The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(16)

Arin shot him a sidelong look.

“Arin, you injure me. Torture is the furthest thing from my mind, I assure you. People love talking to me. I promise I’ll ask my questions very, very nicely.”

Arin held his breath underwater until his lungs ached, then broke the surface of the bath. His bathing room echoed with the sound of splashed water. Dirty lather lapped around his knees. He touched his side, and his fingers came away pink. The cut along his ribs was bleeding again. It was too shallow to stitch.

He found himself wondering how many scars the general had. Arin’s lungs burned as if he was still holding his breath, which made him realize that he was, and that it hurt to feel such hatred and know that no scar could be enough, that the general could suffer no pain that would ever make Arin feel better.

The general and his daughter didn’t look alike. Arin remembered how he’d hated to notice this during his first months as Kestrel’s slave. He’d wanted to see the traces of that man in her, and it had unnerved him that he couldn’t. There was something similar about the eyes . . . but hers were a much paler brown. Arin wasn’t even sure he could call them brown. Honey wasn’t brown. And the shape. Different, too. Slightly tipped up at the corners. Arin remembered making such comparisons, and how his desire to see something in her that he could hate shifted into self-disgust at far too much attention paid. Then, slowly, a curiosity to find her so different. And then came another emotion, one both softer and harder . . .

Arin got out of the bath. He got dressed, and got out of his rooms.

Sarsine stopped him on the stairway that ran down from the west wing. He smiled. “You look better.”

She crossed her arms. “It’s been a week.”

His brow crinkled. “Since what?”

“Since that messenger came.”

“Oh. I forgot.”

“You’ve been busy.” Her tone was dangerously even.

“I’ll talk with him now.”

“You’ve been busy,” she repeated, “throwing people off cliffs.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“So it’s not true?”

“What do you want from me, Sarsine?”

“You blamed Kestrel for changing, but you’ve changed, too.”

His voice was hard. “This is not the same.”

“Isn’t it?”

He turned his back on her. He jogged down the stairs, the tempo of his boots beating fast and sure.

“I tried to get here as soon as I could,” said the messenger. He was a short man, all knobby wrists and elbows and knees. An oddly tiny nose. There were bags under his eyes. The irises were greenish, which reminded Arin of Tensen.

They sat in the receiving room of Arin’s childhood suite. He didn’t like being there. He looked at his childhood instruments, still hung on the wall. He remembered Kestrel touching them, her fingers plucking a string. He saw the birthmark on her right hand, in the middle of the soft web between forefinger and thumb. It had been like a little black star.

Arin should take those instruments down. He should get rid of them.

“It happened about a month ago,” the messenger said.

Arin’s attention snapped back to him.

“Someone gave me something.” The man knotted his hands together. “She told me to give it to you, but I don’t have it anymore.”

“What was it?”

“A masker moth.”

“What?” Arin’s voice was sharp.

“One of those Valorian moths. The kind that change color. A prisoner gave it to me.”

Arin’s heart picked up speed. “Who gave it to you?”

“A Herrani woman.”

“That’s not possible.” Tensen had told Arin that the Moth, his valued spy in the capital, was Risha. No one could mistake Risha for a Herrani. Like all easterners, her skin was brown, a much darker shade than even Arin’s, which was tanned from years in the sun.

“I know what I saw,” the messenger said.

“Tell me every thing.”

“I take care of horses along the road that runs north of the Valorian capital. A prison wagon stopped. They go by sometimes. I was watering the horses while the guards were stretching their legs. The woman called to me. She was reaching through the bars, and asked me to give you the moth, but the guards saw. That’s why I don’t have the moth anymore. It got crushed. The guards were rough with me. Her, too.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. Anyway, they drove off.”

“That’s it?”

The man shifted uncomfortably at Arin’s tone. “Should I not have come?”

“No, yes.” Arin briefly squeezed his eyes shut. His pulse was going too fast. “You were right to come.”

“I’m sorry I lost the moth.”

“I don’t care about that. Just . . . she spoke to you in Herrani?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

The messenger gave him an odd look. “I can recognize my own language. She was mother-taught, like you and me.”

I don’t speak Herrani, he remembered Risha saying. She’d also never said that she was the spy. Arin had taken Tensen’s word for it. “You said you couldn’t see. What couldn’t you see?”