The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(28)

Kestrel sent a house slave to the forge with a request for Arin to meet her in the stables. When he arrived, Javelin was already saddled and Kestrel was waiting, dressed for riding.

“What is this?” Arin said. “I thought you wanted an escort.”

“I do. Pick a horse.”

Warily, he said, “If I am to go with you, we need the carriage.”

“Not if you know how to ride.”

“I don’t.”

She mounted Javelin. “Then I suppose you must follow me in the carriage.”

“You’ll get in trouble if you ride alone.”

She gathered the reins in her hands.

“Where are you going?” Arin demanded.

“Ronan invited me to ride on his grounds,” she told him, and kicked Javelin into a canter. She rode out of the stables, then out of the estate, pausing only to tell the guards at the gate that a slave would be following her. “Probably,” she added, spurring Javelin through the gate before the guards could question the irregularity of it all. She turned Javelin down one of the many horse paths Valorians had carved through the greener parts of the city, creating roads only for riders traveling at a good speed. Kestrel resisted the urge to slow her horse. She pressed him still further, listening to hooves hit the dirt with its blanket of fire-colored leaves.

It was some time before she heard galloping behind her, and then she did ease up, instinctively wheeling Javelin around to see the blur of horse and rider coming down the path.

Arin slowed, and sidled alongside Kestrel. The horses whickered. Arin looked at her, at the smile she couldn’t hide, and his face seemed to hold equal parts frustration and amusement.

“You are a bad liar,” she told him.

He laughed.

She found it hard to look at him then, and her gaze dropped to his stallion. Her eyes widened. “That is the horse you chose?”

“He is the best,” Arin said seriously.

“He is my father’s.”

“I won’t hold that against the horse.”

It was Kestrel’s turn to laugh.

“Come.” Arin nudged the stallion forward. “Let’s not be late,” he said, and yet, without discussing it, they rode more slowly than was allowed on the path.

Kestrel no longer doubted that ten years ago Arin had been in a position much like hers: one of wealth, ease, education. Although she was aware she had not won the right to ask him a question, and didn’t even want to voice her creeping worry, Kestrel couldn’t bear remaining silent. “Arin,” she said, searching his face. “Was it my house? I mean, the villa. Did you live there, before the war?”

He yanked on the reins. His stallion ground to a halt.

When he spoke, Arin’s voice was like the music he had asked her to play. “No,” he said. “That family is gone.”

They rode on in silence until Arin said, “Kestrel.”

She waited, then realized that he wasn’t speaking to her, exactly. He was simply saying her name, considering it, exploring the syllables of the Valorian word.

She said, “I hope you’re not going to pretend you don’t know what it means.”

He shot her a wry, sidelong look. “A kestrel is a hunting hawk.”

“Yes. The perfect name for a warrior girl.”

“Well.” His smile was slight, but it was there. “I suppose neither of us is the person we were believed we would become.”

*

Ronan was waiting in his family’s stables. He played with the gloves in his hands as he stood watching Kestrel and Arin ride toward him.

“I thought you would take the carriage,” Ronan said to Kestrel.

“To go riding? Really, Ronan.”

“But your escort.” His eyes cut to Arin sitting easily on the stallion. “I didn’t think any of your slaves rode.”

Kestrel watched Ronan tug at the gloves’ fingers. “Is there a problem?”

“Now that you are here, certainly not.” Yet his voice was strained.

“Because if you don’t like the way in which I have come, you may ride to my house the next time you invite me, then escort me back to your estate, then see me safely home again, and go back the way you came.”

He responded to her words as if they had been flirtatious. “It would be my pleasure. Speaking of pleasure, let’s take some together.” He mounted his horse.

“Where is Jess?”

“Sick with a headache.”

Somehow Kestrel doubted that. She said nothing, however, and let Ronan lead the way out of the stables. She turned to follow, and Arin did the same.

Ronan glanced back, blond hair brushing over his shoulder. “Surely you don’t intend for him to join us.”

Arin’s horse, perfectly calm up until this point, began to shift and balk. It was sensing the tension Kestrel couldn’t see in its rider, who looked impassively at her, waiting for her to translate Ronan’s words into Herrani so that he could pretend it was necessary. “Wait here,” she told him in his language. He wheeled the horse back toward the stables.

“You should vary your escorts,” Ronan told Kestrel as Arin rode away. “That one stays too close to your heels.”

Kestrel wondered who had orchestrated her ride alone with Ronan, the sister or the brother. She would have chosen Ronan—who, after all, had sent the invitation and would have encountered no resistance in asking Jess to stay indoors for the sake of a few private hours. But Ronan’s uncharacteristically foul mood made her think otherwise. He was acting like one might if his matchmaking sister had tricked him into something he didn’t wish to do.