The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(42)

He returned to her side, the blackened knife in his hand. “I promise,” he said, but Kestrel didn’t know whether he meant to say that he promised this would help her, or that he knew what he was doing, or that he would have saved her from Irex if she had needed saving. He slid the knife in, and she fainted again.

*

He had been right. Kestrel felt better the moment she opened her eyes. Her knee was sore and wrapped in a bandage, but the fevered swelling was gone, and a great deal of pain with it.

Her father was standing, his back to her as he looked out the dark window.

“You’d better release me from our bargain,” she said. “The military won’t take me now, not with a bad knee.”

He turned and echoed her faint smile. “Don’t you wish that were so,” he said. “Painful though it is, this isn’t a serious wound. You’ll be on your feet soon, and walking normally before a month’s out. There’s no permanent damage. If you doubt me and think I’m blinded by my hope to see you become an officer, the doctor will tell you the same thing. She’s in the sitting room.”

Kestrel looked at the closed door of her bedroom and wondered why the doctor wasn’t in the room with them now.

“I want to ask you something,” her father said. “I’d prefer she didn’t hear.”

Suddenly it seemed as if Kestrel’s heart, not her knee, was sore. That it had been cut into, and bled.

“What kind of deal did you make with Irex?” her father asked.

“What?”

He gave her a level look. “The duel was going badly for you. Then Irex held back, and you two seemed to have quite an interesting conversation. When the fighting resumed, it was as if Irex was a different person. He shouldn’t have lost to you—not like that, anyway—unless you said something to make him.”

She didn’t know how to respond. When her father had asked his question she was so horribly grateful he wasn’t probing into her reasons for the duel that she missed some of his words.

“Kestrel, I just want to make sure that you haven’t given Irex some kind of power over you.”

“No.” She sighed, disappointed that her father had seen through her victory. “If anything, he’s in my power.”

“Ah. Good. Will you tell me how?”

“I know a secret.”

“Very good. No, don’t tell me what it is. I don’t want to know.”

Kestrel looked at the fire. She let the flames hypnotize her eyes.

“Do you think I care how you won?” her father said softly. “You won. Your methods don’t matter.”

Kestrel thought about the Herran War. She thought about the suffering her father had brought to this country, and how his actions had led to her becoming a mistress, and Arin a slave. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

*

Arin heard the door to the barracks creak. The sound brought him immediately to his feet, for only one person would come to his cell this late at night. Then he heard the first heavy footfall, and his hands slackened around the metal bars. The footsteps coming were not hers. They belonged to someone big. Solid, slow. Probably a man.

Torchlight pulsed toward Arin’s cell. When he saw who carried it, he pulled away from the bars. He saw a child’s nightmare come to life.

The general set the torch in a sconce. He stared, taking in Arin’s fresh bruises, his height, his features. The general’s frown deepened.

This man didn’t look like Kestrel. He was all mass and muscle. But Arin found her in the way her father lifted his chin, and his eyes held the same dangerous intelligence.

“Is she all right?” Arin said. When he received no response, he asked again in Valorian. And because he had already damned himself with a question he couldn’t bear not to ask, Arin said something he had sworn he would never say. “Sir.”

“She’s fine.”

A feeling flowed into Arin, something like sleep or the sudden absence of pain.

“If I had my choice, I would kill you,” said the general, “but that would cause more talk. You’ll be sold. Not right away, because I don’t want to be seen reacting to a scandal. But soon.

“I’ll be spending some time at home, and I will be watching you. If you come near my daughter, I will forget my better judgment. I will have you torn limb from limb. Do you understand?”





23


Letters came. During the first days after the duel, Kestrel ripped into them, eager for anything to distract her from being confined to her bed, desperate to learn what society thought of her now. Surely she had gained some respect by beating the city’s finest fighter?

But the letters were mostly from Jess and Ronan and filled with false cheer. And then came the note.

Small, folded into a thick square. Stamped with a blank seal. Written in a woman’s hand. Unsigned.

Do you think you are the first? it read. The only Valorian to take a slave to her bed? Poor fool!

Let me tell you the rules.

Do not be so obvious. Why do you think society allows a senator to call a pretty housegirl to his rooms at a late hour? Or for the general’s daughter to take long carriage rides with such an exquisite “escort”?

It is not because secret liaisons are impossible. It is because pretending they are impossible lets everyone turn a blind eye to the fact that we can use our slaves exactly as we please.