Seventeen #2
It was enough of a plan to pressure him into motion as a crossbow bolt shot over the side of his mount’s rear and clattered into the metal of the castle’s gate.
Cin took off around the far side of the castle from the ball.
It was darker in that direction, barns and storehouses and orchards instead of royal gardens.
Two more crossbow bolts whizzed by his head, so close his hands shook as he turned out of sight of the castle’s entrance.
It thundered behind him like a thousand watch members were chasing him.
Panic welled in Cin’s chest, pressing up against the pain that shot between his ribs.
His mount clattered down smaller steps, past a muddle of buildings, around a tiny, enclosed garden, under a row of apple trees, but it all seemed like a blur, a nothing —nothing that could help him.
He had to get to Prince Lorenz. It was the only thing that felt real.
Cin’s world tunneled again, but the blackness didn’t dissipate, clinging to the edges of his vision, of himself, tight and unrelenting.
The path curved suddenly, right up against the castle wall.
He pulled his steed up short, his heart thrust into his throat.
His breath came faster. He could still hear the castle soldiers clattering behind him.
Suppressing the growing terror in his chest, Cin leaped off his mount.
All he had to do was climb—and that was something Cin had plenty of experience in.
As he fit his fingertips into the bricks of the wall, though, the magic of his shoes letting him stick to the side like a spider, his head grew light.
Cin tried to take a deeper breath, but his chest caught on the binding he’d reapplied before leaving home.
The presence of it—always an annoyance—felt ruthlessly constricting now.
He’d climbed with it plenty of times, he told himself.
But those times were never with this speed, never this fear.
As he pulled himself farther up the side of the wall, it felt as though each breath provided only half of what he needed.
Perdition swooped at his back, like her single small body could lift him up—and maybe if the whole flock joined her, it could work, but as Cin thought that, the castle soldiers came whipping around the corner and into the alley.
Still in their horse-mimicking form, the flock-creature bolted at them.
It startled the soldier’s mounts, giving Cin another few seconds.
A few seconds he desperately needed.
As Cin climbed past the second story, stars danced across his vision.
The ache in his sides sharpened with each grab and pull of his arms. He pushed himself harder for it.
He was so close, he could feel it, Perdition cooing in his ear and beating against his backside in a vain attempt to support him, his feet stable with the aid of the elvish magic.
Below him, the castle soldiers shouted—to each other, to him, he couldn’t tell. He just needed one more hand in front of the other. One more tight, terrible breath against the screaming of his ribs. One more...
Cin’s fingertips missed the next brick’s edge. He tried to shift his feet to balance his weight. The world seemed to tunnel in, a flurry of darkness. He grabbed again, fingertips skidding against stone.
He fell.
The only thing Cin could think as it happened, was that it couldn’t be happening—he hadn’t fallen, not in years, not since his flock had first taken to him—but that flock was now dispersing from its creature form far below, only Perdition left to pathetically tug at his clothes.
The rest made it to him only as he neared the ground, their little bodies battering into his, slowing his fall until—
A pair of strong arms caught Cin.
His mind went, hopelessly, to Prince Lorenz, but then hands clamped down, four, then six, latching onto his arms and legs—then suddenly he was dangling between two of the soldiers, another tying his arms behind him.
Some alarming part of his brain screamed at him to squirm, but too much of his body had already shut down with horror.
This was it. The Plumed Menace had killed a man.
The crown had figured it out. He had run, and they caught him.
This was it.
And Prince Lorenz wasn’t even here.
Cin’s body went numb as the soldiers shoved him forward—back the way they’d come.
Perdition swooped down at them, her tiny feet outstretched as she dove for the nearest soldier’s eyes.
The soldier ducked her assault the first time, but then they drew the long wooden stave from their back.
Cin’s heart stopped as they swung. The sound of Perdition’s body colliding with the wood shot through him like a bullet, seeming to tear him apart as it went.
Her body fell into the darkness, and then they were moving, and she was gone. Just... gone.
Cin craned his neck as though that could bring her back, as panic set deep into his bones. She had to be all right; she was knocked aside, that was all. That had to be all. But every second that neither Perdition, nor any of his flock, reappeared lodged a fresh blade in Cin’s chest.
He sank into misery as the soldiers dragged a hood over his head. It felt excessive—what was he going to do now? Break his bonds and fly away?
The thought sent a terrible silent bark of laughter through him, threatening to turn immediately to a sob.
The ground beneath Cin turned from the path, to the dust of the yard, to a stone cold enough for the chill to seep through his shoes.
The path sloped down—underground. His treatment seemed to roughen with each step, the soldiers shoving and growling at him.
Lights flickered beyond Cin’s rough-spun hood, growing bright enough that Cin could see the imprint of each orange glow through the fabric.
The soldiers shoved him to the side, then down, forcing him onto a stool.
They yanked his bound wrists and when Cin leaned, he could feel them tied to something behind him. One of the watch pulled his hood off.
The full musk of the room assaulted Cin’s senses.
He gagged from the combination of the stench—filth and sewage—and the dampness that clogged his nose and throat.
His eyes adjusted to the lighting immediately, the five lanterns filling the small stone chamber to the green crust between the near-black blocks.
In his peripheral vision, he could just make out the bars his wrists had been tied to: the bars of a cell.
His future. The fear that slithered through him at that thought made him wish the soldiers hadn’t broken his fall after all.
They stood around him, half of them staring him down while the others watched the doorway.
Through it, he could hear the near scuffle of footsteps, and the far gurgle of an underground river, and something else beneath it all—a moan, he thought.
Or a dozen of them, crying in unison. How many others were down here?
How long did they last before God forgot their souls entirely, and their bones grew the same mold of the walls, every sparkle of magic and life they’d once known caving into aching hollows of empty want?
Someone was clearly coming to condemn him to that now; if not God, then a mere mortal. Perhaps Cin had lost the privilege not only of a divine smile, but of a scowl as well.
The soldiers straightened fully to alert as the last of them led a shorter, thin figure into the room.
It took Cin a moment to recognize them, piecing together the points of their ears and the uncertainty in their eyes.
They wrapped their fingers around their wrists one after another, twisting as though to reassure themself that nothing remained there to tie them to their old enslaver.
As the elf lifted their gaze towards Cin, they flinched.
Cin’s heart caught in his throat. He wanted to plead with them: look at me, I saved you . Now save me.
But how could he ask that of them, when their troubles had been of none of their doing, and his had been all his own? He had not needed to kill the elf’s enslaver in that moment. Cin had simply... wanted to.
He’d wanted to stop the pain the man had already caused from spreading.
But as Cin hunched there, his wrists bound behind him and the elf he’d saved shifting nervously in front of him, he could feel the desire twisting deep in his gut.
He’d wanted that man dead from the moment he’d heard the elf’s scream.
Just as he’d wanted to see Dorthe’s late husband bleeding out across the town’s cobblestones.
Just as he’d wanted to plunge a knife into the throat of the man whose partner ran to cry behind the well after the fight, cradling bruised wrists and raw cheeks.
And because of that desire, he’d never get the chance again.
Someone was finally, finally, going to stop him.
The elf met Cin’s gaze for just a moment, before nodding to the soldier at their side. “He’s the one.”
They left without another word.
That was it, then, truly. Sitting there, listening to the elf’s footsteps fade out, Cin thought of the prince: a small, half-hearted imagining of the ball proceeding somewhere far upstairs.
It was the most he could let in without breaking.
Because either Prince Lorenz had made this all happen, or if it had happened despite him, and Cin.
.. Cin might never know which. He had been betrayed, or he was the betrayal, and either version hurt.
As the sound of the elf vanished, Cin expected the soldiers around him to leave or to act, but they continued to stand at attention.
Waiting. Dread built in Cin’s chest with each breath that passed.
He could still hear the moaning in the quiet, no longer human, but the divine cry of a thousand-eyed angelic being weeping through a hundred mouths stolen from those who could no longer gnash their pulverized teeth.
He wished desperately that he could have seen Perdition one last time—to know she was safe. Even to know if she wasn’t.
Finally, a new set of footsteps approached.
They seemed to take the whole span of the night to reach Cin’s chamber, slow but steady: an impending executioner’s blade.
And as the small group finally entered the chamber, Cin’s brain seemed to shut down.
Those on the outside wore what looked as though the ornamentation on the castle’s gate guard had been transferred onto the soldier’s practical uniform: beautiful but deadly.
And as Cin’s mind finally caught up with reality, he realized why.
In the center of the pack of guards walked two people Cin had only ever seen at a distance: figureheads shining in the light of their own regal lineage, all the poise and beauty and arrogance of their son, but none of the playfulness.
Standing in the center of the dungeon chamber, prepared to condemn Cin personally, were the queen and king of Hallin.