The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(31)

“You should plan to raid the armory after the new captain is appointed,” said Arin. “If it’s noticed then that weapons are missing, it will make him look incompetent.”

“Good idea. In the meantime, you and I will keep meeting. We need our moment at the general’s estate. You’ll give it to us.”

This was when Arin should have told Cheat that Kestrel was beginning to see a pattern of events. He should have revealed that she found something strange in the death of the captain, though she couldn’t know that two of the captain’s slaves had held him while another knelt on the ground with the man’s sword, waiting for the final push.

Arin should have said something to his leader. Yet he didn’t.

*

He kept his distance from the villa. It was too easy to slip in Kestrel’s presence.

One day, Lirah came to the forge. Arin was sure that he was being called to serve as Kestrel’s escort somewhere. He felt an eager dread.

“Enai would like to see you,” Lirah said.

Arin set the hammer on the anvil. “Why?” His interactions with Enai had been limited, and he liked to keep them that way. The woman’s eyes were too keen.

“She’s very sick.”

Arin considered this, then nodded, following Lirah from the forge.

When they entered the cottage, they could hear the sounds of sleep from beyond the open bedroom door. Enai coughed, and Arin heard fluid in her lungs.

The coughing subsided, then gave way to ragged breath.

“Someone should fetch a doctor,” Arin told Lirah.

“Lady Kestrel has gone for one. She was very upset. She’ll return soon, I hope.” Haltingly, Lirah said, “I’d like to stay with you, but I have to get back to the house.” Arin barely noticed her touch his arm before leaving him.

Reluctant to wake Enai, Arin studied the cottage. It was snug and well maintained. The floor didn’t creak. There were signs, everywhere, of comfort. Slippers. A stack of dry wood. Arin ran a hand along the smooth mantel of the fireplace until he touched a porcelain box. He opened it. Inside was a small braid of dark blond hair with a reddish tinge, looped in a circle and tied with golden wire.

Although he knew he shouldn’t, Arin traced the braid with one fingertip.

“That’s not yours,” a voice said.

He snatched his hand away. He turned, his face hot. Through the open bedroom door, Arin saw Enai staring at him from where she lay. “I’m sorry.” He set the lid on the box.

“I doubt it,” she muttered, and told him to come near.

Arin did, slowly. He had the feeling he was not going to like this conversation.

“You spend a lot of time with Kestrel,” Enai said.

He shrugged. “I do what she asks.”

Enai held his gaze. Despite himself, he looked away first.

“Don’t hurt her,” the woman said.

It was a sin to break a deathbed promise.

Arin left without making one.





18


After Enai’s death, Kestrel sat in her rooms remembering how the woman had taught her to paint a tree by blowing through a hollow quill at a pool of ink on paper. Kestrel saw the white page. She felt the ache in her lungs, saw the black branches spreading, and thought this was what her grief felt like, digging roots and twigs into her body.

She had had a mother, and that mother was gone. Then she had had another mother, and that one was gone, too.

Daylight came and went and continued without Kestrel being truly aware that time was passing. She pushed away food that slaves brought her. She refused to read letters. She couldn’t even think of playing the piano, for it was Enai who had encouraged her to keep practicing after her mother’s death. She heard the memory of Enai saying what a pretty melody that was, and could Kestrel play it again? That memory became a refrain of its own: echoing, diminishing, returning. And then Kestrel saw again the skin and bone of Enai’s face, the coughed-up blood, and knew that she was to blame, that she should have insisted on a doctor earlier, and now Enai was dead.

It was late afternoon and she was sitting alone in her breakfast room, blankly staring out a window at bad weather, when she heard rapid, fierce footfalls striding toward her.

“Stop crying.” Arin’s tone was brutal.

Kestrel lifted fingertips to her cheek. They came away wet. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, her voice hoarse. The breakfast room was one into which men were not allowed.

“I don’t care.” He tugged Kestrel to her feet, and the shock of it forced her gaze to his. The blacks of his eyes were blown wide with feeling.

With anger. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop pretending to mourn someone who wasn’t your blood.”

His hand was iron around her wrist. She pulled free, the cruelty of what he had said bringing fresh tears to her eyes. “I loved her,” Kestrel whispered.

“You loved her because she did anything you wanted.”

“That’s not true.”

“She didn’t love you. She could never love you. Where is her real family, Kestrel?”

She didn’t know. She had been afraid to ask.

“Where is her daughter? Her grandchildren? If she loved you, it was because she had no choice, and there was no one else left.”

“Get out,” she told him, but he was already gone.