Twenty-Nine #2
“No, Emma.” Cin had to swallow down the lump that left in the back of his throat. He began wrapping Emma’s feet in careful, tight folds of bandage. “They haven’t been good to you. Or to me.”
“I know, but…” Emma gave a tiny sob. “I still love them.”
Cin had thought his heart could break no further after the night he’d left behind—the prince he’d left with it—but he could feel whatever remained shatter afresh. “I know,” Cin whispered. He had too, once.
He turned his head to wipe at the moisture gathering at the edge of his eye, and his gaze slid to the front windows. Out across the yard, the darkness of the night sky was giving way to the deep blue of impending morning. Below it came the silhouettes of a dozen riders.
Cin’s heart launched into his throat, and he scrambled up so fast that he nearly stumbled over Emma’s bandaged feet.
She twisted around to look. Her face paled. “I forgot to watch!”
“It’s fine,” Cin lied. He grabbed her shoulders. “Pretend— No, don’t bother. Tell them I was here, and I fled. I’ll come back for you in a month or two, when things are safer, okay?”
“Yes. Okay.” Emma nodded, looking nervous, but determined.
Through the front windows, Cin could see the approaching soldiers dismounting, setting towards the house at a jog. He ran for the back.
As he reached the kitchen, though, the knob of the back door rattled. Someone cursed and banged against it. Someone who sounded an awful lot like Floy.
Cin’s fingers twitched toward the knife at his back. Floy was no less malevolent than any of the bastards he’d killed before, no less willing to hurt their own family if there was something in it for them. But as he tried to grab for the hilt, his hand shook. His breath shuddered. He turned away.
If they were at the back, and the front—
He could hear the door to the entry hall opening. Emma shouted “I don’t know, I don’t know!” at whatever question was hurled her way, and Cin took the only course he could think of. He dove for the giant kitchen hearth.
It was dark and cold, and he slipped over the piled wood as quietly as he could, lifting the edge of his cloak to his mouth as he wedged himself up and into the chimney, grateful for his remaining magic shoe.
He barely fit, his shoulders crammed on both sides.
The soot from fires past swirled around his face, clumps of it dropping each time he moved.
Somewhere above, he could hear the coo of pigeons.
He couldn’t risk trying to reach them, though, as footsteps and the guards’ voices resounded through the kitchen. With each breath, he feared he was dislodging too much soot already. Lantern light flickered across the logs.
“I don’t know,” Emma repeated, sobbing again. “I think he went out the back?”
“Useless idiot,” Floy snapped. They sounded too close for comfort.
Cin risked a glance down. He could see the tips of Floy’s shoes at the edge of the hearth. Part of the group seemed to move back out, charging through the house in a clatter of heavy boots and doors thrown open. But Floy didn’t budge.
So neither did Cin. He focused on counting the seconds as he inhaled, then exhaled, slow but steady.
His back ached from the pressure of the chimney.
Soon his arms and legs would join it, he knew.
But he could not risk trying to leave—not up nor down the chimney—until everyone was gone from the kitchen.
And Floy seemed determined not to move.
From above Cin, something shifted. Soot spilled down, showering his eyelashes and settling across his shoulders as two birds landed on him.
He knew them instantly: Lacey and Ragimund.
Of course they’d come. He wanted to laugh and cry all at once.
The bob of his chest shifted his weight slightly and he cringed as a large mote of soot fell like a shadowy snowflake through his legs.
“What…” Floy muttered. They shifted back, and the top of their head appeared.
At that same moment, both of Cin’s pigeons dove down, wings flapping and small, clawed feet raised as they collided with Floy’s face.
Floy stumbled out of view, cursing and gasping. “Fucking birds ! The hell does that Cinder-whore even like you?” They rattled something, shouting, “You come back down here and I’ll crack your tiny skulls open!”
Cin felt every nerve in his body turn to fire and ice at Floy’s threat, but it was quickly drowned out as chaos erupted from the front of the house. The noise and motion seemed to catch Floy’s attention instead. Finally, Cin was almost certain the room was empty.
He began to shift, slowly, carefully upward, inch by inch. The sounds of the rest of his family echoed from the direction of the parlors—whether they’d come back with Floy, or on their own, Cin couldn’t tell. The voice that responded to them made him stop short.
“I have the shoe with me.” Lorenz sounded as confident and controlled as Cin had ever heard him, but there was a barrier to that tone—a hidden depth that Cin was all too familiar with from their early time together.
What was he doing here? Here?
Cin’s home should have been the last place he’d go. But as Cin wavered between his confusion and resuming his climb toward the insistent coos of his pigeons above, another person spoke.
“We regret the informality of this visit,” Queen Idonia said, “but my son insisted we go home to home for this.” There was an unhappy sharpness to her voice.
Cin’s heart pounded so hard that it hurt.
If she was here too, was this her idea or Lorenz’s?
Surely not the individual shoe fittings, but perhaps when her son had demanded they visit the suitors at their homes, she’d taken advantage of it to come here.
By the sounds of it, though, neither Louise nor the royal family were going to acknowledge the rush of the guards still scurrying throughout the house.
Cin could hear two of them in the yard now as well. So much for climbing out onto the roof.
He wiggled one shoulder, trying to avoid a cramp rising in his arm.
“We are honored by your presence,” Louise cooed. “Please, please sit! We can bring—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Prince Lorenz said. “There are many suitors to attend, and we mustn’t stay long.” Just hearing his voice so close, yet so far, made Cin ache inside.
“But the day is so young,” his mother chided. “We can spare a few moments after the ride here.”
“A few moments ,” Lorenz replied, soft enough that Cin could barely hear him.
“Excellent!” Louise clapped. “Floy and I will prepare the tea.”
Cin tried not to panic.