Cinder & the Prince of Midnight

by Susan Ee

  “I’ve been hunted, and I’ve survived. Splitting up is your best chance. Otherwise, you’ll be caught as soon as the clock stops ringing.”

  As soon as she said that, the clock tower started ringing.

  The first bell of midnight.

  Cinder let the others do what they wanted and ran deeper into the woods, away from the rest of the hunted. She didn’t know if anyone followed her. All she knew was the panic.

  The nobles would be turning in the ballroom—from civilized noblemen to masked monsters. She imagined them dropping their embroidered coats and trampling over them on their way out of the ballroom to hunt their prey.

  Twelve times the bell rang, each time feeling like the last.

  After that, all Cinder could hear was her heart pounding in her ears.

  Chapter 38

  Just as the last bell tolled, Cinder’s clothes changed. Her dress changed back into Darlene’s old dress. Her fan and dance card thudded onto the ground as they turned back into her old boots.

  Boots.

  Cinder quickly shoved off Lalyn’s shoes and laced on her boots. As a last-second thought, she grabbed Lalyn’s glass slippers and shoved them into her dress pockets. But the pockets were so small that one of the shoes fell out. Cinder didn’t have time to look for it.

  She ran as fast and as far as she could—through the stream, over the fallen logs, past the whispering leaves and deep into the enchanted forest.

  It wasn’t long before the wolfkin began howling.

  Screams came to her right, so she veered to the left, trying not to think about those women. She couldn’t help them. She’d be lucky if she could help herself.

  Someone whispered among the trees.

  But when she turned to look, nobody was there. The fairies and beasts of the forest were playing tricks on her.

  She wanted to hit something. It was bad enough that hunters were after her. Did she need to deal with spiteful sprites as well?

  That made her so angry that she kicked a rock into a tree.

  “Ouch!”

  Cinder stopped, trying to calm her breathing so that she could hear who said that.

  “No wonder they’re after you. Let them get you, I say. What do I care?”

  “Who said that?”

  A grumbling creature stood up on two legs and walked away from her. He had broad shoulders that were so hunched that he looked like a boulder on legs. An impossibly tattered men’s shirt the color of dirt draped over his form. He dragged a broad stick behind him even though he was only half of Cinder’s height.

  “Hello? I’m sorry I kicked a stone at you. I didn’t know you were there.”

  “No one ever does.” He stopped but didn’t turn to look at Cinder.

  “Can you help me find a good place to hide for the night?”

  He turned to look at her. “Why would I give away one of my hiding spots to you? You’ll likely come back in daylight and poke sticks at me when I’m not myself.”

  “Not yourself?”

  Then understanding flooded into her. She’d heard old stories of creatures like him. Children’s fables that never quite seemed true, but she hadn’t been able to abandon them as not true, either.

  “Right,” she said. “The full moon. This is your full-moon body. You’re a different pers—uh, creature—the rest of the time. Am I right?”

  He cocked his head. “How do you know that I won’t eat you?”

  “I’m guessing that you already would have if you were going to.”

  “Maybe I’m not hungry now but will be soon, after I’ve led you to my lair.”

  “Maybe. But if you were to do that, you wouldn’t be so stupid as to tell me about it.”

  “You bother me,” he said. “You can starve in the woods.” He turned and walked away from her.

  “Wait. I won’t starve in the woods. The hunters will find me first. Will you at least point me in the right direction to a good hiding area? Lalyn the fairy did at least that much for me.”

  He stopped in his tracks and looked back at her.

  “Lalyn the fairy?” he whispered. “She spoke to you directly?”

  His eyes were wide, and he looked around as if afraid of being overheard. Cinder looked around too but saw only tall trees with moonlight streaming between them.

  He smacked his head a couple of times with his gnarled hand. “Is it time? Has a prince been caught?”

  “Caught? Do you mean have they picked their brides? That’s the last thing anybody cares about right now. Can you please help me?”

  “Why do you need my help? If you can kill the hunters the way you have in the past, you shouldn’t need me.”

  Cinder was very still. “What did you say?”

  “Oh, I have eyes. I see things.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. She had to clear her throat of the dryness before saying anything.

  “Have you been following me?” she asked.

  “Only because I was commanded to, not because you interest me in any way. Why else would I do anything at all other than eat, sleep, and… Well, you get my meaning.”

  “Who told you to follow me?”

  He looked around secretively. “I’m nobody’s slave, you see.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s just that, sometimes, I forget what happens on the full moon. Forget who I am and all that. She told me that she could make me remember everything if I only did something for her on those full moons.”

  “So you struck a bargain.” Lalyn was a firm believer in bargains.

  He nodded.

  Cinder mouthed the fairy’s name without making a sound.

  He looked around furtively and nodded again.

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I didn’t remember—”

  “I know, but why did she want you to follow me?”

  He shrugged. “It was all part of the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “Didn’t ask.” He shook his head with his eyes closed. Then he peeked his eyes open with a sly look. “But I did follow.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “And her. On nights when it wasn’t the full moon. I reported to her what you did on the hunt nights. But to do that, she had to let me remember everything. So I remembered.” A tragic look crossed his face. “Some things you just shouldn’t know, you know?”

  He wiped his nose with a sniffle.

  “I was a fine young man in the village. I had a wife and two children who loved me. I had friends and parents.”

  A tear streaked down his face. “But once I learned what I became on the full moons, I got it into my thick head that they needed to know too. My lovely wife. My wonderful children. My friends. My parents.”

  He wiped his eyes again with his hairy arm.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Perhaps it had had been different before the war, but for as long as Cinder had been alive, the villagers weren’t known for their tolerance of people who were different. And this little creature was definitely different.

  “I’ve lost them all.” His voice wavered. “Now, even on nights that aren’t full moons, I live here, in the dark forest.”

  “Couldn’t you try to live in the world again? You’re…like the rest of us on all the other nights.”

  “Once you know that you’re different, you can’t unknow. And you can’t ever go back.”

  She just nodded because she couldn’t figure out what else to say.

  He sighed. “I followed you. Now it’s time for you to follow me.” He began walking.

  Not knowing what to do or where to go, Cinder followed.

  Chapter 39

  Cinder and the creature walked for what seemed like hours. It was punctuated by them hiding from hunters riding through the forest or screams echoing through the night.

  Once, they walked far too close to a pack of wolfkin growling and snapping over a kill. Cinder and the troll froze in their tracks. But it turned out that the beasts were occupied enough
that Cinder and the troll could nervously sneak past the feeding frenzy.

  Cinder tried to concentrate only on escaping the forest alive. She knew there was no getting out while the moon was out. Even though she didn’t see anyone else trapped on the edge of the forest, it was too risky. The entire forest was probably enchanted tonight, so she’d have to wait until sunrise.

  “How long until sunrise?” she asked as she pushed branches out of the way.

  “Hours still, a lifetime away. Besides, be careful what you ask for.”

  “Why would you say that? All of this nightmare will go away after the sun rises.”

  He glanced back at her with a mysterious look. “Which nightmare is worse, I wonder?”

  Horses whinnied far too close.

  Cinder and the creature dropped onto the forest floor and froze.

  Ahead of them, three hunters wearing masks slipped off their horses and surrounded a girl and an older lady. The girl was no more than thirteen, while the lady must have been her grandmother.

  “What have we here?” The first hunter circled the females, looking them up and down.

  All three of the hunters wore golden wolf masks. Otherwise, they still wore their noblemen’s finery from the ball.

  “They couldn’t even be bothered with charms to make them an appropriate age for our princes,” said the second hunter.

  “Their glamours wore off, cousin,” said the third hunter. “These two were trying to fool the princes into marrying them. Just imagine our kingdom with a child and grandmother queens ruling the land.”

  “Ugly ones at that,” said the first.

  One of them picked up dung from below his horse and smeared it across the grandmother’s face.

  They laughed. The grandmother looked down at their feet, careful not to enrage them. Cinder didn’t think it mattered what she did. The hunters would do whatever they felt like doing.

  “That’s what you get for trying to fool everyone.”

  “But the Dark King invited everyone to use fairy magic,” said the girl with tears in her voice.

  The second hunter mimicked her high-pitched whine. “And the Dark King invited us to do whatever we liked to those who tried to fool his sons.”

  He paced around far too close to the girl, shoving her with his body so that she shifted this way and that as he circled her.

  The third hunter shoved his wolf-masked face into hers. “Anything we want.”

  He lifted his mask and spat in her eyes.

  The grandmother put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and pulled her to her side.

  Cinder couldn’t bear to watch. But neither could she fight off three grown men. They were also so close that she couldn’t get away without catching the hunter’s attention. She and the creature were stuck witnessing whatever happened so long as the hunters chose to do it here.

  She couldn’t do it.

  Her blood boiled. What was the point of all those years of training if not to fight off hunters like these?

  Silver’s voice told her to always run when she could, and only fight if she had no choice. She’d drilled that into Cinder’s head for years now.

  Cinder’s hand shook with the intensity of her anger, though. She wanted to rend the hunters with her bare hands, to pound them into jelly with the biggest rock she could find.

  She shut her eyes and let the feeling consume her.

  The young girl began screaming.

  Cinder’s brain argued with her body, begged her to think of her own survival. There were three of them and only one of her. Each of the three were stronger than her, and well armed, too.

  She grabbed a nearby rock and leapt up. She roared as she catapulted into the men.

  She lifted her hand and swung it to pummel the one who had grabbed the girl.

  But a hand caught hers in mid-swing.

  Someone else punched her from the side.

  She fell onto the ground and felt a heavy weight on top of her.

  Panic.

  She hadn’t even gotten a single hit in before she was overwhelmed. This wasn’t working the way she envisioned.

  Of course not, her brain yelled. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  The voice in her brain was Silver’s. Hard, without mercy. That voice drove Cinder, step by step, into the kind of violence she couldn’t remember practicing.

  Like an animal, her mouth was the first thing she used. She bit into her attacker’s throat and clamped down as hard as she could.

  She freed her hands and went right for his eyes. He tried to stop her, but his strength seemed to be flagging by the second.

  There were screams. Hers sounded like an animal’s; his sounded like prey.

  Cinder had no sense of time, no sense of who or what was near her. Her entire world filled with her enemy. His breathing, his screaming, his blood in her mouth, his slippery and weakly grasping hands as she bit and tore, snarled and snapped.

  Then the screams stopped.

  Cinder got up slowly, looking at the blood on her hands. She was covered in blood—on her chest, her hands, her torso. She could feel it dripping down her chin.

  What had come over her?

  She sucked in ragged, animal breaths.

  Finally, she could take in what was happening around her.

  The troll, if that was what he was, stood over the second hunter, pounding a cudgel into him, pulverizing his head into jelly.

  The third hunter lay dead near her. Mauled and torn apart. Standing over him was the biggest wolfkin she’d ever seen. It was larger than a wolf, but it moved like one.

  It looked up with its disturbingly intelligent eyes. Pulling back its bloody muzzle, it growled at her.

  Cinder froze.

  There was nothing she could do to protect herself from it should it decide to attack.

  Then a sharp whistle rang through the woods. The beast looked up at the sound and waited.

  A man strode out toward them. Dressed in finery, he looked like the other hunters except he wasn’t wearing a mask.

  Dante.

  She blinked a couple of times to make sure she was seeing what she was seeing.

  Chapter 40

  Dante offered a hand to help her up.

  Cinder hesitated. Shame blanketed her, and she didn’t want to bring notice to the blood on her hands.

  So she put her hands on the ground and pushed herself up without reaching up to him.

  “Are you going to attack me too?” she asked, looking nervously at the enormous wolfkin.

  “He won’t hurt you.” Dante pointed into the woods, and the beast ran off like a silent ghost.

  “I always thought that a wolfkin attacked uncontrollably.” She wiped the sweat off her brow. At least she hoped it was sweat.

  “They’re a special breed,” he said. “They’re hunters and killers, but they can be controlled, at least up to a point.”

  He looked at the carnage surrounding them. The troll stood over his kill with his cudgel dripping blood.

  “Are you all right?” asked Dante.

  “I’m alive,” said Cinder.

  “Not all men are beasts, you know.”

  “I didn’t say they were. Many are prey in these woods, trying to rescue their daughters and sisters. It’s the hunters who are beasts.”

  He brushed by her to get a good look at the hunter she’d mauled. Mauled was a good word for it, wasn’t it?

  She looked at her hands again. She needed to wash the blood off. She didn’t want to wipe it on her dress. She didn’t want to carry any more on her.

  Neither Cinder nor Dante were natural killers, but Midnight eventually broke everyone unless they chose a dark path. It looked like the path for them was the darkest of all.

  She really needed to clean the blood off her. They had passed over a stream a few yards back.

  “I’m going to wash up.”

  She walked away, dazed at what had just happened.

  The grandmother and girl were nowhere in sight. Good. The
y were smart enough to run instead of sticking around to see who won. The troll had slinked away, but Cinder was sure he was watching.

  Cinder dipped her hands in the cold water, wondering if this kind of life had always been meant for her. Was she like this when her father was alive?

  She cupped water into her hands and poured it over her head. Then she splashed as much of it as she could onto herself to get as clean as she could.

  It was no use. She could wash the blood off her skin, but not her clothes or hair.

  She was a killer once again.

  “I’d like to say it gets easier, but it doesn’t,” said Dante.

  He walked over to her and dipped his bloody sword into the stream. She didn’t ask whose blood that was. He bent over and gently splashed water on it.

  “It just gets more common,” he said. “You stop thinking about it every moment of your life. But it’s always there, in the back of your mind. Every time someone tells you that you’re nice or kind or worthy, it comes back to you.”

  “This isn’t my first kill.”

  She splashed more water on her face, scrubbing it as best she could. “And he deserved it. All the hunters deserve it.”

  “Does that include me?” He dipped his hands into the water and rubbed them.

  “Are you a hunter tonight?”

  He grimaced. “I am the hunter tonight.”

  “Why do you participate? You’re a prince. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “It’s the king’s command. Even a prince must obey the king.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “And?”

  He looked up at her. “And some of us enjoy the hunt.”

  “You don’t.”

  “How do you know? I have my father’s blood running through my veins. It seems my entire family is full of bloodlust, so why not me?” He sounded sad.

  “Because that’s not who you are.”

  “That’s who I’m supposed to be if I want to be the heir to the throne.”

  “Says who?”

  “My father, the king.”

  “Do you really want to be that kind of king?”

  He laughed. “You know, no one has ever asked me the kind of questions you ask. The nobles are too terrified to question royalty.”