The Winner's Curse

36

He tried to pull her down to the floor. She wrenched a hand away and drove the heel of it into his nose. She felt it crunch. Blood spurted between her fingers.

Cheat grunted, gasped. His hands flew to the broken nose, muffling sounds, catching blood.

Freeing Kestrel.

She pushed past him. She was thinking, Knife. Her makeshift ceramic knife, hidden in the ivy. She had a weapon, she wasn’t defenseless, this wouldn’t happen, she wouldn’t—

Cheat backhanded her across the face.

The blow knocked Kestrel off her feet. Then she was on the floor, cheek against carpet, blinking at the woven patterns. She forced herself up. She was shoved back down. She heard a dagger scrape out of its sheath, and Cheat was saying things she refused to understand.

Then there was a crash.

Kestrel couldn’t wonder what that sound was, couldn’t even breathe under Cheat’s weight. But he suddenly scrambled to his feet. He was no longer looking at her.

He was staring at Arin, who had slammed through the door.

Arin strode into the room. His sword was raised. His face was so pale and tight that it seemed to be made only of bones and fury.

“Arin,” Cheat said soothingly. “Nothing happened.”

Arin swung, and his blade would have cut Cheat’s head from his neck if the other man hadn’t ducked. Cheat began speaking as if they were arguing over a game whose rules had been forgotten. He said that it wasn’t fair that Arin had the bigger weapon, and that old friends shouldn’t fight. The Valorian girl had attacked him.

“Look at my face,” Cheat said. “Just look at what she did to me.”

Arin thrust his sword into Cheat’s chest. There was the grind of metal on bone. A choking sound, a rush of blood. Arin pushed in up to the hilt. The sword’s point pierced through Cheat’s back and the man sagged, folding in on himself, pouring red onto Arin, but Arin’s expression didn’t change. It was all hard lines and murder.

Cheat’s eyes went wide. Disbelieving. Then dull.

Arin let go. He knelt on the floor next to Kestrel. His bloody hand lifted to her bruising cheek, and she recoiled at the wet touch, then let herself be gathered into Arin’s arms, held gently against his raging heart. She inhaled.

A gulp of air. Sharp. Shallow. Again.

She began to shake. Teeth rattled in her head. Arin was saying Shh, as if Kestrel was crying, which made her realize that she was. And she remembered that Arin wasn’t shelter but a cage.

She pushed herself away. “Key,” she whispered.

Arin’s hands fell to his sides. “What?”

“You gave Cheat the key to my rooms!” Because how else, how else had Cheat crept in so quietly? Arin had invited him, opened his home, offered his possessions, offered her—

“No.” Arin looked sick. “Never. You must believe that I would never do that.”

Kestrel clenched her jaw.

“Think, Kestrel. Why would I give Cheat the key to your suite, only to kill him?”

She shook her head. She didn’t know.

Arin passed a hand over his brow. The blood smeared. He tried to rub it away with his sleeve, but when he looked at her there was still a red streak above his gray eyes. The viciousness that had filled his face when he had entered the room was gone. Now he just looked young.

He stood, went to tug his sword out of the body, and felt the dead man’s pockets. He pulled out a thick iron ring with dozens of keys. He turned it, staring as the keys slid and rang.

Arin shut them up inside his fist. “My house,” he said thickly. He looked at Kestrel. “Keys can be copied.” His eyes pleaded with her. “I have no idea how many sets Irex’s family had. Cheat could have had this one, somehow, even before Firstwinter.”

She saw how what he said might be true. She didn’t think anyone could fake the horror on Arin’s face when he first saw Kestrel on the floor. Or the way he looked now: as if what had happened to her was happening to him.

“Believe me, Kestrel.”

She did … and she didn’t.

Arin undid the ring, slipped off two keys, and set them in Kestrel’s hand. “These are for your suite. Keep them.”

She gazed at the dull metal on her palm. She recognized one key. The other … “Is this one for the garden door?”

“Yes, but”—Arin looked away—“you wouldn’t want to use it.”

Kestrel had guessed that Arin lived in the west wing suite, and that it had been his father’s as hers had been his mother’s. But it wasn’t until then that she understood what the two gardens were for: a way for husband and wife to visit each other without the entire household knowing.

Kestrel stood, because Arin was standing and she had had enough of crouching on the floor.

“Kestrel…” Arin’s question was something he clearly hated to ask. “How badly are you hurt?”

“As you see.” Her eye was swelling shut, and the carpet had skinned her cheek raw. “My face. Nothing more.”

“I could kill him a thousand times and still want to do it again.”

She looked at Cheat’s slumped body as it soaked the carpet with blood. “Somebody had better clean that up. It won’t be me. I’m not your slave.”

Quietly, he said, “You’re really not.”

“I might believe you if you gave me the whole set of keys.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Ah, but would you have any respect for my intelligence?”

When night fell, Kestrel tried the garden door. Arin’s garden was as bare as hers, the walls as smooth. His sunroom was dark, but the hallway that led from it to the rest of the suite was a glowing tunnel.

Somewhere in the layers and shapes of illuminated rooms, a long shadow moved.

Arin, awake.

She slipped back inside her garden and locked the door.

The shaking that had consumed her earlier—after—returned. It was deep inside this time. Even if she had stepped into the garden with the thought of escape, when she saw Arin’s shadow she knew that she had really come for his company.

She couldn’t bear to be alone.

Kestrel began to pace, pebbles scattering under her feet.

If she kept moving, maybe she could forget Cheat’s weight. Her hot, stinging face. The moment when she understood that there was nothing she could do.

Arin had done it. Then he had shouldered the body and carried it away. He rolled up the gory rug and took that away, too. He probably would have repaired the door, which hung splintered on its hinges.

But Kestrel told him to leave. He did.

Arin was becoming the sort of person her father admired. Remorseless. Able to make a decision, walk through it, and close it behind him. Kestrel felt that Arin was a shadow of herself—or rather of who she was supposed to be.

General Trajan’s daughter would not be in this position.

She would not be frightened.

Her feet ground into the rocks.

Then she heard something, and stopped.

When the first note opened into the cold dark, Kestrel didn’t understand what it was. A sound of pure, low, belled beauty. She waited, and it came again.

Song.

It welled like sap from a tree, golden beads on wood. Then a rich glide. A singer testing his range.

Loosening. Arin’s voice lifted beyond the garden wall. It poured around her fear, and into it. The wordless warmth of music took a familiar shape.

A lullaby. Enai had sung it to Kestrel long ago, and Arin sang it to her now.

Maybe he had seen her in his garden, or heard her restless walk. Kestrel didn’t know how he knew that she needed his comfort as much as she needed the stone wall between them. Yet when the song stopped and the night resonated with a silence that was itself a kind of music, Kestrel was no longer afraid.

And she believed Arin. She believed everything he had ever said to her.

She believed his silence on the other side of the wall, which said that he would stay there as long as she needed.

When Kestrel went inside, she carried his song with her.

It was a candle that lit her way and kept watch while she slept.

Arin woke. His throat still felt full of music.

Then he remembered that he had killed his friend and that the Herrani had no leader. He searched himself for regret. He found none. Only the cold echo of his own harrowed rage.

He rose and splashed water on his face, ran it through his hair. The face in the mirror didn’t seem to be his, exactly.

Arin dressed with care and went to see what the world looked like.

In the hallways beyond his suite, he caught guarded glances from people, some who had been Irex’s servants, some who had worked in this house during his parents’ time. They had picked up where their lives had left off. When Arin, uncomfortable, had said that they didn’t need to fill their old roles, they had told him that they’d rather clean and cook than fight. Payment could come later.

Other Herrani lived in Arin’s house, fighters who were rapidly becoming soldiers. They, too, watched Arin pass, but said nothing about the body he had carried through the house yesterday and buried on the grounds.

The lack of questions made him edgy.

He passed the open library door, then stopped, returned. He pushed the door wider to see Kestrel more fully.

A fire burned in the grate. The room was warm, and Kestrel was browsing the shelves as if this were her home, which Arin wanted it to be. Her back to him, she slid a book from its row, a finger on top of its spine.

She seemed to sense his presence. She slid the book back and turned. The graze on her cheek had scabbed over. Her blackened eye had sealed shut. The other eye studied him, almond-shaped, amber, perfect. The sight of her rattled Arin even more than he had expected.

“Don’t tell people why you killed Cheat,” she said. “It won’t win you any favors.”

“I don’t care what they think of me. They need to know what happened.”

“It’s not your story to tell.”

A charred log shifted on the fire. Its crackle and sift was loud. “You’re right,” Arin said slowly, “but I can’t lie about this.”

“Then say nothing.”

“I’ll be questioned. I’ll be held accountable by our new leader, though I’m not sure who will take Cheat’s place—”

“You. Obviously.”

He shook his head.

Kestrel lifted one shoulder in a shrug. She turned back to the books.

“Kestrel, I didn’t come in here to talk politics.”

Her hand trembled slightly, then swept along the titles to hide it.

Arin didn’t know how much last night had changed things between them, or in what way. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Cheat should never have been a threat to you. You shouldn’t even be in this house. You’re in this position because I put you there. Here. Forgive me, please.”

Her fingers paused: thin, strong, and still.

Arin dared to reach for her hand, and Kestrel did not pull away.