Seventeen
T he day of the next ball came, and the watch had not come for Cin.
That should have made him feel better—his safety intact, his identity a secret.
His role as the Plumed Menace could continue, just as it always had, and he with it.
Yet the more certain that future became, the more pointless it all felt to Cin.
He had been meant to lose Prince Lorenz someday.
Cin reminded himself of that as the afternoon pressed on and the rest of his family piled into their carriage.
Still, Cin lingered in the kitchen, scrubbing the same pot he’d been working on throughout the day—a tricky burnt spot of beans caked to the bottom after Manfred had failed to let Cin know when their dinner last night had come to a boil.
Every shove of the brush against the caked burn spot left Cin more restless.
He had denied that loss’s premature arrival before.
He’d ascended the castle wall the night he’d been left off the prince’s list, and asked to go away with him when the party seemed bent on cutting their time together short.
He’d had the courage, the fire, to go after what he’d wanted then.
For once in his life, it had seemed so easy, so right.
Had seemed like it wouldn’t end this way: angry, and empty.
Cin dropped the half-cleaned pot with more force than necessary, sweeping out the back door without a thought to where he was going, only that he had to move.
He had to know whether the prince would live the rest of his life despising Cin.
He had to—
But he couldn’t look Prince Lorenz in the face and see the same haunted, disgusted expression he had the week before. Cin knew, without a doubt, that he wouldn’t survive that again. If nothing changed, though, he didn’t think he could survive this either.
His legs ached to carry him back down the road, through town—to the well woman’s husband, or any other bastard. He needed to see the red drip down his hands again, and know that he deserved this. That the sin was worth the justice, his pain worth their healing.
Cin understood, though, deep within himself, that to rush through another killing was the wrong choice too, and instead he turned and turned, his feet on a track as chaotic as his thoughts as he paced back and forth, marking a trail through the garden.
With a cry of desperation, he collapsed to his knees on his mother’s grave, dropping his head to the wet grass.
“I saw your towers,” he hissed at the dirt, wishing he could feel his voice resonate inside her bones. “I danced with the prince—I climbed over those goddamn walls for him. I brought him home with me. What more do I need? ” Hot, wet tears slid down his nose.
He’d done so much, let himself want so very much, and yet just like that, their relationship had meant nothing.
Cin could sense one of his pigeons at his side, feel the gust of a wing and hear the soft shifting of the grass. The deep, fond coo was Ragimund. Cin twisted his head to watch the fluffy brown and white bird. Gently, Rags nibbled on Cin’s nose. Cin sniffled.
The thought of not going, of kneeling there at his mother’s grave for the rest of the night, pathetic and miserable…
He could already sense the desolation of inaction curling around his heart, trying to drag him down into the grass, into the dirt.
Into nothingness; just a blade and a body to collect blood and ash for the rest of his life.
Just what he’d always been, before Prince Lorenz.
As Cin sat himself up, Lacey landed on his shoulder like a tiny angelic being, her gray feathers so soft as she rubbed against his neck. Then, she fit her beak around his earlobe and pulled .
“Hey!” Cin chided her.
She hopped, pulling again, and Rags joined her on Cin’s other shoulder, running his little brown head into the side of Cin’s as he squawked.
As though that wasn’t enough, Perdition hurled herself at Cin like a battering ram, driving him to his feet and toward the front of the garden.
More birds swooped with her, creating a guiding stream around Cin.
“All right, all right,” Cin grumbled, giving in to their pressure. “You know he left me , don’t you?”
But that wasn’t entirely accurate. Prince Lorenz had left, but he hadn’t said he never wanted to see Cin again.
He’d been distant, condemning even, but not once had he told Cin not to come back.
It was a pathetic hope, so ridiculous that Cin nearly dismissed it.
Being ridiculous had gotten him there, though: dreaming, and wanting, and taking .
There were still two ball nights left up for grabs.
So Cin took again, one step toward the castle.
His birds continued to swoop and the patterns of Cin’s ball glamor folded out from his ordinary clothes.
He tried to remove his feathered cloak, but it spilled immediately back into place, the magic transferring it from the ground to his shoulders like a wisp of shadow: real, then not, then real again.
The whole outfit boasted the same feathers that Cin had left in his victim last week. Someone would notice… or they wouldn’t. He supposed that was the cost of his sins, after all: he had to choose now, to be safe or to be .
And to keep being , he had to see Prince Lorenz in person, speak with him, even if it was for the last time, and know whether there was anything left between them to salvage.
The wind whipped like needles against Cin’s face as his magical steed tore down the road.
He fixed his gaze on the glimmer of the castle’s towers, ignoring the dark trees and farms around him as they were replaced by lights and music, every party he could have attended blocked out of his mind in favor of one thing: one piece of information.
It was later than ever before by the time he made it to the gates, no line remaining with the list so cut down.
Only one of the doors had been opened, a single primary watch member guarding it from in front, though Cin could glimpse a far greater number beyond.
Extra security would be reasonable after a murder so near the castle the previous ball-night, Cin told himself.
He recognized the main guard, and—unlike the week when Cin had been forced to scale the castle walls—Berit also seemed to recognize Cin.
Their face paled slightly, and Cin held his breath.
“Apologies, Cinder-Ella, but you’ve not been included in the general castle attendance this week,” they said, an awkward tremble to the words.
Cin felt the weight of all his hope crash back into him.
Everything inside him felt wrong: twisted.
This world blurred around him as he told himself to breathe, just breathe.
This was the answer he’d expected. It was better than nothing, but as he sat there, his limbs numb around his steed and Perdition nuzzling his jawline, it wasn’t enough .
Berit had stepped closer, and they were still speaking, slightly hushed, but it took Cin an extra moment for their words to even register. “You should leave—”
“I have to see him,” Cin said, growing more insistent with each word, more desperate. He could feel himself falling apart at the thought of leaving, the kind of falling that would land him back on his mother’s grave so hard he was unsure whether he’d rise again.
Berit looked nervous, shaking their head. “I’m sorry—”
“Just for a minute.” Cin clenched his reins, staring out past Berit’s head, down the path toward the castle. “Please, Berit. I know he’s your friend—”
The watch member shook their head all the harder, pushing against Cin’s mount as he hissed. “You don’t understand, you must go ! Leave—leave the city ; it’s not safe for you here!”
Not… safe ?
But no one had come for Cin. The prince would have told his parents where Cin lived if he meant to turn Cin in, wouldn’t he?
Cin had no time to dwell on the matter, though.
As Berit continued their attempt to steer Cin’s mount away, a commotion set in behind them.
Servants and crown’s watch scampered aside for half a dozen watch members who Cin could only classify as soldiers, each uniform utterly practical and every belt weighed down with a different weapon.
Cin’s flock-creature pranced beneath him, but as his mind screamed to turn and run, his heart held tight to what he wanted—what he was going to take, watch or not, soldiers or not, Prince Lorenz be damned.
With a nudge of his heels, he urged his steed into a gallop straight through the castle gates.
Berit stumbled back with a cry of surprise, and none of the mounted soldiers had time to react before Cin was charging through their midsts, his flock-creature’s magic carrying him between their flesh-and-blood horses like a ghost.
“Prince Lorenz!” Cin screamed. His steed’s fantastical hooves threw sparkles of light against the stone of the pathway as he ascended the stairs toward the castle’s entrance, aimed to shoot like an arrow straight through the main hallway.
A servant waiting near the front dashed for cover, but two of the watch newly stationed at either side grabbed the metal gates and pulled them.
They shut just as Cin reached the top step.
His mount tossed its head as it came up so short that he had to grip into its feathery mane and sink his hips to keep in the saddle.
Each of his ribs seemed to scream out in unison.
The flock-creature dancing back into motion beneath him, Cin frantically searched for a new plan between the hollowing pain in his sides.
Around the back: through the gardens?
But two more soldiers were coming up from that direction—that was where all the crown’s watch were congregated, after all, with the ball in full force. If Cin could get somewhere less exposed though, climb up and through a window, perhaps—