Page 76 of Cinder
“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 firstthwackcame 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 brushedgently 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.
