Nineteen
I n the shadowy, dank space, with everyone but Cin and the prince now gone from sight and sound, the room seemed hollowed out, each sway of the lantern light creating new caverns between the grimy dark stone blocks of the walls. Cin broke first, the tiniest sniffle yanking him back to the present.
Then suddenly Prince Lorenz’s arms were wrapped around him again, scooping him up in a hold so perfect that Cin couldn’t even care that his ribs still ached in sharp rhythmic intervals.
He could feel the soft trembling of the prince’s breath, and for the first time, he realized how scared Prince Lorenz had been. Scared, for Cin .
“I am sorry I was not here sooner, my dove,” he whispered, lips pressing into Cin’s hair and neck. “When I learned tonight that my parents were planning something for you should you arrive, I didn’t know what to do but turn you away at the gate and hope...”
It was everything Cin had wished to hear and more. He drew his fingers along the prince’s jawline, gently pressing his head back until their eyes could meet. “You took the blame for my actions.”
“I couldn’t let them condemn you without hearing your side or seeking to understand why.
” Prince Lorenz cringed, turning his face away.
“All week, I’ve made myself dwell on that night—and not simply the way it ended, but all that you shared with me.
And don’t misunderstand; I still hate what you’ve done.
But in drawing back from the emotion, I have realized that I am not you.
I’ve not lived your life. I cannot say that I wouldn’t have made those exact choices were I walking the world in your shoes instead of my own.
And so, too, I can’t judge you without knowing more. ”
The sheer compassion in the prince’s voice felt like a balm on a wound Cin hadn’t realized went so fiercely deep.
He was seeing Cin, not simply from the outside—a feat many had already failed—but searching for the soul behind his actions, recognizing that Cin had his own well, his own depths, contradictory and indefinite.
Who had ever sought them out before? And here was this man, this prince , acknowledging the complexity of Cin, even if he could not understand every last hidden crevice.
Being willing to sacrifice for that unknowable, nameless soul.
“I came in the hopes of telling you anything—everything,” Cin said. “Just ask.”
Prince Lorenz swallowed visibly, “What you said back when you killed Von Achenbach, it was that you had to, to stop him from hurting me, because you’re not… strong enough to fight him?”
When Cin slowed and thought back through his memory of the night, he could see how the prince had come to that conclusion.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t just to protect you, though that was part of it.
Every time I kill, it’s to protect someone, but also to protect everyone —everyone who would be harmed by them in the future.
I did it to prevent further pain for you in that moment, but also the next elf he would get his hands on.
I’m not strong enough to fight, you’re right.
But if I could simply beat these bastards up, it would still be wrong, and it might not save anyone—or it would only protect them so long as I was there. ”
“So you want to prevent the future pain as well…” Prince Lorenz’s brow knit.
“But we have the watch. If you or I had subdued Von Achenbach, we could have brought him to them, to be dealt with justly, both for the harm he’d caused me and the violation of our kingdom’s law against elvish enslavement. ”
“Yes.” Each breath felt like inhaling through a pincushion now that Cin’s terror had passed, the pain his climb had ignited between his ribs excruciating. “I didn’t— It didn’t occur to me, then. It’s not normally like that, with the people I kill.”
“Like what? That they’ve committed provable harm? Because you just said that you kill the guilty—”
“Guilty isn’t a word I used,” Cin protested, tugging mindlessly at his shirt, like that might stop the agony between his ribs.
What right did he have to profess guilt or innocence, when he was guilty himself?
Pain was his expertise, not piety. “But regardless of what they do, the crown’s watch doesn’t come to the villages unless there’s something in it for the crown. ”
Prince Lorenz snorted. “They would, surely. If they were asked.”
“Should we need to ask?”
“Well… no,” the prince concluded, shaking his head. “No, you’re right, you should not. Not from your leaders, nor their watch. But that justifies a fight not with these villains you kill, but rather with us .”
That made Cin laugh, somehow, a tight, awkward sound strained by the searing ache between his ribs, but a laugh all the same. “Would you like to be stabbed, Your Royal Highness?”
“Perhaps that depends on the weapon in use.” Prince Lorenz sounded almost jovial himself, a tiny smirk peeking at his lips, but the good humor faded with a sigh as he cupped the side of Cin’s face.
“Would you consider letting the Plumed Menace be the one who dies next?” He ran his thumb over Cin’s cheekbone, down the corner of his mouth, his gaze so deep, and yet soft beneath, as though a fall there could break nothing.
“You could let him go and just… be you? This burden should not be yours to bear.”
Cin choked on a lump in the back of his throat, and tried to look away, but he found he couldn’t.
He could only fall. “I don’t think I get to make that choice,” he whispered, not sure how else to put it.
“I know I’m doing this all wrong. I’m not a hero, nor a judge, nor a god.
I have no right to decide who lives or dies.
My hands are covered in more blood than can ever be washed clean.
I’m a bastard just as much as anyone I kill, but I—I can’t just walk by what I see and do nothing, even if that means I am worthy only of the same pain. ”
“My dove,” the prince said, so tenderly it hurt, “life is complicated, and there’s no way to be just good or just gentle, but that means that sometimes our victims aren’t good or gentle either, and their villains are complicated.”
Cin traced the prince’s hand upon his own face, and all he could manage through the wave of his emotions was a soft, “Complicated, like me?”
“You’re not a villain. But you are complicated.” Prince Lorenz met Cin’s gaze once more, this time fierce in every way he’d been tender before. “And you are good. Perhaps not all your actions are such, but they’re a manifestation of you, and you are good , my Cinder-Ella.”
How could that be the thing he saw in the depths of Cin? Amidst so many shadowy monsters, the prince picked a ghost. “I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Cin admitted. “But I thank you for saying it.”
“May time prove me right, then,” he said. The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You still have one last week to stab me through the heart.”
“If it means you don’t trade your choice of partner away to your parents, perhaps I will.”
“Oh please.” Prince Lorenz snorted. “Have you seen the shallow and power-hungry bastards who fill my ball? If I’m to be cursed with one of them, at least I can guarantee a little more time with you before then.”
It sounded like such a romantic notion for a man so determined not to marry Cin.
He fought back the ache from his earlier rejection with the same sad fact: Cin could not marry Prince Lorenz anymore than the prince could transform his lust for Cin—or any other—into romantic desire.
Cin had been the one to tell him they’d need to part ways eventually.
The one to ask for this momentary arrangement.
“A little more time,” he whispered back.
“Unless… I can ask for more?”
Cin’s heart leaped at the thought. His soul seemed to cry out, raging inside his chest, and everything in him screamed past the pain of his ribs that this—this—was what he needed: more time with Prince Lorenz, with his only and best friend, this wonderful man who could know him, all of him, and think him not a villain for it.
But the world had not changed since he’d first told the prince they would have to part ways after the balls. There was still no way for him to leave his home regularly to visit the castle. No way for them to spend time together regularly that wouldn’t eventually bring his identity into it.
“You knew what this relationship was to be, ending and all,” Cin said.
And damn, did he hate himself for it.
A flash of pain crossed the prince’s face, but then his hand went to his chest, and his expression turned as charming as any moment on the dance floor. “Well, I had to at least try. You did say I could ask you anything.”
“True.” Cin nodded, then cringed, when somehow even that hurt his sides. “If you’re satisfied though, I must leave. One of my pigeons was hit during the chase. I need to find her.”
If not her, then her cold, broken body, but Cin couldn’t bring himself to admit that possibility out loud. He didn’t have room in his chest for those emotions yet, should they be necessary.
For now, he had to believe she was all right out there somewhere.
“Of course,” Prince Lorenz said. Before Cin could stand, the prince’s arms shifted around his, one of them slipping under Cin’s knees and the other at his back.
He swept Cin up and carried him toward the door.
Cin’s position put extra strain on his chest binding, and the sharp pain beneath it, but the thought of trading the prince’s embrace for the ability to breathe or to think seemed silly after a week of believing he’d never get to touch Prince Lorenz one last time, kiss him goodbye like their separate futures didn’t matter.
As they passed a few other open cells, the sounds of the underground river fading behind them, Cin realized his angelic chorus of moans had always been the echoes of the water.
Every other chamber in the decaying dungeon was empty.
Perhaps it was not the only place in the palace where prisoners could be kept, but at least it seemed the crown did not regularly deem anyone worthy of this terrible treatment.
Cin wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or honored by that.
Was its emptiness the reason so many bastards roamed the streets? This form of justice seemed no more desirable than a blade, though.
Prince Lorenz finally set Cin down at the top of the dungeon’s stairwell, where the musky, dark tunnels turned to the clean and well-lit hallways of what appeared to be the castle’s guard wing, though of the few guards who passed by them, none stopped to intrude on the situation.
Word must have already spread that Cin’s name had been cleared, even if the reason behind it would remain a secret.
As Cin tried to step away though, Prince Lorenz took his hand. “You won’t be questioned if I’m here.”
Cin couldn’t argue with that, nor with the warmth of the prince’s hand, nor the way his presence made Cin stronger as he forced himself to journey back around the castle toward the darker side of the estate.
As they walked, birds gathered along the eaves of the buildings, dozens upon dozens of them flooding down from the dovecote above. Guiding his way.
He followed them.
Cin’s binding seemed to be growing tighter with each step, but he didn’t bother to take the time to stop and loosen it. There would be no soldiers chasing him now, at least. No rooftops to fall from. Once he found Perdition, it wouldn’t matter if the pain brought him to his knees.
He gritted his teeth at the memory of his capture, and for what felt like the hundredth time, he wished he had been born slimmer in the chest, with a form that didn’t require any pressure placed upon its tender sides for him to feel at peace with his own body.
Since they’d arrived, the mere sight of his own breasts left him wanting to slip backwards out of his skin with such aggression that the pain had always seemed worth the price… but now…
And if the shortcomings of his body had somehow led to Perdition’s death...
Cin didn’t want to even consider that. But the closer he came to where he’d been caught, the more the gathered birds seemed like a funeral procession, their heads bowed and their silence unnerving for such a large flock. He held the prince’s hand all the tighter.
Together, they walked through the darkness.