7. A Murder in Midnight?
Chapter 7
A Murder in Midnight?
CINDER
I raise an eyebrow, letting Prince Charming know I don’t appreciate him wasting my time.
“I’m serious. I wish to propose to you. In front of everyone.”
He says it all so cavalierly. There isn’t a chance I’m taking this seriously.
My mind blanks and all I can do is blink. It must be a defense mechanism to keep my brain from shattering when my psyche encounters something impossible.
“Tell me, Cinder,” he murmurs, his voice becoming low and rough. “Don’t you feel it too? This fire that consumes us, that draws us together even though it’s forbidden?” His gaze drops to my lips, a silent invitation, a challenge.
I swallow hard, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. “I don’t feel anything.” I lie. “Anything other than contempt for you and everything you represent.” I’d rather die than let on that my body has been waking up in ways I never anticipated since laying eyes on him in Midnight.
The corner of the prince’s mouth lifts in a knowing smirk and I curse myself for the heat that pools in my belly, the traitorous want that pulses through me like a second heartbeat.
Who slipped me the drugs? This is not normal.
He reaches for my hand, his fingers grazing my wrist.
I jerk back, snatching my hand away as if burned. The contact sends a shockwave through me, a visceral reminder of the vulnerability that comes with being touched. I wrap my arms around myself and level a glare at him.
“Back up there, Prince Charming ,” I say, dripping his name with all the disdain I can muster. “Are you high or just bored?”
Pretty, rich princes must do the best kind of designer drugs. Ones that make them say stupid, ridiculous things with all the confidence in the world.
Maybe the world will get lucky and break from being under his spell when his teeth go soft from the drugs and fall out.
Though knowing my luck, he’ll remain beautifully attractive and simply make the toothless look a fad.
“You should call me Kaison, or better yet, Kai. I’m not bored, and I don’t do drugs.” His tone is suddenly serious as if it’s imperative I know he means that.
Oh sure, I’ll call the Prince of the Midnight Kingdom by his first name.
Next we can braid each other’s hair and watch trashy reality mage TV shows while bingeing junk food.
Actually, I am overdue for a chill night in. . .
The prince takes a step closer to me, his proximity forcing me to drop my arms, or we’ll touch.
I don’t like being touched. Especially not by vampires.
“I need a bride. As you know, my father insists. So I figure why not give the old man what he wants.”
While Prince Charming rambles on about his outrageous proposal, I stealthily slide over to the small kitchenette corner of the break room. I flick on a lighter and set the wick of a little orange candle aflame. In mere seconds, the spicy-sweet aroma of pumpkin apple spice wraps around me like a comforting hug.
So sonny boy wants to rebel and punish dear old daddy. I turn to face him again. “And why not give him the most unsuitable bride, eh?”
Kaison’s lips quirk up on one side, but his eyes remain untouched by the half-smile. As if he is having a very serious thought about something I just said.
“You’re perfect.” The words come out in a low husk, and I don’t like how they land in my belly and explode in a bevy of warm tingles.
Panic rises in my chest as I struggle to catch my breath and fight off the overwhelming urge to give in to him completely. Desperate for space, I shove him aside to get some air closer to the open door. He moves, but only because he wants to, not because I made him. He’d been steadily backing me up against the lockers, and I can’t think like that, all caged in.
Turning back to face him, I say, “What’s in it for me?”
With a smirk and a suggestive tone, he asks me, “What do you want?”
The Ember of Midnight.
I don’t say it out loud. I’ve said it to him once before, I won’t say it again. It’s a secret need, something I’ve tried to go without for so long, but I can’t stand it. It’s like having a piece of my soul missing.
There is no use explaining it to Prince Kaison Charming. If he has a soul, it’s been spoiled under riches, wild sex, and privilege.
I learned a long time ago to not make myself vulnerable in front of others. Especially not anyone from Midnight. Bloodsuckers can’t be trusted.
Instead of repeating what I went to the Midnight realm for, I ask about the other thing that has been ripping at the inside of my brain since he said it. “What makes you think my father was murdered?”
Kaison’s hands slip into his pockets. “Toward the end, your father had a contentious relationship with my father, that much was no secret. It's the stuff of palace intrigue and whispers in dark corridors.” He leans back against the lockers, his gaze direct, unflinching. “But the night before he was found. . .” he trails off.
Dead.
I don’t know why he thinks he needs to protect me from the word.
“. . .there was a fervor to their argument that I’d never seen before.”
“Byung-He was working on something for the King. The way your father was sequestered the days leading up to his. . . passing, and the tension it brewed, it never sat right with me.” He meets my eyes, and there's a solemnity in them that wasn’t there before.
His pause is telling, a quiet space that lets the weight of his words hang in the air. As if sure I understand his meaning. I do. I don’t like it, but I do.
“Plus, the morning after he died, I saw one of the King's advisors burning documents in the courtyard. Early morning, before anyone else was around. Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe it was everything.” There's steel in his voice, a conviction that’s hard to deny.
There's a moment when everything pauses—the sound, the breath in my lungs, the very beating of my heart—and I hover in that space, disconnected from the agony of reality. His words echo like distant thunder, a storm I’m desperate to avoid by folding into the gray shadows of my detached self.
He watches me closely now, gauging my reaction.
“They said he died of heart failure.” The words that escape my lips feel like they belong to someone else.
My father was everything to me. My mother died in childbirth, so he was all I had. While I didn’t exactly belong in the Midnight Kingdom, it had been okay because we had been together.
My dad made sure we took regular trips back to the Common World to get ice cream. He took me to the movies, taught me to ride a bike, and most importantly, we painted together. While he made masterpieces on massive spans of canvas, he was never too fussy to stop and fingerpaint with me.
When he died, my world fell apart.
And then it morphed into a hell I never saw coming.
My breath turns ragged and shallow. Anxiety squeezes around me like a python, making me light-headed. I glance at the prince to see if he’s noticed, but he only scoffs and goes on. “Yeah, technically that’s not wrong. His heart stopped, but I doubt his ticker gave out for no reason. The timing was too convenient with the shit I saw.”
A part of me yearns to slip into the void between thoughts, where the harshness of his theories can't reach me.
I point first at him, “You think your father,” then at myself, “killed my father.”
Kaison pushes off the lockers, frustration etched into every line of his face as he runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But if I were you, I sure as hell would want to find out.”
My chest constricts and my breath catches in my throat, as if my lungs are collapsing under the weight of all the air rushing out. A sense of unease settles over me, creeping up my spine like a cold hand. “I don’t know that he was murdered.”
And yet, deep down, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something wasn't right about my father's death.
I had avoided thinking about it for so long, pushing the thoughts away in order to survive in my personal hell with my stepmother and stepsisters. The idea of my father being killed was too much to bear on top of everything else.
Even now, ten years later, I struggle to accept the possibility.
My entire nervous system trembles with the knowledge as if acknowledging it would shatter me completely. The emotions welling up inside—anger, rage, fear—seem almost tangible, ready to consume me whole. To know that my father was murdered, to face that brutal reality head-on, could very well crush me.
It’s only been six years since I escaped to the Common World, and it took a long time to get my head out from under water. Not to mention to get my health back.
My heart flutters in my chest and my breathing becomes ragged, but I've become an expert at masking these reactions around others.
I begin to shut down, retreating again to a place where his theories and my fears turn hazy. Reality becomes slippery and distant as if I'm watching us from the other end of a long, dark tunnel.
“We can both get what we want here,” he goes on. “You need safe, protected access to the castle, to the fairies of Midnight to find out what happened. And I don’t want to spend the social season entertaining young ladies and their mothers who want to land me as their prize.” Kaison’s face blanches as if the thought makes him physically ill. “If I’m engaged, I’ll be left alone. Plus, bonus points for following the letter of the law while staunchly giving the traditional spirit of it the middle finger. There is no law that says I can’t choose a human as my bride. Getting engaged to you will drive my father up a wall.” He waggles his eyebrows at me.
“You really think he’d let an engagement between us stand?” I ask.
“You would be the sole exception as the daughter to his only human friend. If he got all racist over you, let’s just say it would look very bad for him politically. It would damage relations with the Common World, and we are getting a lot of attention right now.”
The words of King Charming and his advisor return to me, about having to tolerate the ambassadors. That tensions were high as his rule was in question.
“And if I find my father’s killer?” I say slowly.
A storm moves in over Charming’s face, and it reminds me of that moment he found me in the crowd at the ball. Suddenly, he’s unrecognizable. Whatever carefree fa?ade he’s been touting is not the whole of Prince Kaison Charming. Not even close.
“Well, I know what I’d do, but you choose to do what you wish with that information. And when the time comes, we’ll call off the engagement. Or better yet, I’ll cause a scandal that forces us to part ways.” Kaison explains, and a flicker of mischief dances in his dark eyes as if the thought amuses him.
“Like having a threesome with some chick and her mom?” I ask, cocking a hand on my hip.
He doesn’t even have the decency to pretend to look ashamed. His eyes glaze a little as if remembering something pleasant, while he runs his tongue over his teeth.
Um. Gross.
“Something like that,” he muses before his focus sharpens back on me. “My father will annul the engagement himself, leaving you blameless. You'll be free with a sigh of relief from the court, and I’ll be the prodigal son who can't do anything right, once again.”
Kaison shrugs, a cavalier lift of his shoulders that somehow conveys both the weight of his position and the lightness with which he's learned to carry it. “Of course, we’ll time it right—after you've had a chance to investigate and get whatever information you need about your father. And after the social season has passed. That way I won’t spend all season as chicken bits baiting the piranhas of Midnight society.”
I stare at him, trying to piece together the man before me. There's a dance of shadows and light in his words, a delicate balance between the persona he projects and the gears turning behind the fa?ade. And in that balance, I find a sliver of common ground.
He’s offering a partnership of sorts, one with an endgame that serves us both. And though I don't trust him, there's an honesty in his plan that resonates with the part of me that wants answers.
“I understand your plan,” I say slowly, going over all the angles and curves of it in my mind.
“So you’ll do it?” His voice ticks up with hopefulness as he practically bounces on the balls of his feet.
“Absolutely fucking not.”