The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1)(74)

He tried to pull her down to the floor. She wrenched a hand away and drove the heel of it into his nose. She felt it crunch. Blood spurted between her fingers.

Cheat grunted, gasped. His hands flew to the broken nose, muffling sounds, catching blood.

Freeing Kestrel.

She pushed past him. She was thinking, Knife. Her makeshift ceramic knife, hidden in the ivy. She had a weapon, she wasn’t defenseless, this wouldn’t happen, she wouldn’t— Cheat backhanded her across the face.

The blow knocked Kestrel off her feet. Then she was on the floor, cheek against carpet, blinking at the woven patterns. She forced herself up. She was shoved back down. She heard a dagger scrape out of its sheath, and Cheat was saying things she refused to understand.

Then there was a crash.

Kestrel couldn’t wonder what that sound was, couldn’t even breathe under Cheat’s weight. But he suddenly scrambled to his feet. He was no longer looking at her.

He was staring at Arin, who had slammed through the door.

Arin strode into the room. His sword was raised. His face was so pale and tight that it seemed to be made only of bones and fury.

“Arin,” Cheat said soothingly. “Nothing happened.”

Arin swung, and his blade would have cut Cheat’s head from his neck if the other man hadn’t ducked. Cheat began speaking as if they were arguing over a game whose rules had been forgotten. He said that it wasn’t fair that Arin had the bigger weapon, and that old friends shouldn’t fight. The Valorian girl had attacked him.

“Look at my face,” Cheat said. “Just look at what she did to me.”

Arin thrust his sword into Cheat’s chest. There was the grind of metal on bone. A choking sound, a rush of blood. Arin pushed in up to the hilt. The sword’s point pierced through Cheat’s back and the man sagged, folding in on himself, pouring red onto Arin, but Arin’s expression didn’t change. It was all hard lines and murder.

Cheat’s eyes went wide. Disbelieving. Then dull.

Arin let go. He knelt on the floor next to Kestrel. His bloody hand lifted to her bruising cheek, and she recoiled at the wet touch, then let herself be gathered into Arin’s arms, held gently against his raging heart. She inhaled.

A gulp of air. Sharp. Shallow. Again.

She began to shake. Teeth rattled in her head. Arin was saying Shh, as if Kestrel was crying, which made her realize that she was. And she remembered that Arin wasn’t shelter but a cage.

She pushed herself away. “Key,” she whispered.

Arin’s hands fell to his sides. “What?”

“You gave Cheat the key to my rooms!” Because how else, how else had Cheat crept in so quietly? Arin had invited him, opened his home, offered his possessions, offered her— “No.” Arin looked sick. “Never. You must believe that I would never do that.”

Kestrel clenched her jaw.

“Think, Kestrel. Why would I give Cheat the key to your suite, only to kill him?”

She shook her head. She didn’t know.

Arin passed a hand over his brow. The blood smeared. He tried to rub it away with his sleeve, but when he looked at her there was still a red streak above his gray eyes. The viciousness that had filled his face when he had entered the room was gone. Now he just looked young.

He stood, went to tug his sword out of the body, and felt the dead man’s pockets. He pulled out a thick iron ring with dozens of keys. He turned it, staring as the keys slid and rang.

Arin shut them up inside his fist. “My house,” he said thickly. He looked at Kestrel. “Keys can be copied.” His eyes pleaded with her. “I have no idea how many sets Irex’s family had. Cheat could have had this one, somehow, even before Firstwinter.”

She saw how what he said might be true. She didn’t think anyone could fake the horror on Arin’s face when he first saw Kestrel on the floor. Or the way he looked now: as if what had happened to her was happening to him.

“Believe me, Kestrel.”

She did … and she didn’t.

Arin undid the ring, slipped off two keys, and set them in Kestrel’s hand. “These are for your suite. Keep them.”

She gazed at the dull metal on her palm. She recognized one key. The other … “Is this one for the garden door?”

“Yes, but”—Arin looked away—“you wouldn’t want to use it.”

Kestrel had guessed that Arin lived in the west wing suite, and that it had been his father’s as hers had been his mother’s. But it wasn’t until then that she understood what the two gardens were for: a way for husband and wife to visit each other without the entire household knowing.

Kestrel stood, because Arin was standing and she had had enough of crouching on the floor.

“Kestrel…” Arin’s question was something he clearly hated to ask. “How badly are you hurt?”

“As you see.” Her eye was swelling shut, and the carpet had skinned her cheek raw. “My face. Nothing more.”

“I could kill him a thousand times and still want to do it again.”

She looked at Cheat’s slumped body as it soaked the carpet with blood. “Somebody had better clean that up. It won’t be me. I’m not your slave.”

Quietly, he said, “You’re really not.”

“I might believe you if you gave me the whole set of keys.”