The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(36)

“Not a word. Don’t speak until we are in the carriage.”

They walked swiftly down the halls—Arin’s halls—and when Kestrel stole sidelong looks at him he still seemed stunned and dizzy. Kestrel had been seasick before, at the beginning of her sailing lessons, and she wondered if this was how Arin felt, surrounded by his home—like when the eyes can pinpoint the horizon but the stomach cannot.

Their silence broke when the carriage door closed them in.

“You are mad.” Arin’s voice was furious, desperate. “It was my book. My doing. You had no right to interfere. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?”

“Arin.” Fear trembled through her as she finally realized what she had done. She strove to sound calm. “A duel is simply a ritual.”

“It’s not yours to fight.”

“You know you cannot. Irex would never accept, and if you drew a blade on him, every Valorian in the vicinity would cut you down. Irex won’t kill me.”

He gave her a cynical look. “Do you deny that he is the superior fighter?”

“So he will draw first blood. He will be satisfied, and we will both walk away with honor.”

“He said something about a death-price.”

That was the law’s penalty for a duel to the death. The victor paid a high sum to the dead duelist’s family. Kestrel dismissed this. “It will cost Irex more than gold to kill General Trajan’s daughter.”

Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorians the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.

“Really, Arin.”

His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”

She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.

“You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine.”





20


Kestrel slept easily that night. She hadn’t known, before she claimed Arin’s friendship, that this was what she felt. He had fallen silent in the carriage and looked strange, like someone who has drunk wine when he expected water. But he didn’t deny her words, and she knew him well enough to believe that he would if he wished.

A friend. The thought calmed her. It explained many things.

When she closed her eyes, she remembered something her father had often told her as a child, and would say to soldiers the night before a battle: “Nothing in dreams can hurt you.”

Sleep settled on her like velvet.

Then the dawn came, clear and cold. Kestrel’s peace had vanished. She pulled on a dressing gown and hunted through a wardrobe for her ceremonial fighting garb. Her father ordered a new set every year, and this year’s was buried behind dresses. But they were there: black leggings, tunic, and stiff jacket. A worm of misgiving ate through her as she looked at the clothes. She left them where they were for the moment.

It wasn’t that she feared the duel, Kestrel thought as she shut the wardrobe door. She didn’t balk at first blood, which could be no worse than she had received in training sessions. She didn’t dread losing to Irex. Defeat at a duel brought no shame in the eyes of society.

But Kestrel’s reasons for fighting might.

Does society talk about him? Enai had asked. Kestrel pressed a palm against the wardrobe door, then rested her forehead against her fingers. Society would talk about Arin now, if they hadn’t before. She imagined news of the duel spreading among Irex’s guests, who must have been shocked and enthralled by the details. A mistress to fight on behalf of her thieving slave? Had it ever been done?

Obviously not.

She could expect an audience at the duel. What would she tell them? That she sought to protect a friend?

Her easy sleep had been a lie. Nothing was easy about this.

Kestrel straightened. The challenge to duel had been issued, received, and witnessed. There was no dishonor in losing, but there was in cowering.

She pulled on a simple dress, intending to visit the barracks, where she hoped to confirm that her father wouldn’t return from his training session before the next day. Kestrel knew she couldn’t keep the duel a secret. Even her father couldn’t fail to hear the gossip this would stir. Still, she would prefer for him to arrive after the fact.

When she opened the outermost door to her suite, she found a slave in the hallway, her arms drooping under the weight of a small chest.

“Lady Kestrel,” she said. “This just arrived from Lord Irex.”

Kestrel accepted it, but her hands had gone limp with the realization of what the box must hold. Her fingers could not close.

The chest dropped to the hallway’s marble floor, spilling its contents. Gold pieces spun and rolled, ringing like small bells.

Irex had sent the death-price. Kestrel didn’t need to count the coins to know that they numbered five hundred. She didn’t need to touch the gold to remember what she had won from Irex at Bite and Sting, and to think that he might become a better player someday, if he understood the psychology of intimidation enough to pay a death-price before a duel had begun.

She stood motionless, washed by acid fear. Breathe, she told herself. Move. But she could only stare as the slave chased the errant coins and another girl came down the hall to help refill the chest.