Twenty-Six #2
“I lost myself in that forest,” Lorenz continued.
“I recall only snatches, sobbing and breaking, praying to God and the trees and the fairy creatures that the grief be taken away.” He fingered the cage around his heart, his eyes closing as he traced along the top band where its ragged edge was revealed.
“Finally, I stopped praying, and I demanded,” he said, flatly. “It was that or death.”
“You conducted dark magic?” Cin whispered.
“I don’t know for certain, but that was how it felt.
In the center of a fairy circle, I tore my brother’s circlet apart with my bare hands, ripping long strips of metal like they were the bark of a tree, and plunged them into my chest. I cannot imagine there was any light magic in a feat like that. ”
Cin edged closer, removing his hand from Lorenz’s in order to rub his back, their shoulders pressed together. “If you were the one who placed the bonds, could you not take them away again?”
“It was all a haze. I’ve tried to pull against them, to wish them away, even. After I left you the night we killed Brando Von Achenbach, I took a pair of tools to them for leverage. It’s only drawn blood.” Lorenz shook his head. “To remove them myself now, I think would kill me.”
To remove them himself , he said, and Cin believed him.
But perhaps, someone else?
A flicker of hope sparkled in Cin’s chest, so small that he feared accepting it. Lorenz could not return to that place of grief that had allowed him to force the magic to his will the first time, but Cin had magic of his own, even if it was of a far different sort.
“What if someone else might…” Cin stumbled over the suggestion, not sure how they’d go about it, but certain there had to be something worth trying—anything for Lorenz. “I’ve found better, lighter magics, in my life, in the woods even…”
“You did go after all, didn’t you?” Lorenz seemed to really look at Cin then, perhaps for the first time since they’d absconded from the ball. A quirk came into his lips, cautious but optimistic. “You seem different.”
That brought a smile to Cin’s face, sad though it was in the midst of Lorenz’s pain. “My chest is not quite so lumpy now.”
Lorenz’s nose wrinkled. “No—well, yes—but in other ways,” he said, like he was still working it out as he spoke. “You’re less tense. You don’t flinch or brace. Your smile is softer. You’re… no longer in pain?”
Cin nodded, not sure he could put to words everything that meant to him.
It was all that the prince had said and so, so much more.
But just as he didn’t know how to share the full bliss of his transformation, neither could he grant that joy to Lorenz, and the knowledge hurt just as much as his pain had.
He touched gently along the edge of his prince’s metal binding. “If I could give this magic to you…”
Lorenz’s expression melted from awe to misery. His throat bobbed harshly, bitterness in his voice. “I had that chance, and look what I did with it.”
Cin tucked his hand over his prince’s. “Don’t hold it against yourself, Ren. You did nothing wrong.”
Lorenz grimaced. “But you did everything right!”
“I was lucky,” Cin insisted, gentle as he could manage. “My flock guided me to the Frog Prince, who understood my plight and granted me a trade far kinder than I could have dreamed. It was nothing I earned, and nothing I could possibly repeat.”
Slowly, Lorenz seemed to force himself to nod. Still, he looked worried. “What did you give up, my dove?”
“Nothing,” Cin reassured him. “I promised to continue caring, was all.” Specifically for the prince, but if he revealed that, Lorenz would want to know why—why was he so important, why would this monster in the woods care whether he was loved?
And the answer that had been creeping around Cin’s heart was still too wild and whimsical to dare speak aloud.
“It was a boon, really. He gave me permission to—to love the people I love.”
Lorenz wrapped his arm around Cin’s, squeezing him gently. “It is everything you deserve.”
“But this is not what you deserve.” Cin leaned against him, feeling every shudder and breath shared flesh to flesh. “What can I do to help you?”
“Find me that Frog Prince?” Lorenz gave a sad laugh, so broken that it made Cin’s heart ache.
Perhaps it might be that simple, Cin suspected, in ways Lorenz could not even fathom, but if it were, then this prince of the swamp was not simple in the slightest…
Cin tucked the thought away. There would be time for it in the morning, when the sun lit the land and monsters and magic felt a little less dangerous. Right now, he had a different prince to focus on.
Lorenz turned his face toward Cin’s, pressing his mouth to the top of Cin’s forehead.
“When I’m with you, I can feel something awakening inside me, and its grown so strong that often it bleeds through the bonds.
When we talk, when we touch, this curse begins to shatter for a moment.
It’s painful, but it’s wonderful too.” He breathed out a shaky, hollow breath.
“Then the moment you’re gone, I’m empty again.
It’s why I can’t devote my life to you, you understand?
Who would I be to pull you into a future where the one person who is meant to be there for you, profoundly and unconditionally, forgets he cares for you the moment you leave his sight? ”
“I would still love you,” Cin whispered, almost pleading.
But it was a naive hope, he understood. Lorenz was doing for him what he had done for Dorthe just weeks earlier: stepped aside, knowing he couldn’t give her the fullness of what she deserved.
He might not have agreed with Lorenz that it was what he needed, but he doubted that would reassure his prince nearly enough to convince him to be selfish in this—not his prince: his good, kind, just prince, already more loving and lovely as a man devoid of the emotion than anyone who possessed it.
Lorenz would let Cin go and think it mercy.
Unless Cin could end the need for that mercy in the first place.
“You say it’s better when I’m here, when we talk and touch?” Cin’s voice came hoarse, but he pushed onward. “That means there’s hope then, does it not?”
A tear slid down Cin’s cheek, and he sniffled in surprise. When he reached to brush it away though, it was Lorenz’s eyes that were wet and red.
“While you’re with me, I can believe that.”
Cin pressed his thumb under his prince’s eyes, one after the other, and smiled despite himself.
“Then I should never leave,” he said, knowing it was ridiculous, knowing it would never work, knowing they were still, despite all their hope and comfort, bound for the same tragedy that had caught Cin the moment he’d fallen for Lorenz.
His prince smiled back at him. “Well, this is certainly a different tone than I had imagined for our last evening.”
Cin’s laugh was small but somehow, weirdly content. “You did bring me back to your chambers. I think for you, that means we can’t be intimate here.”
“Now, now.” Lorenz narrowed his eyes mischievously. “I said that I never sleep with people in my bed. This, if I’m not mistaken, is what we in the most prestigious classes call a floor .”
“Cheeky.” Snorting, Cin gave him a little shove, and when Lorenz returned the favor, Cin flopped backward across the blankets.
He tried to stretch his arms above his head and snuggle into the nest of comforts.
The magic of his clothing was clearly not as in tune to his needs as it should have been, because his fancy jacket cut the motion short, pinching in his shoulders and armpits.
He lay there awkwardly instead, lifting his brow at Lorenz.
“Do you do anything in that great big bed of yours?”
Lorenz leaned over Cin, and one by one he began popping open the buttons on Cin’s jacket. “I do sleep there. Occasionally. But it’s so downy that my back feels better here, and besides, here is warm.”
“You privileged little prince,” Cin teased.
He grinned down at Cin. “Guilty as charged.” But through the dangling collar of his shirt, Cin could see the shadow of his bound heart, and he knew that no life was so simple.
Cin felt his own expression soften, stupidly, the ache in his chest rearing its head, but in its claws was a joy so unlike anything he’d known. “I’m glad you tried to fuck me that first night.”
“Oh?” Lorenz pushed Cin’s jacket over his shoulders, and Cin sat up enough to let his lover—his love, if only in part, in half—pull the fabric free and strip it off. “Wishing now you’d said yes, hmm?”
“No.” Cin laughed, sitting up further, until his legs were tangled in Lorenz’s, their faces close again, breaths shared. “I have very much enjoyed knowing you more, the more I know you.”
“Sounds pretentious.” But Lorenz seemed a little bit in awe as he said it. He gave a tug to the collar of Cin’s shirt. “I’ve shown you mine…”
The flush that spread over Cin’s cheeks and down his neck wasn’t unexpected, but it still felt like an announcement that he’d never done anything quite like this before.
But Lorenz had. And he trusted his prince with his body—even with his heart, despite everything.
Or perhaps, weirdly, more because of it. “I suppose it’s only fair.”
Lorenz’s grin sparkled in his eyes. He didn’t hesitate, flipping through each of Cin’s vest and shirt buttons like his fingers knew their forms already, setting Cin’s knife and sheath off to the side with reverence, and when he got to Cin’s undershirt, he stripped it up and over Cin’s head like a thirsty man trying to dig water out of the desert.
The little exhale that left him after brought a mist to Cin’s eyes.
“You’re the first to see it,” he said, feeling a bit like he was babbling, but he needed to fill the silence while Lorenz took him in.
Lorenz gave a low whistle. His eyes lifted, creasing at the corners. “I’m going to touch you now, my dove. If you don’t want any part of my lust, then tell me outright, because otherwise, I will take you for everything you are worth. Every piece of you will be mine, and I will say no to nothing.”
Yes , Cin wanted to plead, to shout, to tear between Lorenz’s ribs and convince his poor, strangled heart that it could be free again, with him.
But the little twist in his gut stopped him.
He could feel the burn in his cheeks as he ducked his head.
“Everything, except… I don’t mind my more feminine bits being down there, but I don’t want you inside them, if that makes sense?
” He’d never had anything in his other hole either, but he knew that was a way it was often done, and it sounded more pleasant, at least in his mind.
“You make sense,” Lorenz said, and it was everything Cin didn’t know he needed to hear. He fingers crept around Cin’s hips. “Now, if that’s all…”
Fuck, this was going to kill Cin, wasn’t it? But, well, he could accept that. He breathed in, then out, and whispered, “Take me.”
“As you wish,” Lorenz whispered back.