The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(64)

Kestrel lifted her pen, wondering when Arin had become aware of something she had refused to see for so long. Where was Ronan now? Did he despise her as much as she did herself?

“Be happy for me,” Arin said. It took her a moment to realize that these words were meant for the page. “Now sign.”

It was exactly the kind of letter Kestrel would have written in normal circumstances. She felt how deeply she had failed her father. Arin understood her heart, her thoughts, the very way she would speak to someone she loved. And she didn’t know him at all.

Arin took the letter and studied it. “Again. Neatly this time.”

She wrote several copies before he was satisfied. The final letter was in a firm hand.

“Good,” Cheat said. “One last thing.”

Kestrel rubbed tiredly at the ink on her skin. She could have slept then. She wanted to. Sleep was blind, it was deaf, and it would take her away from this room and these men.

Cheat said, “Tell us how long we have before the reinforcements come.”

“No.”

“Now might be the time when I start making my inventive threats.”

“Kestrel will tell us,” Arin said. “She’ll see the wisdom of it.”

Cheat raised his brows.

“She’ll tell us once she sees what we can do to her people.” Arin’s expression was trying to tell her something his words didn’t. Kestrel focused, and realized she had seen this look in his eyes before. It was the careful gleam of Arin striking a bargain. “I’m going to take her to the governor’s palace, where she’ll see the dead and the dying. She will see her friends.”

Jess.





31


“Don’t provoke Cheat,” Arin said as they stepped out of the carriage and onto the dusky path that led to the governor’s palace, which looked eerie to Kestrel because its impressive fa?ade was the same as the night before, but the lights burning in the windows were now few.

“Kestrel, do you hear me? You can’t toy with him.”

“He started it.”

“That’s not the point.” Gravel crunched under Arin’s heavy boots as he stalked up the path. “Don’t you understand that he wants you dead? He’d leap at the chance,” Arin said, hands in pockets, head down, almost talking to himself. He strode ahead, his long legs quicker than hers. “I can’t—Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize—my prize—it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won’t harm you, I swear that he won’t, but you must … hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you’re not better off dead. Swallow your pride.”

“Maybe that’s not as easy for me as it is for you.”

He wheeled on her. “It’s not easy for me,” he said through his teeth. “You know that it’s not. What do you think I have had to swallow, these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?”

They stood before the palace door. “Truly,” she said, “I haven’t the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else.”

He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: “You can make people feel so small.”

Kestrel went hot with shame—then was ashamed of her own shame. Who was he, that she should apologize? He had used her. He had lied. Nothing he said meant anything. If she was to feel shame, it should be for having been so easily fooled.

He ran fingers through his cropped hair, but slowly, anger gone, replaced by something heavier. He didn’t look at her. His breath smoked the chill air. “Do what you want to me. Say anything. But it frightens me how you refuse to see the danger you risk with others. Maybe now you’ll see.” He opened the door to the governor’s home.

The smell struck her first. Blood and decaying flesh. It pushed at Kestrel’s gut. She fought not to gag.

Bodies were piled in the reception hall. Lady Neril was lying facedown, almost in the same place where she had stood the night of the ball, greeting guests. Kestrel recognized her by the scarf in her fist, fabric bright in the guttering torchlight. There were hundreds of dead. She saw Captain Wensan, Lady Faris, Senator Nicon’s whole family, Benix …

Kestrel knelt next to him. His large hand felt like cold clay. She could hear her tears drip to his clothes. They beaded on his skin.

Quietly, Arin said, “He’ll be buried today, with the others.”

“He should be burned. We burn our dead.” She couldn’t look at Benix anymore, but neither could she get to her feet.

Arin helped her, his touch gentle. “I’ll make certain it’s done right.”

Kestrel forced her legs to move, to walk past bodies heaped like rubble. She thought that she must have fallen asleep after all, and that this was an evil dream.

She paused at the sight of Irex. His mouth was the stained purple of the poisoned, but he had sticky gashes in his side, and one final cut to the neck. Even poisoned, he had fought.

Tears came again.

Arin’s hold tightened. He pushed her past Irex. “Don’t you dare weep for him. If he weren’t dead, I would kill him myself.”

*

The sick were laid out on the ballroom floor. The smell was worse here: of vomit and the tang of human waste. Herrani moved among the pallets, wiping faces with wet cloths, carrying away bedpans, and it was strange to see them still acting like slaves, to see pity in their eyes, and to know that it was only pity that made them care for people they themselves had tried to destroy.