the prince and back, not knowing when it might come to an end—Cin could not have withstood that, even if the price on the Plumed Menace’s head was not in play. “Tell me you understand that, too?”
“I understand,” Prince Lorenz said, purposeful as he stared into Cin’s eyes. “This is not my first fling, you know.”
That made Cin flush slightly. “Well, perhaps it’s mine,” he admitted. “I just want neither of us to be hurt after this.” And he meant that, not merely for himself. He didn’t want to break Prince Lorenz’s heart any more than bear that pain himself.
Before the prince could answer, though, someone pushed aside the planter Cin had hidden them behind, nearly knocking over the statue at its side in the process.
Fear and anger tore through Cin in equal proportions, so strongly he had to stop himself from reaching for the blade tucked against his back when he realized their assailant was none other than an overstrung crown’s watch, complete with the gold brocading of the royal family’s personal watchers.
“Your Royal Highness?” he gasped, one hand still on his hilt despite his worry having loosened at the sight of a Cin in the place he seemed to have half expected to find the Plumed Menace. “I turned around and you were—”
“I’m fine, Wilhelm,” Prince Lorenz chided, sounding just a touch exasperated.
“Lieselotte left the gate to stalk me here—she’s down the hall.
Go tell her you’ve returned.” When Wilhelm blinked at him, the prince lifted his brow.
“The only risk here is a good fucking. Unless you’re joining, I suggest you leave? ”
Wilhelm coughed in embarrassment. “Right, my apologies.”
By the time he stepped back though, it was already too late. It seemed like half the remaining guest list had spotted Cin and the prince, two dozen suitors flooding down the hall expectantly. A look as mournful as the one in Cin’s chest passed over the prince’s face, there and gone in a flash.
As slowly and carefully as time allowed, Prince Lorenz took Cin’s hand, squeezing it as he stepped back, into the light. “As for your worries, never fear, my dove. This prince’s heart is locked away as tightly as his future.”
And Cin, despite his usually better judgment, found himself believing it of them both.
A fter the watch member’s interruption, it felt to Cin as though he had far too little time to spend with the prince before Floy’s arrival cut them short, forcing Cin to slip out to the gardens and back over the wall—though by the looks of the other guests, every second Cin stole of Prince Lorenz’s attention was a moment too long.
Even Floy—the only one of Cin’s siblings to make it past the gate—remarked on it the next day, grumbling haughtily about a guest in a feathered cloak whom everyone claimed was becoming the favorite.
“But Prince Lorenz did not look for him for another moment after I appeared,” Floy added. “We’ll have to arrive earlier next week. I want his eyes on me the entire night.”
Cin was confident that Floy was overestimating the amount the prince actually cared to speak with them.
Confident, but not certain . By the way that Louise pampered Floy for their selection as a continued attendee, it seemed that, in the Reinholz house at least, Floy was destined for future Queen-hood.
At least Manfred and Emma were not put out by the prince’s dismissal of them—Manfred, because he’d realized it was easier to convince someone to fuck him if they weren’t seeking the attention of another man, and Emma simply because she was Emma.
Very little held her attention for long, even rejection.
It was one of the few positives of her scatterbrained disposition, and the longer Cin had to listen to Floy flaunt their place in the continued lineup while Manfred grossly detailed his list of exploits, the more Cin wished his other two siblings were a little more like her.
When Cin arrived for the next ball, he found the guest list had been cut again, and to his great humor, that he’d been added to the top of the list as simply The Cinder-Ella —ten lines up from Floy Reinholz, he noticed with disdain.
With the new reduction, there was no one left in attendance who preferred the sidelines, no one kissing on the balconies or flirting in the stairwell.
Everyone wanted their moment with the prince, and there was nowhere left for him to run.
The last moments they’d had together lingered in Cin’s mind, leaving Cin wanting for more.
More of Prince Lorenz’s touch, more of his heat.
More of him, just pressed there beside Cin, laughing and teasing and making Cin feel as though there was nothing beyond that moment, no home to return to or family to cater for. Just him.
Cin could not shake the feeling that they were wasting their precious time together.
He tried to tell himself that the prince needed to see the other attendees—to know them well enough to chose one as his future partner. But then, if he really wished to, Prince Lorenz could visit any of them during the week. Cin had only these few nights and nothing else.
For once in his life, he wanted to choose someone. To be brave enough. To make that first move, even if it was the only one he planned to make.
He played his fingers across the stem of his cup and watched Prince Lorenz flirt with a beautiful young man whose family possessed ten times the Reinholzes’ holdings and half of their arrogance.
In the next break in their conversation, Cin managed to slip in, brushing his fingers to the back of the prince’s hand as, for once, it was him who leaned in first.
“Take me back to the dovecote,” Cin whispered, and what he meant was take me back to that moment : just take me.
The Crowned Prince of Hallin held out his hand to Cin. “As you wish, my Cinder-Ella.”