Thirty
C in could see an infinite number of ways this could go, and none of them were worth being trapped there to witness, stuck between the guards seeking his head on a platter and the prince who could not love him no matter how much they both wished for it, but the knowledge that his magic shoe wouldn’t fit Floy was darkly satisfying.
They clearly knew it too, as Floy stormed into the kitchen, saying, “You saw its size! I can not fit into that. If that is truly Cin’s shoe, it’s a wonder he has managed it.”
“His feet aren’t that much smaller than yours,” Louise objected, her voice equally low. “We’ll make room.”
The distinct metal-on-wood sound that followed was eerily like the thrum that the largest of their cooking knives made when pulled from its mount. Cin’s stomach turned at the thought. But they couldn’t—they wouldn’t—
“Mother!” Floy snapped, and beneath their anger Cin caught their fear, stark and rising.
“It’ll only be one foot,” Louise replied. “Hurry! They’ll grow suspicious.”
“I don’t—”
The scoff Louise gave made Cin feel like a child again, soot smeared across his face and not sure what he’d done, but certain he must have ruined things for all of them.
“Would you not give a part of your heel to be Queen?! You will have the very best slippers, servants to carry you, a stable of horses—your foot need only fit .”
Floy’s voice, when it came again, was smaller than Cin had ever heard it, tight and terrified. “Fine.”
Cin’s nausea grew, and he curled his toes against the inside of the single shoe he still wore, telling himself it wasn’t his feet, it wasn’t his feet. His heels hurt. They felt too large suddenly, two protuding knobs that might fall off if he twisted his ankle the wrong way.
Floy and Louise shuffled about, and a chair slid loudly across the floor. Then the noise stopped. In the silence, the carving of the knife through flesh sounded thick and ragged. Floy’s suppressed groan turned to a sob as it happened again. And a third time.
Something flopped wetly onto the ground.
Bile rose in the back of Cin’s throat and he nearly slipped.
His head felt light. He’d seen blood, seen death—slid knives into backs and throats and bellies—but not seeing was worse somehow.
The thing was no longer out there, external, untouched, but inside him, his mind building weight and pain to the echo of that meaty thud.
Floy’s sniffles lessened as Louise barked at them to quiet themselves. Cin swore he could hear the blood as it seeped into the bandages Louise applied with none of the care or love that Cin had given Emma’s. When they were done, Louise left on steady feet, and Floy at a lopsided shuffle.
Louise’s voice sounded as cordial and unaffected as ever as she greeted the party back in the parlor. “It seems we need to send for water to make the tea, but in the meantime, my dear Floy would be honored to try on that royal shoe of yours.”
Cin knew the magic in his elvish-made shoes would not let Floy’s feet fit, heel or not, yet the fear of it was still suffocating; whatever his head told him, his heart could not stop believing there was a chance—a chance that Floy would be the one at the prince’s side for the rest of their life, Cin forever hearing news of their exploits in papers and cross-kingdom gossip.
Stranger things had happened so far that day.
Lorenz was there, in Cin’s parlor, after all; for some stupid, haphazardous reason, he’d wound up a hall away from Cin, talking amicably with Louise and Floy.
Cin could imagine the scene in visceral detail: Lorenz’s smile masking his fear and loathing, Louise’s calm gentleness pinching to anticipation around the edges, Floy holding back the pain with a stony expression.
“Here, if I may?” Lorenz asked, and he could only have been kneeling.
“Please, yes!” Louise exclaimed, and Floy said something softer.
Lorenz would be picking up their foot then, the bandage hidden beneath a pristine stocking. Cin hoped his fingers brushed the place Floy’s heel had been. Hoped they bit their cheek open to stifle their cry, pink lacing their teeth when next they tried to smile.
Envisioning that was the only thing that kept him from panic.
The shoe would be going on now, in the silence and the tension. The moment seemed to drag on forever. Cin’s arms shook. Flecks of soot rained from where his feet braced.
“Does it fit?” Queen Idonia asked, and for the life of Cin, he couldn’t determine the emotion behind the question.
Lorenz answered impatiently. “It’s nearly…”
Through the moment of quiet, Floy cried out in pain.
“My god!” Lorenz’s voice lifting above an onslaught of shuffling and whispers. “Are you bleeding ? I’m terribly sorry.”
“It’s nothing—” Louise interrupted him.
“Clearly not!” Lorenz snapped. “The back of their heel is red .”
Cin tried to smile, but he could hear the hack-hack-hack-flop of that heel falling to the floor once again and his body gagged against the joy he wished he could find in the situation. There was no future with Lorenz for Floy. Heel or no heel.
Louise seemed to be arguing against that very obvious fact, but Queen Idonia cut her off with a solemn determination. “Clearly, the shoe does not fit.”
And Cin thought she sounded just the tiniest bit disgusted.
“My— Floy is not my only eligible child,” Louise said, almost begging now. “Please, let me get my eldest.”
“If you will,” Queen Idonia said, yet she did not sound particularity interested.
Cin caught the sound of a guard’s voice, too low to make out the words, then the queen gave an equally soft response. The guard moved through the house once more—clearly not ready to give up quite yet—though it seemed most of their group had already moved outside.
The sounds of the search party were lost under Manfred and Louise’s footsteps as they burst into the kitchen.
“But my feet are bigger than Floy’s!” Manfred protested.
“We trimmed Floy’s heel and they nearly fit,” Louise said. “Without your toes…”
“My toes ? Fucking hell!”
“I have let you sleep in my home and gamble my money while you contribute little to this household.” Louise’s voice was a hiss, so imposing it seemed to snake into Cin’s very bones. “I need not sustain your slothful habits, you understand me?”
An image flashed through Cin’s mind of Manfred’s sneer turning to a scowl as he curled one fist. Louise was no fighter, and though tall as her children, she was wiry and brittle. She’d crumble under a single punch from Manfred.
Yet the next sound that came was not the clap of skin on skin, but the soft struggle of their Father’s voice. “Louise is right, son.”
Cin hadn’t even known he was there—had he watched Floy’s heel come off, too? Silent, uncaring. Or hiding it all inside, telling himself that it was for the best.
Manfred growled, “Fucking do it already.”
Cin did not want to be there. As much as he hated Manfred, he did not want to listen to this again. The sickening slice, the muffled cry, the visions that would accompany it.
Cin breathed in a little too fast and deep, his cloak slipping from around his mouth. Soot burned in his lungs. He held in his breath as best he could, choking as his body fought to cough.
The first thwack came wet and fast, and Manfred breathed like he was fighting through tears. The second cracked against bone. Manfred moaned, a long, low noise like a dying animal, his voice blending into the sound of sawing that came next. Then it cut out entirely. The sawing continued.
Soot stung up the back of Cin’s throat. One of his arms slipped. He moved his foot to adjust for it.
He closed his eyes at the final slap of Manfred’s fallen toes onto the floor.
The world swayed around him, and he couldn’t bear to listen as Manfred was helped out of the kitchen, the rumblings from the parlor repeating what he’d already heard from Floy’s presentation. It didn’t matter—Cin knew the outcome.
Now was his time to leave. He bit back nausea as he prepared himself to climb once more. From the parlor, Lorenz seemed to be wrapping up another unsuccessful shoe testing, his voice quickly losing its mask of grace and charm.
“I have a final child,” Louise was pleading, and some bitter part of Cin was satisfied that he was not included among that count, until his stepmother called out of the parlor, “Emma!”
Cin’s blood ran cold.
Emma’s clumsy footsteps echoed down the hall as she answered dutifully, but when she was pulled around the kitchen corner, with what sounded like the whole family in her wake, she begged under her breath. “But I don’t want—”
“Your feet are just a little small,” Louise was saying, like the crown was somehow still one brilliant mutilation away. “We only need to stretch them out…”
Panic snapped through Cin’s mind, blotting out all fear of the crown’s watch hearing him. He would not see Emma brutally used for their mother’s mad scheme first.
Cin tried to drop from the chimney with care, but the moment his remaining magical shoe left the brick, his whole body slid.
His feet hit the logs piled in the hearth, and they twisted, dumping him forward.
He gasped in pain as his ankles twisted, and soot rained around him, sweeping into his lungs.
Cin hacked it back out, stars dancing across his vision.
“My God!” Louise proclaimed.
Cin lurched out of the hearth as he coughed, reaching behind him for his knife, but something hard and metallic slammed into the side of his head. The world spun and flashed, time sliding forward as though not all moments were equal. He could see the blur of Louise’s ankles, a poker in her hands.
Behind her, Emma burst forward so quickly that Floy and Manfred had to scramble on their mutilated feet to grab her.
“What are you doing to Cinder-Szule?” she shrieked, struggled against her sibling’s grips. “Stop!”
Something moved at Cin’s side as his world nearly turned dark again as he tried to look over his shoulder. A hand brushed gently against his head. Cin’s heart caught in his throat as his father spoke.
“Your mother would have been so ashamed.”
The back of Cin’s eyes burned. It was not sadness he felt, though; it was righteousness. Perhaps he was not good or pious, but neither were the rest of his God-forsaken family. Cin, at least, knew how to turn his villainy on those who deserved it.
As his father stepped away, Cin shoved his elbows under himself, scrambling to his feet. He only made it halfway before the poker slammed across the side of his head. He hit the floor again, his vision wavering. This time, he smelled blood.
A pair of sharp pigeon screeches filled the air, echoing through Cin’s head. They were followed by Louise’s screams.
Her arms swung, the poker swinging with them.
Cin’s consciousness slipped out entirely, but into the darkness carried a thwack. Like a knife in flesh. Like fist on bone. Like a tiny body, being struck to the floor. Again.
And again.
And again.