Darn it. I can't stop writing. Whatevs. Hope you like this chapter!
Cinder meandered through the gardens with Kai. The colors seemed brighter and more vivid with him at her side. Cinder knew it was just her eyes playing tricks on her but she still wished the night would never end. Kai swung their clasped hands as they ambled along the cobblestone path. The only parts of her that were warm were the parts that touched his. Cinder tried to conceal her shiver as a brisk wind danced over her skin. She leaned into his shoulder closing her eyes.
He stopped and engulfed her in a hug. Kai's arms wrapped around her arms and rubbed them. "Cold?" he asked muttering into her hair. She pressed her face into chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
"Hmm," she murmured. "I was," Cinder stood on tip toe and pressed a kiss to his throat. "Not anymore though." She felt him shifting and cracked open an eye, too comfortable to move. Kai draped his coat over her.
"Better?" Cinder nodded against his chest. She knew this wouldn't last. It couldn't last. Not if the assassin was still after her. If they found out how much Kai mean to her... No. Cinder can't let that happen. They can't hurt Kai. They can't. Kai had to be as far away from her as he can get, especially now. And perhaps later after this was over if Kai could ever forgive her for abandoning him once again... Cinder shook her head. She couldn't fantasize now. Eyes on the prize, Cinder.
She stepped back with a mocking smirk. "So," she started, that biting expression locked on her face. Don't falter, she told herself. His life is on the line. "When are you going to tell the press about your fabricated lies?" Kai stilled, his eyes wide, confused. Wondering about her ridiculous mood swings probably.
"I..."
Cinder tilted her head, lips pressed together. "You didn't think this arrangement was going to last forever did you? I'm not getting any younger you know." She smoothed a hand down her dress hide her trembling. "The Lunar council wants me to appoint a prince consort, and how is that going to happen with you in my way?"
Kai, finally getting what she was insinuating, sucked in a sharp breath. "You were acting?"
Cinder forced herself to get this over with, ignoring his disbelieving look. She gave him a pitying expression. "My dear, Kaito. Did you really ask me that?" Cinder heaved a sigh. "Don't make me spell it out for you, Your Majesty. I'm sure you are astute enough to get my meaning," She cocked her head to the side as if second guessing herself. "Or perhaps I was mistaken about your level of intelligence?" Cinder watched with detached curiosity as Kai gritted his teeth, a muscle feathering along his jaw.
"Why do you play these games with me?" he snarled. "To think that I even-" He snapped his mouth shut and looked away, closing his eyes briefly, taking deep uneven breaths. Cinder tenuous control on her countenance almost shattered like brittle glass at the display of betrayal and pained grief, so easily read. Kai never had the same level of control she did over her emotions. He couldn't even lie properly. Not like she could.
"My darling emperor," Cinder purred, " You didn't really think for a second this was real, did you? What were you going to say? Don't be so naive, Kaito." She spun on her heel and stalked a few steps forward. One, two, thr- Kai seized her arm and wrenched her backwards. Didn't he know when to quit? He searched her face. Cinder kept her face cool and unresponsive.
His voice was hoarse when he asked her, "Tell me, Your Majesty," Kai spat the words, "Did you ever care for me at all? Or was it all a game for you."
Cinder eyed him, considering. "Oh, let me think," she paused tapping her chin. "No." Cinder didn't look him in the eye.
Kai shook her. "Look me in the eye and tell me you never felt anything for me, ever." Cinder glanced down at where he gripped her arm.
"You better unhand me at once," she hissed, "Lest you would like for me to call the guards." His grasp on her didn't loosen.
"Answer me," Kai said evenly. "And I will."
"Fine," Cinder snapped, "You asked for it." She took a deep, jagged breath. " I have never and will not ever care for you in that manner. I know what I said six years ago, and that was to save my life. Not that it helped much," she added disgusted, "but everything else had always been for self preservation." Whatever Kai had seen in her face had finally convinced him, and his clasp eased off. Her heart twisted violently in her chest. It was for the best, but why did it feel so wrong? Fight for me, Cinder pleaded inwardly. See through my lies. But it was a foolish, narcissistic thought.
"Don't be so desperate, Kaito," Cinder continued. Stop, the voice inside shrieked, but Cinder couldn't let up. She had to sever every thread, every thought, every touch. Kai was not hers. Cinder crossed her arms, expression bored. "If it makes you feel better, I thought you were pretending as well. If I knew you hadn't been, I would have stopped this game a lot sooner. I'm apologize if I hurt you." But she didn't sound apologetic, even to her ears. She would never be sorry for this. There would be no regrets. It was for the best. Even if he hated her forever. Even if he didn't understand.
Kai shook his head at her. "I can't-" he stopped. "I just can't." He turned away. "Have a good evening, Queen Selene." A shard of pain sliced her chest at the return of formality.
"To you as well, Your Majesty," she whispered to his retreating back. Kai didn't seem to hear her, or if he did, Kai chose not to acknowledge it.
"Seems like someone is in need of a good cheer up," breathed a familiar voice near her ear. Cinder kept her eyes on Kai but felt her lips twitch up into a small smile.
"Yeah?" she said as lightly as she could. "Are you the person for the job?" Sage's arms crept around her waist and snuggled his face into her hair.
"Perhaps?"
Cinder huffed and slapped the offending hand inching toward her bottom. Sage hissed in pain. "Hey! That hurt!" She rolled her eyes.
"I didn't even hit you all that hard. Don't be such a baby." Sage had always been like this. Touchy feely and an unbelievable flirt. It was one of his many charms apparently. A charm that Cinder was immune to. Possibly the only reason why Cinder let him so close. She knew that Sage wasn't really attracted to her. Also, it was all sorts of amusing to see Reece get oh so infuriated. She turned and flung her arms around his neck. At six nine, he was more than a foot taller than her even when she was wearing heels. It was so not fair.
Sage staggered, her enthusiastic hug almost throwing them both to the ground. "Whoa! Someone missed me while I was away." He chuckled as Cinder gripped him tighter.
"You never told me you were coming! Thank goodness. At least you are sane. Reece has been wanting more guards to follow me around and Cress and Scarlet are both throwing me at the emperor. You wouldn't do any of that to me will you?" Cinder gazed at him with desperate, wide eyes. Sage's eyes darkened.
"Of course not. I wouldn't be able to convince you to do anything you didn't want to do. You're stubborn like that." Cinder scowled.
"Thanks a lot for your support. I really appreciate it." Sage frowned down at her.
"Really," he drawled. Cinder squeezed his hands and he winced. She felt a crinkly fabric underneath his white gloves and her eyes narrowed.
"What happened to your hands?" Cinder asked questioningly. Sage withdrew his hands and cradled them against his chest.
"I reached into something hot," he muttered, not meeting her probing gaze. "Forget about it. It's not important." Cinder frowned, troubled.
"How? Let me see. Did you see the physician?" She tried to take his hand. Sage dodged her hands and backed away. Cinder chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. He was acting rather strange. Wasn't he wearing the gloves at the council meeting as well? What did he have to hide? "Sage. Show me your hands." Her voice brooked no argument.
Sage still hesitated. "Don't force me to make it a direct command, Sablewood," Cinder said softly. He flinched and stretched out his hands. There was a rustle behind them and their eyes snapped toward the sound.
Kai stood behind them with his brows raised, staring at their clasped hands. He was holding the plant she had been commenting on earlier. Cinder's heart leapt to her throat where she started silently choking on it. They stared at each other not knowing what to do. "I was just coming back for my coat," Kai said plainly. "Am I interrupting something?"
Sage listed his head to regard the emperor with interest. "Perhaps," he answered ambiguously. Sage gave Kai an appreciative once-over and whistled. "Darn, girl, if you had told me about your darling emperor's remarkable good looks I might have come to the commonwealth a lot sooner." He turned to give her a look. "Where've you been hiding him? Your enormous closet?"
Cinder rolled her eyes and quickly shrugged off Kai's jacket. She caught a whiff of his cologne, the smell permeated into the fabric. Her eyes tightened and Cinder handed it over to him quickly, making sure their hands didn't touch in the process.
Kai glanced at Sage but spoke to Cinder. Instead of being offended as Cinder had first thought he would be, Kai looked amused. "Friend of yours?" he asked, his mouth curling up into a smile. Cinder played along.
"Unfortunately," she said sighing.
"Hey! I am a good friend," Sage cried outraged from behind them. Cinder stepped back, as Kai laughed.
"Well," Kai said with a forced lightness. He dipped his head down. "I better go then. Keep on doing whatever you were doing." Kai nodded at Sage, "Pleasure to have met you," and sauntered off. Cinder rounded on Sage as the emperor walked out of earshot, shivering without Kai's coat to keep her warm.
"What was that?!"
Sage shrugged. "He was hot. I told him so. What's wrong with that?" He leaned closer. "Jealous?" he mock-whispered. Cinder smacked him.
"Of course not. We broke up!"
His eyes danced merrily. "Uh huh," Sage said indulgently.
"I'm serious!"
"Right."
Cinder scowled. They sounded like squabbling children. She held out a hand. "Your hands please." Sage exhaled.
"I was hoping you had forgotten about that."
She snorted. "Fat chance of that." He gave her his hands. Cinder tugged his gloves off and stuffed them carelessly into his pocket. She gently tugged at the stark white bandages. Sage grimaced. He must be in absolute agony if he actually acknowledged the pain. "Sorry," she whispered, but she wasn't really. Cinder had a sneaking suspicion she knew what was beneath all that protective gauze.
Cinder let the rest of the bandages unravel. She inhaled sharply at the damage. They were second degree burns. His hands were red and swollen with blisters. The injured tissue was shiny and peeling away at the edges. How did he do this to himself?
"What happened to you?" Cinder gasped.
Sage bit his lip. "Look, I wasn't going to show you this. I just wanted to warn you about Danto-"
Cinder ignored him. "You were at the restaurant." It wasn't a question.
"That isn't the point-"
"Don't tell me that wasn't the point. You were at the fire!" Sage flinched.
"I didn't set it." He wasn't lying. There was no telltale blinking orange light, but...
"You know who set it." Sage's eyes roamed the garden, the fountain, the palace. Anywhere but her. Cinder backed away from him.
"You knew who the assassin was all this time and you didn't tell me?" she growled. "I could have been killed, you asshole!" Sage held his hands out in a placating manner.
"I wasn't sure! I flew back to Luna to tell you, but Blackcrest," he spat the name, "said that you were already gone. You were convinced the traitor was in the council so I thought I was mistaken. You can't tell anyone I was in the Eastern Commonwealth." Cinder folded her arms across her chest.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't call the guards right now."
Sage raked a frustrated hand through his hair, mindful of his injuries. "I didn't set the fire. I have an alibi. I was with Aiden." Cinder tapped her foot.
"You'll have to give me more than that, Sage," she said.
He closed his eyes and hung his head. "My father will kill me if he finds out."
"I don't care," Cinder growled. "Tell me now." Sage hissed out a breath.
"You know I said I was vacationing with my girlfriends." Cinder's impatient expression caused Sage to speed up his explanation. "You know I was actually with Aiden, right?"
"Sage," Cinder said with a sympathetic expression, "I know. You don't have to explain who you were with, just where you have been." He breathed in deep, almost to the point of holding his breath.
"Aiden wanted to see the Eastern Commonwealth and I... agreed. Rather reluctantly, if you ask me. I knew Scarlet and Cress would bring you here and I didn't want to get in their way. I didn't want them to find out about Aiden. If they told Father..." Sage trailed off, shuddering. "Father would never approve of our relationship. He wants me to marry some respectable Lunar girl from a prominent family and produce an heir." He shook his head. "I can't do it, Cinder. I won't hurt Aiden like that. I know if it really came to that, Aiden would probably give me up first just so that I don't get kicked out of the family, but I don't want to give him up."
Cinder softened. "He must mean a lot to you," she murmured. Sage gave her a convicted nod.
"Aiden wanted to come and I didn't really have a legitimate excuse to give him so I consented. We were just walking past Takazumi's when I heard something in the alley. Danto was there conversing with a cloaked figure. The stranger's hood was over his face and I couldn't see anything of him really, but I knew it was a guy. I couldn't recognize his voice, but the situation was strange enough that Aiden and I stopped to listen."
Sage grimaced. "I couldn't believe it. Danto had handed him the two Tarsus' in holsters-"
"Danto?" Cinder interrupted.
Sage nodded. "I obviously recognized the weapons from the blueprints Walter showed us. The hooded figure checked the air pistols and gave him a nod. Danto walked away after that and the stranger slipped into the restaurant. Aiden tracked Danto while I went into the restaurant after the hooded figure. He started a bonfire in the storage room and flung a book into the fire. He went out and disappeared around the corner so I snuck in there to see what it was. I had to reach into the fire. That's how I got this," he lifted his hands to show her.
"Most of the pages were burnt already, but I fished this out." Sage reached gingerly into his coat pocket to pull out a few delicate, tattered pages. "Your name is mentioned a lot. It seems you have an adversary."
Cinder reached out to take the crinkled, soot stained folio. The pages were worn soft and buttery, as if it had been touched many times, probably by the same hands as her assassin. She gnawed on her lip until she tasted blood. This thing was ancient. Who used paper anymore? They were only used for important official documents. "Thank you, Sage. This will help me a great deal I think. What did Aiden find out with Danto?"
"Aiden said that Danto took a hover back to the palace and locked himself in his room."
Cinder frowned. "Wasn't he negotiating with the emperor? Where was Reece?"
Sage shrugged. "When Aiden questioned Blackcrest he said that he was stuck with the emperor's head advisor, setting up for the conference. Blackcrest said that Master Torin could vouch for him and Aiden left it at that. The strange thing is that Reece also said that shortly after their arrival, Danto disappeared into his room and he didn't see Danto again until after the fire incident."
"Interesting. I did wonder when Danto left in such a hurry this morning," Cinder said thoughtfully. "So Danto hired one of the rogue to take me out of the picture. Hmm. He didn't seem like the type of person to do something like that. What could be his motive?"
"You are the Queen of Luna. People don't need a motive to want to kill you. Remember those radical reformers last spring?"
"Fine. Comm fourth-tier Thaumaturge Sasha and tell him to arrest Danto Selkirk. Throw him in the holding cell for now and see if he talks. I'll deal with him when I get back to Luna. Get Sasha and his team to investigate. I want records of Danto's comings and goings for the past few months. You know the drill. It's a direct command. If Sasha is working on another case convince him to turn it over to another team."
Sage inclined his head. "It will be done my queen. Are you going to tell Reece?"
Cinder furrowed her brow. "Perhaps, but he probably already knows. Is there a problem? I know you guys don't like each other much," Sage snorted at her understatement and Cinder corrected it with a sigh. "I know you hate each other's guts, but we'll put that aside for now, at least until this is over, okay? I don't understand why you and Reece always have to act so macho around each other."
Sage's glower morphed into a full blown glare. He paced in front of her agitated. "There's something in the way that he looks at you that I don't like." Cinder rolled her eyes.
"Funny, that's the exact same thing Reece told me about you last week," she paused. " You're not jealous are you?" Sage scoffed.
"As if! I just-" He cut himself off. Sage lowered his voice. "Be careful with him, promise me." He gazed at her intensely. Cinder massaged her temples wearily.
"Why are you and Reece so repetitive? Always telling me this or that about the other." She threw up her hands. "You know what? This conversation is so over. I'll figure this out alone, and don't you dare breathe a word of this to anyone." Cinder gave him a dirty look. "Not even your little Ember guard boyfriend." Sage tilted his head at her.
"Aiden is hardly little. He's just..." Sage trailed off into a wistful sigh. "A bit of a dweeb. Not that being a bookworm is unacceptable of course. Aiden's just adorable, and smoking hot when he wants to be which is a plus." Cinder's eyebrows rose to her hairline.
"That is... certainly different from the others. What happened to Leo?"
Sage waved a careless hand. "Oh, we broke up a long time ago."
Cinder stifled a smirk. "Of course you did. And I assume you did the breaking part?" Sage shrugged.
"I got bored. Leo was nothing more than passing entertainment. He was pretty to look at but had nothing between his ears, if you get my meaning."
She folded her arms. "I see."
Sage caught the waves of disapproval radiating from the queen. "What can I say? I like to play." He gave her a kittenish expression. Cinder tried to keep her curved lips down.
"If you keep looking at me like that I think your new boyfriend will soon get really protective if he isn't already." Cinder inclined her head at the new arrival. A wiry man slipped out of the shadows to stand beside Sage. She could see him better now in the cool, winter sun. Aiden's blonde hair stuck up in all directions and his black and red uniform was wrinkled. He seemed to realize the unkemptness of his appearance and attempted in vain to smooth his gold locks.
"Your Majesty," he saluted, in a surprisingly high voice. Cinder nodded.
"At ease, lieutenant. Scion-Elect Sage tells me your name is Aiden, is that right?"
"Yes, Your Majesty." Sage slipped a hand around Aiden's waist and he almost choked.
"Don't worry, Cinder knows."
Aiden protested pushing Sage's face away from his. "Her Majesty is watching!" he squeaked, blushing profusely. Cinder watched with an amused smile.
"Cinder doesn't care!" Sage growled and pounced on him, peppering his face his butterfly kisses. She grimaced.
"Are you really going to do this in front of me?"
Sage didn't bother removing his lips from Aiden's person. "Go away then."
Well, since he put it like that.
Cinder walked away, fingering the folio in her possession. She wondered if she would ever be as close to someone as Sage was with Aiden. Cinder lifted her head and gazed at the balcony leading into the royal suite. Her heart winced. Probably not. Cinder closed her eyes and looked down.
A burst of giggles and male laughter caused Cinder to whip her head back up to the balcony. A girl erupted out of the formerly closed terrace doors... with Kai following close behind. He caught her in his arms and they kissed, Kai's hands running along her back.
Cinder willed herself not to make a sound as she backed away, eyes burning. She clenched her fists imagining wringing that girl's neck, whoever she was. Kai chanced a look down and they both froze. The girl paused, running a hand through his silky hair in question. He turned away from her and gave the girl a smile, shaking his head. They resumed their 'friendly fondling'. But Cinder could see that Kai was slowing his movements, showing her, tormenting her. She would not let him see how much he hurt her. What did you think? she berated herself, that he would wait for you forever?
Cinder stood dumbly, staring. She had no idea why she was still here. Why she hadn't just walked away. Kai glanced at her again and Cinder listed her head, her expression carefully cool and composed. Perhaps a bit of disgust was thrown in there as well. Kai deliberately closed his eyes to her, his way of telling her that he was already over her. So be it. Cinder fists loosened. She was protecting him after all. It was for the best. It had been foolish of her to agree to this date and get so close. He would never truly forget what she have done to him all those years ago. Nor will she forget this anytime soon.
The queen turned her back on her former lover, and disappeared into the gardens without looking back.
Thanks for reading! I guess my hiatus is finished now since I can't seem to stop myself from writing. Oh well. Who cares about exams anyway?
And as always review!
-Silverleaf