Twenty-Nine
I t was a shame Cin couldn’t have flaunted his way down to the stage, just to see the reaction of the crowd as the magic of his shoe fit it perfectly to his foot.
A shame, because each step away from the prince hurt like barbs being yanked from deep within his soul.
A shame, because now that he’d dropped away from Lorenz’s side, he might as well have dropped out of his life entirely, if the cage around his heart had anything to do with it.
He should have at least kissed Lorenz goodbye.
Cin could focus on little else as his flock-creature carried him out of the city, the fireworks popping in swells of light and color behind him.
It would have taken a single second. One final kiss, in case it was their last. A memory to hold onto.
As though the hundred they’d shared already weren’t enough.
But they weren’t .
They never would be.
Cin wiped a hand over his blurring eyes and kept riding. He could barely see the road before him, yet his mount carried him towards home with long, steady strides. Perdition was still there, with what little he owned. If he was to start a new life without Lorenz, Cin at least needed her.
Before Cin had time to process everything that had happened, much less all that he would have to do in the coming hours, days, and weeks to restart a full life in a new place—no home, no skills, no money—he was standing before the Reinholzes’ dark, empty estate, his magical glamor still cloaking his outfit, and his mount beside him.
It had been a beautiful house once, he thought.
In many ways it still was, with its impressive silhouette, vines overgrowing its edges.
It wasn’t his, though, no matter what grave lay in the garden, or how many times he’d lit those hearths.
His own family had never made it into a home for him, only a place to work.
With a shaky breath, he walked up the front steps for the last time.
The chill seemed to permeate everything inside the house, deeper and more treacherous than the cold night beyond its walls. Cin tucked his arms around himself as he passed from the foyer into the first parlor. From the shadows, something lunged for him.
He hissed a sound almost like a scream as he grabbed for the knife strapped to the back of his belt. Too quick for him, frail hands gripped his arms, then wrapped around his back. Not an attack, but a hug .
“Cinder-Szule,” Emma sobbed quietly, clinging to him.
“Emma?” Gently as he could, Cin detached her hold on him so that he could see her better, his eyes fighting with the darkness. Her ball dress felt grimy, her hair half-fallen from the delicate wraps Cin had put in for her that morning.
She had not once looked at him through that entire process, no “thank you” at the end, no smile or laugh. Now, at least, came the emotions. Though not the ones Cin wished.
His heart ached as he held her, cupping her face with his hand. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Emma sniffled out. “I left the ball.”
Despite himself, Cin almost laughed. “I can see that. But why? How did you get back?”
“I walked.” Emma leaned a little too hard against Cin’s hold as she said it, and he nearly stumbled as she did. Carefully, he settled her down on the nearest chair. In the back of his mind, he knew he had little time to waste.
But he could hardly focus on that when Emma was here, dirty and crying. “ Why did you come back, Emma? What’s wrong?”
She sniffled again, and began anxiously twisting her hair in one of her hands. “We got into the city and I just—I didn’t want to be there anymore. Not without you. It was the last night, and you were supposed to get to go—Mother had promised me. So I—I left.”
Cin’s heart ached. She hadn’t even known he’d left; hadn’t heard his fight with their family or seen him storm out the door.
And no one had bothered to tell her. He put his fingers over hers, gently stopping her frantic motion before she could add any new knots to the mess already tumbling halfway off her head. “Oh, Emma.”
“You weren’t here, though.” She sounded sullen—not accusatory, simply sad .
Cin felt sad, too—sad, just for a moment, not to live in the world where he’d never loved Prince Lorenz, and had instead been sitting in the parlor with a roaring fire in the hearth, ready to sweep his little sister into his arms the moment she arrived.
Maybe in that world, it would have been her love that propelled him toward a brighter future; they could have planned to flee together, hand in hand, with both of their family’s horses and all the money they could filch over the course of months.
Maybe.
“I’m sorry,” Cin said. As he knelt there in front of her, he could feel the small shivers beneath her cold skin.
“Here, this will help.” He rose, pressing his lips to Emma’s forehead before moving to light the hearth.
The logs smoked and went out, and he was forced to add more kindling to help them catch.
By the time he’d finished, Emma’s gaze was on him, sharp and bright. “You… have an outfit?”
“It’s magic. I’ve been to all the balls, in this, riding a horse made of my pigeons.” It sounded absurd even with the mention of magic, but Emma only nodded as Cin continued, “I just couldn’t let Mother know, until now.”
“I’m not Mother.” She looked so tragic as she said it, like she was realizing why that didn’t make a difference, and hoping desperately that Cin would correct her.
He couldn’t. “It’s not that I don’t trust you…”
“But you don’t trust me,” she said, then sniffled again, “Because I’m irresponsible and incompetent .” She said them the way that Louise did, a little flare on - sponse and - comp , like those parts of the words were offending her. The little hiccup that followed cut the intimation short, though.
“No, Emma,” Cin said, even though he wanted to say yes Emma, get a fucking grip .
But for all the things he should have said a long time ago, he didn’t think that was one of them.
“You’re inexperienced, but that’s not your fault.
It’s Mother’s, and Floy’s, and Manfred’s, and even our goddamn father’s for all putting every responsibility on me and never finding you the things that you can learn to be good at.
You’re capable of so much—you just proved that, for fuck’s sake!
You walked all the way back from the capital in the dark, alone, wearing—Oh God, your poor feet . ”
Now that the logs had caught, Cin could see Emma’s state properly, her dress torn and ragged and her hands and face dirty. But worst of all were her feet: scraped and cut, cracked with blood and dirt covering the sides. He could see each red-brown place she’d stepped since arriving.
Cin wanted to protect her all the more for it, but somehow, he got the sense that this was a sign of the opposite: Emma was more capable than he’d imagined.
“There were wolves,” she said, oddly timid about it. “My heels were caught in the dirt, so I took them off.”
“You walked here alone, in the dark, with the wolves .” Cin laughed. “Emma !”
“Sorry?” Emma said meekly. A little tug came into the edge of her lips though.
Cin sighed and gave her hair a ruffle. “Stay put. I’ll get some water and wrappings for them.”
He could almost hear the back of his mind screaming now: you have to leave. They’ll be on to you soon. Caring for her is not worth your future.
Still, Cin shot the voice down. He had time. “Keep watch out the front for me, won’t you?” he said as he left the room. “Let me know if anyone is coming down the lane.”
“Okay,” Emma chimed. “Are you waiting for someone?”
It made more sense to lie, but… hadn’t he done that enough? He’d just told her that it wasn’t her fault that no one had given her the opportunity to grow. She, who had run from wolves on bloody feet. “The palace guards,” Cin called down the hall. “They think I’m the Plumed Menace.”
He listened closely to the silence from the parlor as his heart beat, then Emma said with genuine confusion, “But you are the Plumed Menace, aren’t you?”
Cin froze, the water pail from the kitchen halfway to his hip. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you have the pigeons.” Emma shouted slightly to reach him down the hall, and it felt like each echoing word was imprinting into the foundations of the house. “And you’re so quiet, and you hate it when anyone is mistreated.”
By the end of her explanation, Cin had made it back to the parlor, his heartbeat only a little out of time with the rest of him. She had known, all this time—and kept his secret, so thoroughly that even he hadn’t realized. He didn’t know why that should come as a shock.
Of course she would know, and still love him, and still protect him. She was his Emma.
“I can’t deny any of that,” Cin said, kneeling in front of her. He took one of her bloody feet, sliding it into the water. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”
Emma’s brow tightened. “Because the palace wants to lock you away,” she replied, as though maybe Cin had forgotten. She flinched as Cin began to scrub gently at her wounds. Then things seemed to sink in a little more fully. “If the guards are after you now, where are you going to hide?”
“I’m not hiding.” Cin switched to her other foot. “I’m leaving.”
“For how long?” She sounded miserable at the thought, but like she was trying to hold herself together for his sake.
He couldn’t bear to look up at her as he replied. “Forever, Emma. I’m going to Falchovari, or beyond. To start a new life.”
It didn’t sound like him. Not his future. Not yet.
Emma, at least, looked like she could see it.
Her eyes welled and she sniffled as she brushed at them. “You’re leaving me?”
Cin took a breath, drawing Emma’s second, cleaned foot from the water to dry it off, and forced himself to look up. “You can come, too, if you’d like that.”
“Oh,” Emma said. A fresh set of tears followed, larger and uglier than the last. “And we couldn’t take Mother? Or Floy or Manfred? Or Father, even?” She seemed impossibly, stupidly hopeful.