Thirty-One
C in felt the sick terror in his stomach before he could form a coherent thought.
He didn’t have to force his eyes open to know the cooling bodies of his pigeons were splayed beside him: one silky and gray, one splotched brown and white.
If they were alive, he would not have felt the snap in his chest, like a cord between them had been cut short.
A cord of magic, withdrawing from their tiny bodies, and returning to Cin’s.
The magic they’d been using: it was never truly his flock’s, Cin realized.
It was always his own magic, only he’d given it away, unknowingly spreading it around in little hopeful pieces until he hadn’t even known he was the origin.
Amongst his birds. To the only living creatures who’d cared for him after his birth mother passed.
The only creatures, except Emma.
She sobbed for Cin now, and as he forced his eyes back open, he could blearily see her, struggling against their siblings. Manfred wrenched her back so hard that she spilled into the counter, toppling to her knees.
“Stop!” Emma gasped.
Manfred grabbed her again, clamping a hand over her mouth as she tried to scream.
A fire lit in Cin’s chest, seeming to burn through his grief and turn it to anger, to rage. Something rattled in the chimney, but no one else seemed to notice. Cin heard it, though, the first clatter, and the second one. Hisses and flaps echoed with it.
Manfred wrenched Emma onto the table, Floy holding her legs while Louise searched for a kitchen tool that would achieve her desired foot-stretching, however pointless and unwanted that might be.
Emma locked eyes with Cin. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Their father stood over her shoulder, patting her head while she struggled.
“Listen to your mother, Emma,” he said, soft and dead-eyed.
Cin hated him most of all.
He didn’t try to run at his family again, though. As much as he wanted to plunge his knife into their flesh and see the world turn right for once, that was not the way. Because justice should not have had to be a thing that slipped quietly into backs.
It deserved to be loud.
Behind and above him, the chimney sang like a storm, and Cin’s flock poured out of it.
Dozens upon dozens of birds—pigeons, doves, songbirds, even a few crows—flooded through the chimney in a shrieking, sooty cloud.
They descended on Cin’s family, too dense and violent for Cin to make out more than the screams, but he could feel their actions like they were extensions of himself, hearts and minds linked through his magic.
From amidst their fury, Emma scrambled out on all fours.
She hugged Cin’s leg, shaking as she she held onto him. A single scratch ran the length of her jaw to her forehead, a trickle of blood running like a tear from one eye. But she was safe.
She would be the only one.
Cin’s flock swelled and raged around him as he swept up Lacey and Rags’ small bodies into his arms, Emma still clinging to him fiercely as he cradled his lost pigeons, their unbeating hearts warm against his chest. Tears slid down his cheeks, but he held his chin up, letting the shrieks of his family echo through him.
Slowly, the sounds of torment died to whimpers.
His flock began to pull back, still swirling and dancing through the kitchen like a feathered storm. The paths vacated by their claws and beaks revealed a terrible scene.
Manfred moaned where he slumped across the table, the flesh of his hands picked down to the bone.
Shiny tendon strings from his partially intact wrists and streaks of blood crisscrossed the wood beneath him, but each finger had been stripped to sparkling whiteness.
Beside him, Floy shuddered, their jaw hanging open.
Cin could see every one of their teeth, from gum to tip, where their lips had been stripped away in jagged chunks, what remained of the flesh there flopping against their chin.
A fresh drizzle of blood slid free with each of their ragged breaths.
A whisper came from Cin’s father where he sat on the floor, two deep, bloody holes where his eyes had been, blood welling in the pits and dripping down the long ridges of the gashes that extended into his cheeks.
What Cin could see of his stepmother seemed whole in comparison—her eyes dull from pain, her mouth open in her gasping, her fingers clenching the edge of the table.
But as she pulled herself up, Cin could see where the front of her gown was gone, her under-dress hanging in tatters across strips of muscle and fat where the birds had ripped away the front of her chest. The bone of her sternum gleamed where it met ribs.
Beneath them sat the erratic pump-pump of a heart. Each beat came slower than the last.
Cin held Rags and Lacey’s bodies all the tighter.
He wanted to finish this.
He wanted this to end.
He wanted …
Louise’s exposed heart went still, and Cin didn’t know what he wanted.
Through the chaos of his flock, a shadow shot toward him.
Arms wrapped around Cin, Lorenz’s hands grasping at him, pulling him close.
Not a spot of blood was on him, but the front of his shirt had been ripped open by the claws of birds, his crown lopsided upon his tussled hair and stray feathers caught in his clothing.
Cin could see the faint impression of the bonds around his heart.
The prince ignored the carnage, holding onto Cin so tightly that Cin could feel the press of the metal in his chest, the subtle thrum of a heartbeat beyond.
“You’ve done it, my Menace,” he whispered. “You’re free.”
The breath Cin took then felt like his first in ages. It cracked in a sob at the end.
Around them, his birds barreled outward. They shot through the windows, glass shattering outward in a crystalline rain, and the back door tore open under their weight, peeling back with such a fury that it was dragged off its upper hinges. Cin sobbed again, clutching Lorenz’s shirt.
His family’s moans still whispered through the space, but the weight of his wrath felt lighter. Emma sniffled, burying her face into the side of Cin’s leg, clearly terrified, but safe. Free. They were, both of them, free.
Almost, anyway.
From the hall to the parlor rushed the final member of the original watch team, the one who’d been continuing through the house even as the others had all turned their searches outside.
Behind him, Cin could just make out the queen, her face pale as she stared at the scene in horror, three of her personal watch members surrounding her.
When her gaze landed on her son, the bonds of his chest on full display, a new terror appeared, followed by fury.
Cin tensed. His flock careened by the windows, birds flying through the open back door to fill the space behind him like a deadly throne, a weapon prepared to launch. Those before him weren’t villains, though—and Cin wasn’t a victim in this. He’d made his choices, and he had no regrets.
As the watch member lifted his sword point for the charge, Cin held his ground, his flock alert but unmoving behind him. It was Lorenz who stepped forward.
“You will not touch him!” The desperation in his voice made Cin’s heart lurch, Lorenz growing hoarse as his shouting continued, thick and painful with emotion. “You will not touch the man I l-l—”
The word cut off in a cry. Between the strands of his ripped shirt, the serrated bonds that locked his heart pulsed with darkness as they writhed deeper into him.
He grabbed for them, blood welling between his fingers, and Cin grabbed with him.
Lorenz’s eyes met Cin’s, endless and open, no longer a pool but the completeness of the night sky, brimming with something so precious Cin did not have to guess at it.
“I love—” Lorenz managed, crying out in pain at the final word.
And Cin whispered back, “I love you, too.”
With everything within him and everything outside himself, every feather of his flock and sparkling drop of their shared magic, he pulled.
He could feel his will collide with that of the monstrous dark thing.
His mind went numb, like a mile of water lay above him, murky and muggy.
A heartbeat pounded in his ears. He could sense more than see: the forest, a fight, a splatter of blood and a scream of agony.
But the heartbeat remained, through the shimmer of golden sun on green.
The croaking of frogs bubbled in the distance.
Hope and fear caught in Cin’s throat. He tightened his grip.
He could sense his flock around him again, their strength flooding his veins.
He shoved against the vile magic once more, and its darkness broke for him.
It moved like a living thing beneath his fingers.
It left gaps of bloody flesh in its wake as it peeled itself off Lorenz’s chest, coming free into Cin’s hands.
With one final shove of power, he hurled it across the kitchen. The dying metal collided with the kitchen hearth. Sparks flared through the chimney and rolled across the stone, unfurling like vines until they met wood. The wall caught fire.
Cin grabbed Emma’s hand in one of his and Lorenz’s shoulder in the other and pulled them toward the back door.
The queen and her guard followed on their heels, a flood of birds pushing them all toward safety.
Behind them, Louise’s corpse already smelled of burning fat and seared muscle as the magic-sparked fire spread in a rampage.
Floy and Manfred whimpered and wailed as they scrambled away, their father catching flame silently behind them.
Cin ignored them all. He dragged Lorenz and Emma far enough into the garden that he couldn’t feel the fire as it curled up the kitchen walls and ascended through the house’s too-many rooms. Carried, Cin hoped, by the draft in his own room.
He could feel Perdition’s small body as she slipped through that very gap, fleeing the fire in a burst of magic.
As they came to a stop, he could not help but smile at his prince.
Lorenz swayed, and his hand came away from his chest. Red.
Fear turned Cin’s body cold. Lorenz collapsed away from him, crumbling onto his back in the garden grass. Blood pooled in the open gashes where his bonds had been, spilling in streams across his skin.
Cin’s whole world seemed to sway. He was atop Lorenz in a moment, his flock a distant crackle in his ears as they poured around him protectively.
He shoved his palms against the wounds he’d left when he’d torn Lorenz’s bonds free.
Wounds, deep as blade-marks. Cin choked on the thought.
He could hear the queen screaming somewhere, everywhere—or maybe that was him, crying Lorenz’s name as he tried frantically to stop the bleeding.
Through the cloud of birds around him, a single pigeon descended on to his shoulder.
He knew her by touch, by song, and by the way she pressed into the crook of his neck, her soft back ruffling against his skin.
Amidst the din of his terror, her weight sparked something in the back of Cin’s mind; she was heavy.
Far heavier than Lacey and Ragimund’s bodies now were, tucked into one arm as he used his hands against Lorenz’s chest. No bones, no blood, no flesh remained of them—only feathers, shimmering with a final hint of magic.
Cin moved on instinct. He pressed the feathers into Lorenz’s wounds.
Wherever they entered, fresh skin spilled into place, modeled in Lacey’s gray and Hap’s white and brown, as though knit from the very souls of Cin’s precious companions.
As the final gash sealed over, he could feel a spark of them settle into Lorenz, gracious and arrogant, kind and brave.
Lorenz gagged in a breath and coughed it out. A shimmer ran through his new flesh, the tangled lines crisscrossing his chest. It held in place, healthy and strong as the magic that flowed through it.
Cin wasn’t sure whether he was laughing or crying as he leaned over Lorenz, pulling him into his arms. His prince clung to him in return, echoing his sentiments until slowly their sounds turned to soft, giddy cackles. Lorenz cupped the side of Cin’s face, grinning up at him.
“I love you,” he whispered, and the magic flesh over his heart shimmered as though in agreement. He said it again, then a third time, and with each repetition, Cin’s smile widened. If they had been the only people on earth, he would have been happy to stay like that forever.
But even with Lorenz’s love, Cin was still the Menace, and his prince the future king, and a whole different justice was coming to call for them both.