The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(62)

“I am,” he whispered.

“What do you plan to do with her?”

Arin tilted his head helplessly against the carved back of his father’s chair. “I don’t know.”

“She demanded to see a sick friend. Said you made her a promise.”

“Yes, but I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Kestrel hates me, but she still speaks to me. Once she sees Jess … she’ll never do that again.”

*

Kestrel sat in the sunroom. It was warm, filled with potted plants and their mineral, almost milky fragrance. The sun was already high above the skylight. It had burned through the ripples of rain left on the glass from the night’s storm, which had drummed out the fire in the city. From the southernmost window, Kestrel had watched the flames fade.

It had been a long night, a long morning. But Kestrel didn’t want to sleep.

Her eyes fell on a plant. The Herrani word for it was damselthorn. It was large and thick-stemmed, at least as old as the war. It had leaves that looked like flowers, because their green became a brilliant red in the sun.

Despite herself, Kestrel thought of Arin’s kiss. How it had flared a light inside her, and transformed her from plain leaf into fire.

Kestrel opened the sunroom door and stepped into a high-walled rooftop garden. She breathed the chilled air. Everything was dead here. Fans of brown leaves. Stems that would snap as soon as touched. Stones lay strewn in artful patterns on the ground, in gray, blue, and white, the shape of birds’ eggs.

She passed her hands over the cold walls. There were no rough edges, nothing that might give her fingers or toes purchase. She couldn’t climb. There was a door set into the far wall, but where it led Kestrel would probably never know. It was locked.

Kestrel stood, considering. She bit her lips hard. Then she walked back into the sunroom and brought out the damselthorn.

She smashed the pot on the stones.

*

The day aged. Kestrel watched the light outside yellow. Sarsine came and saw the wreckage of plants in the garden. She gathered the ceramic shards, then had a group of Herrani search the suite for more.

Kestrel had made certain to hide some wicked-looking shards in places where they would be found. But the best—one that could cut a throat as easily as a knife—she had hung outside from the window. She had tied it with a strip of cloth, dangled it into the thick evergreen ivy that climbed the walls outside the bathing room, and closed the window on the strip’s edge, securing it between the frame and the sill.

It wasn’t discovered, and Kestrel was left alone again.

Her eyes itched and her bones turned to lead, yet she refused to sleep.

Finally she did something she had been dreading. She tried to unbraid her hair. She yanked at the plaits, swore as they snarled into knots. The pain kept her awake.

So did the shame. She remembered Arin’s hands sinking into her hair, the brush of a fingertip against the hollow behind her ear.

Sarsine returned.

“Bring me scissors,” Kestrel said.

“You know I won’t do that.”

“Because you’re afraid I’ll kill you with them?”

The woman didn’t answer. Kestrel glanced at her, surprised at the silence and the way Sarsine’s face had become thoughtful, curious.

“Cut it off then,” Kestrel said. She would have done it herself with the makeshift dagger hiding in the ivy if it wouldn’t have raised questions.

“You might regret cutting your hair, a society lady like you.”

Kestrel felt another wave of tiredness. “Please,” she said. “I can’t bear it.”

*

Arin’s sleep was fitful, and when he woke he was disoriented to be in his father’s rooms. But happy, in spite of everything, to be there. Maybe it was the happiness, and not the place, that was disorienting. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Old and somewhat stiff, as if its joints ached when it moved.

He passed a hand across his face and got to his feet. He had to leave. Cheat wouldn’t begrudge Arin his homecoming, but plans had to be made.

He was walking down the stairs of the west wing when he saw Sarsine on the floor below. She was coming from the east wing, a basket in her arms. He stopped.

It looked like she held a basketful of woven gold.

Arin leaped down the stairs. He strode up to his cousin and seized her arm.

“Arin!”

“What did you do?”

Sarsine jerked away. “What she wanted. Pull yourself together.”

But Arin saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into the braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror and didn’t know, couldn’t tell, her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.

“It’s just hair,” Sarsine said. “It will grow back.”

“Yes,” said Arin, “but not everything does.”

*

Afternoon tipped toward evening. It was almost one full day since the Firstwinter ball, and more since Kestrel had slept. She stayed awake, staring at the outermost door to her rooms.

Arin opened it. Then he stepped back, inhaling as if she had frightened him. His hand tightened on the doorjamb, and he stared. Yet he said nothing of the fact that she still wore her black dueling uniform. He didn’t mention the jagged ends of hair brushing her shoulders.