The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(109)

“I’m thinking about what I’ll claim from you when I win,” he said. “The particularly appealing part of the deal you struck is the openness of your offer. ‘What ever you like.’ ”

She wished she’d phrased things differently, though she didn’t know what else she would have said, since part of what had made him agree to the game was his anticipation of the plea sure of what he was doing now.

“I could make you bring Arin of Herran to me,” the emperor said. “He’d surrender, for you.”

The world deadened.

“I never finished what I started with that boy’s face.” The emperor pushed the hilt of Kestrel’s dagger with one finger.

The sound it made, though small, scraped down her spine.

“Or perhaps it’s not his face that appeals to me most. We could see what might be done with yours.”

Silence.

“No, Lady Kestrel?”

His gaze drifted over her shoulder. He continued to speak, voice soft as his list continued, and Kestrel’s mind jumped between thinking that he chose to name the things that would torment her most, and meant none of it, or that he did mean it and wanted her to hope that he didn’t, and that this hope was his most delicious form of brutalization.

Her heart was loud in her ears. This wasn’t working. She’d made a grave mistake in coming.

“But of course,” the emperor finally said, “with such an offer as you made, I could exact it all.”

Arin ordered his vanguard to fall to the sides of the road.

The black powder sacks were lit.

The Valorian cavalry reared back from what they saw too late.

The sacks burst under their hooves. Chunks of paving stone exploded into the air.

“Do you forfeit your turn?” Kestrel asked.

“Not at all.”

“You’re afraid to play.”

“We both know,” he said, “which of us is afraid.”

She reached for her wine glass and drank.

“I do admire your love for a gamble.” He took her cup and drank from it as well. “I was simply thinking out loud earlier. There’s no harm in thinking.”

“I have my own thoughts. I am wondering why my father ever respected you.”

The emperor set down the cup. “He’s my friend.”

“Yet you say the things that you say.”

“He’s not here, and if he were, he wouldn’t care.”

“Yes, he would.”

The emperor scrutinized her. “You don’t look like him. Except the eyes.”

“Why?” The word burst from her lips.

His reply was gentle. “Why what, Kestrel?”

Her throat closed. Her eyes stung. She realized that she had forgotten the game . . . and that maybe this had been the emperor’s intention. She didn’t want to ask her question. Yet she couldn’t help it . . . or the hurt evident in her choked voice. “Why did he choose you over me?”

“Ah.” The emperor rubbed his dry palms together and templed them with a little pat. “You’ve provided me with an entertaining evening so far. I feel I owe you something in exchange. So: the truth. Trajan wasn’t my friend—not at first. He was necessary for what I wanted. Military prowess. Imperial expansion. I, in turn, was an opportunity for what he wanted, which was nothing less than for his daughter to one day rule the empire. An understandable ambition. Or perhaps our friendship didn’t begin there, after all. We’ve known each other since well before your birth. He’s a man of rare intelligence. There’s plea sure in finding one’s equal. Perhaps things began with that. As to how it has grown . . .” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s because he knows how I am with every one else, and knows that I’m not like that with him. I value Trajan. Ultimately, when he held your treasonous letter in his hand and saw how you had lied to him, the choice between me and you was the choice between someone who loves him and someone who didn’t.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

The emperor patted her frozen hand. “I suggest that we not discuss your father.”

He played his tile.

The air reeked of sulfur and scorched horseflesh. The screams were so many and so loud that Arin couldn’t really hear them. Just noise. His ears buzzed.

Valorians floundered in their blood on the broken road. Ranger arrows continued to furrow the sky. A blasted paving stone, Arin saw, had smashed into a Herrani soldier’s face. Her body lay half in the mud, half where the road had been.

Arin couldn’t spot the general. The Valorian army was vast. Only a few ranks of cavalry had been decimated in the blast.

Another unit of Valorian cavalry moved forward into position.

Kestrel was losing. Earlier, the emperor had delayed in order to unsettle her, to revel in it, to spear her like a worm and watch her writhe. Kestrel’s tactic of delay was different. She took as much time as possible to draw the game out. Earlier, she’d wanted the game to be over quickly. Now she needed more time.

The four shiny tiles in the boneyard winked at her. She knew their values. The wolf—she could use that if it were in her hand. Or even the bee.

Her frustration rose.

The tears had dried on her cheeks, the skin tight with salt. She couldn’t help returning to what the emperor had said about her father. The memory of how her father had told her that she’d broken his heart.