The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(10)

Kestrel came up behind her, rope stretched taut between her hands. The rope went down over the woman’s head and tightened around her throat.

The woman thrashed. Kestrel had the wild thought of having caught an enormous fish. She clung hard, ignoring the wheezing. Even though she was rammed back against a wall, she didn’t let go. She tightened the rope until the woman slumped and collapsed.

Kestrel ran into her cell and feverishly dug up the key to the gate. When she came back into the hallway and saw the woman on the floor, the cell door key having fallen from her hand, she registered the other prisoners, standing where they had been, their faces blank but their bodies uncertain, fingers twitching at their sides. They were aware enough to know that this was not how evenings went. None of the women, though, seemed to know what to do about it.

“Come with me,” Kestrel said to them, though this offer was foolish enough to border on suicidal. How would she get them to the gate without being noticed? She couldn’t save the entire camp. How would they survive on the tundra, and not be caught? But . . . “Come with me,” she said again. She moved back down the hallway, toward the exit. She beckoned them after her. They stood still. When Kestrel took a woman’s hand, it was snatched back.

Finally, Kestrel picked up the cell door key that had fallen to the ground and pressed it into a prisoner’s hand. The fingers stayed loose. The key dropped.

Frustration surged through Kestrel—and relief, and shame at her relief. She wanted to apologize. Yet she wanted most of all to live, and she knew—the knowledge was sudden, lancing, sharp—that if she didn’t leave now, she would die here.

Kestrel clutched the gate key. “I’ll leave the gate open,” she promised.

No one replied.

She turned and ran.



It wasn’t dark enough. She cursed the greenish sky. Someone was going to spy her shadow, creeping along the outside wall of her prison block.

But no one did. The windows of the guards’ barracks burned brightly. She heard laughter. She saw one lone guard by the gate. The young man was leaning lazily against the bars.

Still crouched in the shadow of the prison barracks, Kestrel shifted the heavy key in her palm, its jagged teeth pointing out.

The guard at the gate shifted. She thought she saw him close his eyes as he sighed and settled into a more comfortable position.

Swiftly, her tattered shoes silent over the ground, Kestrel sped toward him. She swung her fist with the key at his head.

He lay in a heap at her feet, his temple bleeding. Kestrel fumbled with the key, her breath loud, gasping. It wasn’t until she moved to set the key into the gate that she thought of the possibility that it was the wrong key, that she had been tricked, or Verex had, or the senator.

Horror spiked through her. But the key went in smoothly and it turned, making no more sound than a knife in butter.

A giddy rush. Her heart soaring in her chest. Her ribs spread wide with relief. A laughing breath.

She pushed the gate open. She slipped out onto the tundra, stealthy at first, then running as fast as a deer.

She was free.



Her foot plunged into a puddle. The ground was soggy, the vegetation short and shrubby. Little cover. Nowhere to hide. She was too exposed. Her breath rasped. Her heart faltered. Her legs were hot and thick and slow.

Then: horses.

A sob of fear burst past her lips. She heard them behind her. Fanned out wide. Galloping. A hunt.

A shout. She’d been seen.

Little rabbit, little fox.

Run.

She fled. She couldn’t really see where she was going, couldn’t look back. Gasps tore at her throat. She stumbled, nearly fell, forced herself forward. She heard the horses stop and that was worse, because the guards must be dismounting now, they were close, and she didn’t want to know this. It could not be over.

But someone caught her from behind. Pitched her down. She screamed against the wet earth.

She was dragged back inside the prison gate. She refused to walk. They pulled her through the mud and then finally carried her.

As on her first day in the camp, she was brought before the silver-braided woman. A thin purple welt cut across the woman’s throat. Kestrel should have killed her. She should have locked all the women prisoners in their cells. Her escape had been too quickly discovered. She hadn’t had enough of a head start. Yet another mistake.

“I told you that if you behaved, no one would hurt you,” the woman said. She unhooked the whip from her belt.

“No.” Kestrel shrank. “Please. I won’t do it again.”

“I know you won’t.” The woman shook the looped whip. It snapped out loose at her thigh.

“That makes no sense.” Kestrel’s voice got threaded and high. “I won’t be able to work if you do that.”

“Not at first. But afterward I think you’ll work much better.”

“No. Please. Why punish me if I won’t remember it? I won’t, I’ll be just like the other prisoners, I’ll forget it, I’ll forget every thing.”

“You’ll remember long enough.”

Kestrel twisted wildly, but hands were already opening the back of her dress, she was being turned around, pushed up against the gate, tied to the bars. The wind whispered across her bare back.

I have been whipped before, she heard the memory of Arin’s voice. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?