In my defense, I did not procrastinate. I read Winter and cried for a week.

This chapter is post-Winter, though it doesn't have any spoilers. I actually wrote most of it before I read Winter.

~:~

Carswell's Guide to Being Jealous

Prompt (by Cher): Jealous!Thorne

I

The Lunar boy integrates himself into their circle like a snake. A sly, nasty snake with cheekbones that belong in a net-drama.

Thorne doesn't hate him. He really doesn't. He just wishes the slimy, pretty reptile would do them all a favour and set himself on fire. Or maybe jump into Artemisia lake and not bother to resurface.

That would be nice.

He's always hanging around them, and Thorne wonders if he ever goes home, or does he simply lurk in the palace hallways waiting for Cress to pass by so he can swoop in and steal all her attention with his stupid straight-teeth smiles, and stupid net-drama cheekbones?

He feels something poisonous coil inside him whenever she smiles a timid smile at the snake, or whenever she goes red in the face at one of his complements. Those cheekbones are probably glamoured.

"I'm not jealous," he tells Iko, jaw tight and hands clenched. "I'm not jealous." He repeats it to Cinder, to Scarlet, to all his other friends, to Kai's advisor (who hadn't even asked), to the porcelain vase in his room, to his own gaunt reflection. He's not jealous.

He's just having a little trouble breathing is all.

II

She can't breathe. His fingers run circles along her spine. Soft, sweeping swirls, round and round and round. It's making her dizzy and slow. Niyor is saying something, but she can't hear a word. Her whole world has narrowed down to Captain Thorne and his fingers breathing secret messages on her back.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels a little guilty though. She shouldn't be spacing out in the middle of a conversation. Niyor is a nice person. He is, in fact, one of the few nice Lunars to be part of the Artemisian court. He's kind and charming and he's had no trouble fitting in within the new Queen's circle of friends, except maybe with Thorne. The Captain hasn't been openly hostile, though he hasn't been very warm with Niyor either. For one, he keeps calling him New York.

Maybe it has something to do with what Iko has been telling everyone—that Niyor has a crush on Cress. Maybe. But Cress has some trouble believing that. To start, she can barely talk to him little more than two sentences. Sure, he's nice and funny and gorgeous. But the thing is, he's nice, and funny, and gorgeous, and Cress has yet to master the art of speaking to another person without stuttering, or freezing, or fainting, or hiding behind Thorne (she has been practicing though).

Then there's the fact that she's also all kinds of awkward in general. She's not confident like Cinder or Scarlet, not heart-stopping beautiful like Iko or Winter. She's mediocre at best, with only her advanced coding skills as her saving grace. Except how does one even seduce a boy with that? Reconfigure the electrical grid, so the street lights spells out his name in Morse? Hack into the broadcast system so the music channels only play his favourite songs? Steal from a bank and transfer all of its money into his account? Thorne would certainly love the last one. Maybe she could line that up for Valentines' day.

Maybe then he'll finally like her back. Or maybe she'll get arrested and won't have to watch him flirting with Iko and Cinder all day.

Although, ever since Niyor showed up, the Captain has been flirting a fair share with Cress too. With extra hand holding, and extra hugs, and extra all things tactile—including this breath-stopping thing he's doing to her back right now, this almost absent sort of contact, like he's touching her without being aware. Perhaps he is. Or perhaps, Iko's right. Perhaps Thorne is jealous.

But Niyor doesn't have a crush on her. That part Iko got wrong, she's sure.

She doesn't notice that Niyor has stopped talking until Thorne's fingers stop their movement abruptly. They're both starting at her—Niyor expectantly, and Thorne...Thorne has the strangest expression, one Cress has never seen on him.

Was she asked a question? Seems like she was asked a question. Should she ask Niyor to repeat himself? But then he would know that she wasn't paying attention. Which would be rude...right?

"Um," she looks from one face to the other, unsure. "Yes?"

Niyor's face immediately lights up, and just as he takes a step towards her, Thorne takes a step back, as if she'd hit him.

"That's great," Niyor says, taking both of her hands in his. He kisses her knuckles, smiling against her skin. "I'll pick you up at six."

Oh.

Oh no.

III

She tells Iko before anyone else, hoping her friend can fix this. Iko presses her lips together and stays silent for so long Cress imagines she can almost hear her fan whirring as she processes this disaster.

It's perhaps, two minutes of silence, or perhaps an hour, when Winter and Jacin pass by the empty conference room that Cress and Iko have claimed as their base of operations.

"Hello," Winter says, doubling back towards them. She looks first at Cress, then Iko, then back at Cress. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes," Cress says.

"Cress has a date," Iko blurts.

Winter blinks. Behind her, Jacin also blinks. And then he starts laughing.

Winter claps her hands together and skips the rest of the space towards them, curling up cross legged beside Cress. "This is wonderful," she says. "The Captain finally found his courage!"

Cress squirms uncomfortably, feeling sick and embarrassed. She looks down at Winter's soft, gauzy dress and inspects the intricate pattern on its hem. It's Iko who speaks up. "It's not the Captain," she says. Winter's smile freezes just as Jacin's laughter dries up.

"Cress has a date with Niyor."

Jacin starts laughing again.

If Cress wasn't feeling so awful, she would have marched right up and kicked him. Instead she turns to Winter for help. "It was an accident," she mumbles.

Winter scrunches her eyebrows in thought, then looks at Iko. Cress watches as some sort of unspoken agreement passes between them.

"This, my dearest miniature-friend," Winter tells her with a devious smile, "is an opportunity."

"W-What?"

"One as golden as your hair," Winter adds with a sigh.

IV

Thorne spends the rest of the day avoiding Cress. He considers asking Cinder to have Niyor arrested, with charges of anything ranging from being a nuisance to treason. They could flip a coin to decide.

He reconsiders when he realises that this would go against his amazing and very original plan to reform from his evil ways and denounce all things criminal so that he may deserve Cress. How convenient.

"Why can't you just tell her how you feel?" Kai asks.

He'd gone to Scarlet looking for help, but she wasn't around. So, he'd gone to the next best thing. Well, best-adjacent.

"Because," Thorne says through gritted teeth, "it's complicated."

Kai rolls his eyes. He's like another Cinder sometimes. A cheap black market rip-off for certain, but close enough.

"You're being an idiot, and Cress is trying to move on," Kai says. "Yes. This is so complicated. I think I'm getting a headache."

Thorne kicks Kai. Maybe he's turning into Cinder too.

V

Iko and Winter throw open the doors of her closet and stand back to survey their choices. Iko places one hand on her hip, and the other taps her perfect lips thoughtfully. Winter skips closer with her hands behind her back.

"Dress or skirt?" Iko asks.

"Dress." Winter says. "Knee length?"

"Shorter," Iko says, and then turns around to shush Cress just as she opens her mouth to protest.

For the first week after they'd defeated Levana, Cress had worn dresses borrowed from Winter, shortened and tucked by the royal seamstress to fit her petit frame. Then, right before the coronation, Iko had insisted they needed to go shopping. They'd come back with their arms full of more clothes than Cress had ever dreamed of—dresses and skirts and jackets and pants and shorts and scarves and far too many hair accessories.

"Tomorrow," Iko had said with wide, bright eyes, and a smile that could swallow both of them whole, "we'll find you some shoes."

Before she had tucked everything into her closet that night, Cress had laid them all out on her bed and cried. This was a dream, she had been certain in that moment. It was a dream and she would wake up any second in her satellite, in her tattered dress, with no friends and no freedom.

She had been crying so hard that she hadn't heard the knock, and hadn't seen the Captain push the door open a crack and peer inside. She hadn't noticed him until his arms were around her and his voice in her ear murmured soothing things, that she was okay, that she was safe.

And she had cried harder still because it was just so difficult to believe it.

It was only after she'd finally hiccuped to a stop, and brushed away the tears that Thorne leaned back to ask what was wrong. She shook her head. "Nothing," she said, "nothing's wrong."

He raised an eyebrow. "You were crying because nothing's wrong?"

She laughed, cracked and silly. "Yes."

He looked at her solemnly for a moment, trying to figure out the lie before he finally conceded with a smile—that crooked, devious grin that made her want to melt into a puddle right then and there.

"Then I suppose I'll just have to start another war to cheer you up."

She laughed.

"But," he continued, "I hope this will keep you sated in the meantime."

He dropped a box on her lap, wrapped in a white, fluffy ribbon.

"What's this?" she asked.

He reached up to mess with his hair. "Well, I thought you'd like something new for the coronation, but I suppose someone else beat me to it." He tilted his head towards the clothes laid out on her bed. "Iko?"

She nodded. Tentatively she pulled at the ribbon. The dress was blue. Teal, to be more precise. Soft like a feather, made of some sort of misty fabric. Delicately stitched snowflakes spread out from the bodice down towards the skirt, shimmery and gossamer.

She wanted to cry all over again.

"It's—"she began.

"—not stolen," he rushed to assure her.

She laughed.

Iko's delighted squeal drags her back from the memory.

With matching smiles, Winter and Iko hurry towards her and hold out their choice for tonight's date. It's teal. The dress. With snowflakes dancing on the skirt.

"It's perfect," they inform her in unison.

VI

In the end, he has to concede that Kai may be right. Though he admits so only grudgingly, and certainly not out loud.

Instead he tells Kai that he's the idiot, and storms out of the room as if in anger. He's been standing outside Cress's room ever since. It's been ten minutes by his count, and he has a speech running in his head about how he's trying, he's trying so hard to be better, to be deserving of her...

He keeps messing up the words as his mind replays her saying yes to that sack of lunar slime.

He grits his teeth and takes a deep breath. Okay. Okay. He can do this. She already has a crush on him no matter whom she agrees to go on a date with. He's seen her face every time he'd flirted with her, heard the hitch in her breath every time he slid his fingers through hers. He can do this.

He reaches up to knock just as the door swings open and she's standing there in that dress he bought her for the coronation.

(The coronation where he'd only danced with her once because he couldn't stop thinking about kissing her.)

She looks startled to see him. She looks—oh spades.

It hits him then why she's wearing a dress. She's—

All the words of that oh so carefully worded speech flies out of his head. "You can't go out with him," he blurts like the fool he is. Kai really was right. Not that Thorne would ever tell him that.

Cress looks about to say something, then she closes her mouth, then tries again. "Excuse me?" she says.

Well, he thinks, since he made his bed... "You can't go out with Niyor," he says as he steps inside, and she takes a step back with every step he takes forward. He closes the door without turning, all of his attention occupied on her, wearing that dress, about to go out with him.

Cress looks down at the floor, then at her fingernails, then back at the floor. "So, you do know his name."

Maybe he could give her his speech now. His I'm-trying-to-be-better speech. Only he's messed up, and, and instead of sincere and hopeful, he's going to sound jealous and petty. He already sounds jealous and petty actually (which, may be because he is).

He sighs. "Cress—"

"Why?" she asks, looking up from the floor.

Oh shit.

He did not think this through. He was right. Kai was wrong. This was a bad, bad idea.

"I—" Only he doesn't know what to say.

She waits for eight pounding heartbeats before she nods and looks back down at the floor. Her fingers pick nervously at her nails, chipping at what looks like a fresh coat of paint—pink like her lips.

"It's not fair," her voice cracks. "If you can't love me back, shouldn't I be able to give someone else a chance to?"

This time he looks down at the floor. He imagines her walking out right now, imagines her on that date, laughing, holding hands. He imagines her kissing that lunar boy. He imagines her living a whole life without him, happy and safe and content. He looks up. She's still looking down, lips trembling, on the verge of tears.

Shit. Shit.

"You're right," he says, his own voice sounding strange to him. She squeaks as she looks up and he watches her eyes widen and her face turn red, red, and even redder as he takes three quick steps towards her until her back is pressed against the wall.

"I'm sorry," he whispers against her lips. And then he's kissing her.

He should have kissed her on the day of the coronation, he thinks. He should have kissed her on the day he got his eyesight back. He should have kissed her a long time ago, and every day since. He cups her face, and hears her mewl when his hands wind through her hair. He likes it better like this, this length. He thinks she likes it better too.

She doesn't hear the knock, but he does. And he keeps kissing her still. She tastes like saltwater and those expensive candy apples Winter keeps handing out to everybody. There's another knock. She squeaks as one of his hands slide down her back, and the other pulls at her hair. Her fingers tighten around his shirt as he licks at the roof of her mouth. A third knock.

She pulls away with a gasp, her hands flying to cover her mouth. Her face is aflame, her hair is a mess. Her lips must be a sight. If only she'd let him see. He can hear the door swing open but he doesn't turn away from her, and she doesn't move to see who it is. He carefully pries her hands away and slips his fingers through hers as he pulls her closer and kisses her again.

This time she moans.

Neither of them hear the door swing back shut.

She thinks she might faint. He thinks he should probably start carry a stool around because this much leaning can't be good for his back. When her hands slide away from his and rake through his hair, he forgets everything else but her.

Her, her, her.

VII

He gives her the speech eventually, between intervals of kisses. He never tells Kai he was right.

Hey guys, so I entered the Cinder Litograph Design Contest and I've made it as a finalist (yay!). You can check it out on Marissa Meyer's website. My art is the last one. The one that says "by Snigdha". That's me. I'm Snigdha. Hello.

And if you like it, could you please vote for me?

Thanks for reading. I would love some feedback!