Thirteen
C in led Prince Lorenz halfway through the gardens, following the route he’d taken the last time, before the prince pulled Cin to a stop. The pigeon trio that had been trailing above them all took roost, their dark eyes watchful in the night.
Prince Lorenz looked back toward the celebration still setting the night alight. At least three—no, four—attendees were making their way out of the ballroom to trail after him, the prince’s nightly personal watcher splitting her attention between the prince and them. Prince Lorenz grimaced.
“What if I don’t want to take you to the dovecote,” he said. He wove his fingers through Cin’s, squeezing gently. “What if we could go somewhere else instead?”
“Somewhere better than a tiny room smelling of pigeon droppings?” Cin snorted, whispering to the sky after, “No offense, darlings.” One of his trio cooed—deep and low; that would be Rags, the sweet boy. “You’d be hard pressed to find a lovelier getaway than that, but do tell.”
Prince Lorenz hesitated, his attention drifting back toward the guests and guards now lingering around in the garden walkways nearest the ballroom, the former looking as though they hoped they might slip into the conversation unnoticed.
For a moment, a flash of distress passed over Prince Lorenz’s features, but between the shadows and the quick mask of his usual congenial arrogance, Cin nearly missed it.
His voice still held a faint tremble though, as he said, “Anywhere but here.” His grin returned in full force, sparkling and devious.
“Show me your little bundle of lights up close. Let me see this town I’ve spent all my life just beyond. ”
Cin almost choked on the thought. “It’s your ball you’d be leaving.”
“And I don’t want to be a part of it.” The smile didn’t fade from Prince Lorenz’s face, and for all the other guests, Cin supposed they must be seeing only the same charm and arrogance as ever—but only because that mask was eternally hiding something more.
Some depth even Cin didn’t think he’d truly seen yet.
And maybe this was a path to discovering whatever lay beneath it?
“Is it safe?” Cin asked, narrowing his eyes at the prince. “Will we be taking your watcher?”
If not for Prince Adalwin’s disappearance, he did not think he would have worried so.
The elder prince was said to have vanished despite having his entire entourage with him, though, and he had been even farther outside the capital, where the trees were left to grow tall.
The forests between Hallin and Falchovari boasted their own monsters, their own princes—ones of swamps and forgotten castles.
But Cin did not know any that went out of their way to frame the local murderers.
People were, often, their own kind of terrifying that no monster could outdo.
“My parents would demand I take at least two dozen.” Prince Lorenz looked none-too-thrilled at the thought. His disgruntled expression turned playful, though, as he leaned toward Cin, looping one arm around Cin’s waist. “You tell me. If the Plumed Menace appears, will you protect me?”
A little shiver ran through Cin, and he didn’t know if it was from the prince’s nearness or the mention of the menace. At least he knew his own blade had never come near Prince Lorenz’s brother. “With my life, Your Royal Highness.”
“Then what need have I of anyone else?”
That statement was delicious and terrible all at once. The prince would need someone else very soon: someone whose finger he could place a ring on. “I do warn you, my town is not much,” Cin insisted. “The dovecote is likely the more interesting of the two.”
“For you, perhaps,” Prince Lorenz agreed. Then he leaned a little closer, his lips brushing the curve of Cin’s ear in a way that made Cin’s whole body catch fire. Everyone else in their line of sight seemed to be catching something far greener. “I could make it worth your while.”
Cin breathed in. “Done.” He turned his head, letting his nose brush the prince’s as he added, “But we’re taking my horse.”
I t was the coolest night yet that fall, but the feathers of Cin’s cloak seemed to hold in the heat as they rode at a breakneck speed down the main road out of the city.
No one had overcome their shock fast enough to stop them—no one could have, with the way Cin’s steed could dive and dart through a crowd with ease.
Watching the wonder that spread across Prince Lorenz’s face the moment they left the city’s farthest walls, it seemed he was the one more in awe of their figurative escape than Cin.
It made Cin want to glance back at him all the more for it.
The prince sat behind Cin’s saddle, his arms wrapped tightly around Cin’s waist and his breath hot on the back of Cin’s neck.
His lower body moved in time with Cin’s, both of them gliding to the rhythm of their mount’s strides, though he seemed to be leaning back some—giving Cin space. Not that he needed it.
Cin did not slow until he was certain that no one would try to follow them.
Prince Lorenz gave a breathless whoop that turned quickly to laughter, his fingers pinching fondly into Cin’s hips. “Ah, this is brilliant! Are you certain you’re not a horse-whisperer as well as one of pigeons?”
“You were the one who first called me that.” Cin gave him a little elbow in the ribs, teasing but still sharp.
He oophed out air, but his voice still sounded like he was grinning from ear to ear. “But I wasn’t wrong, was I?”
Cin didn’t validate that with a response.
He pulled his mount to the side of the road as a carriage passed—not his family’s, he made sure to note.
Despite everyone who seemed to be out in the city celebrating, there were somehow still people on the roads making their way to the ball.
Few lights seemed left on in the homes they were quickly coming upon.
“This is where you were raised, was it?”
“Yes,” Cin admitted. Before the prince could come up with another question, he asked, “And you’ve really never been here in your youth? I know your parents visited on occasion. Even your brother had…”
It was clearly the wrong topic, because Prince Lorenz went stiff against Cin’s back, his hold on Cin tenuous suddenly. But still, he answered, “Yes, Alwin certainly would have.”
Alwin— Prince Adalwin : the new heir to the crown said his brother’s nickname with such tender ferocity that it felt like a whole new depth of him had been flashed before Cin.
The prince snorted under his breath. “He actually enjoyed the diplomacy of it all, my dear brother.”
The laughter, the smiles, the flirting—what was that, if not also a kind of diplomacy? “But you seem so good at managing the ball guests?”
“Skill does not equate to desire,” the prince objected.
“I desire to retreat to balconies and gardens, to frolic and fuck, and never, ever have the future of my kingdom depend on whether I can say the right words at the right time in the right way to the right person. I learned to act the charismatic prince well enough to escape it, because I watched Alwin succeed at the real thing for so long. But the crown—it was always supposed to be his .”
The way the prince spoke of it made the whole ordeal sound painful.
For all of Cin’s annoyance over his lot in life, at least he was the most capable at his work of anyone in his family.
Nor did he particularly want Manfred’s gambling lifestyle, or Emma’s ditsy failures, or Floy’s obsessive arts and sciences.
The one thing Cin did love was his birds, and while he had no proper dovecote of his own, at least they were always nearby; Perdition herself was circling above them now, her white feathers nearly glowing in the starlight.
“What would you have been, had you not been this?”
“I…” The prince paused, and seemed to genuinely think on it, before humming. “I don’t really know. I was never planning to be anything, besides his younger brother.” He laughed. “And rich.” His arms wrapped snugly across Cin’s stomach and he nuzzled into the side of Cin’s neck.
God, did that feel good. With the houses growing closer and closer together, Cin hoped no one inside noticed them.
“I suppose you won’t teach me to whisper to pigeons?” the prince asked, his voice light and teasing in Cin’s ear.
“Since pigeon-whispering is not actually a skill, no.”
“Cruel.”
“Reasonable.”
“You abuse me.” It sounded as though the prince was rolling his eyes, and his voice dropped as he added, “My brother would have approved of you, at least.” After a pause, he asked. “Do you have siblings?”
“Yes. Three.”
“And?”
Cin scoffed a laugh. “What more is there to say? They are thorns in my side whether I like them or not.”
One of the prince’s hands unwrapped from Cin’s waist and he could feel it drift between them, clutched near to Prince Lorenz’s heart as he whispered, “I suppose I knew how that felt.” And he sounded pained, certainly. Pained, but something else as well.
Empty, Cin thought. Would his heart break that same way if he lost Manfred and Floy? If he lost Emma ?
Cin recalled the way she’d told him that she’d been excluded from the castle’s inner circle, pouting one moment and sighing wistfully of the city the next, as though being dismissed by the prince merely meant that the rest of the world had opened up to her.
Then, she’d daydreamed herself off the bottom step of the stairs that Cin had been trying to urge her up and nearly sprained her ankle.
Idiot child.
“Family is family,” Cin said.
The prince grimaced. “Family is family, and then that family makes you choose someone new to join them as a permanent thorn in your side, and they give you six weeks to do it in.”