Page 74 of Cinder
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. “Fuckingbirds! The hell does that Cinder-whore evenlikeyou?” 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 hedoinghere?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 fewmoments,” 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.
Thirty
Cin 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 wonderhehas 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 onlyfit.”
