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

The boy tugged madly back, but it was ridiculous, he knew how pathetic his effort was. He squawked and flailed. The soldier laughed. He shook the boy. Not very hard, more as if trying to wake the child up. Come along nicely, the soldier said in a language that the boy had studied yet never expected to use. And you won’t get hurt.

Not getting hurt was very important. The mere promise of it made the child go limp with ugly relief. He followed the soldier.

He was led to the atrium. Every one was there, the servants, too. His parents didn’t see him arrive. He was so quiet. Later, he couldn’t say how things would have been different if it hadn’t been his sister, standing at the far side of the room, who noticed him first. He wasn’t sure how he could have changed what happened after. All he knew was that at the most important moment, he had done nothing.

He’d heard there were women in the Valorian army, but the soldiers in his house that night were men. Soldiers stood on either side of his sister. She was tall, imperious. Her loose hair fell around her shoulders like a black cape. As Anireh’s gaze fell upon him and her gray eyes flashed, the boy realized that he’d never before believed that she loved him. Now he knew she did.

She said something low to the Valorians. The boy heard the tone of it, musical in its mockery.

What did you say? a soldier demanded.

She said it again. The soldier seized her, and the boy understood with a sick horror that this was his fault. It was, somehow, all his fault.

They were taking his sister away. Soldiers were taking her toward a cloakroom used in winter when his family had evening guests. He’d hidden in there before. It was close and dark and airless.

This was the point in the story when Arin wished he could reach through time and put his hands over the boy’s small ears. He wanted to deafen the sounds. Close your eyes, he wanted to tell that child. The echo of an old panic fluttered in Arin’s chest. It was crucial that he imagine how he would stop the boy from witnessing what happened next.

Why did Arin do this to himself? It made him ache, this effort to try to change his memory of that night. It was compulsive. Sometimes he thought it hurt more than the actual truth. Yet even now, more than ten years after the Valorian invasion, Arin couldn’t help thinking with desperate fervor about what he should have done differently.

What if he’d called out?

Or begged the soldiers to let his sister go?

What if he’d run to his parents, who were still unaware of his presence in the room, and stopped his father from snatching a Valorian dagger from its sheath?

Or his mother. Surely he could have saved his mother. It wasn’t her nature to fight. She wouldn’t have done it if she’d known he was there. He’d stared as she lunged at the soldier holding his sister. Soldiers cut his father down. The cloakroom door shut behind Anireh. A dagger sliced his mother’s throat. There was a bright plume of blood.

Arin’s ears were roaring. His eyes were dry rocks.

After the soldiers had yanked him shrieking off his mother’s body, he was led with the servants into the city. The royal palace burned on its hill. He saw the corpses of the royal family hanging in the market, including the prince that Anireh was supposed to marry. It was possible that his sister was still alive, wasn’t it? But two days later Arin would see her body in the street.

Even though it didn’t seem like anything worse could happen, Arin swallowed his sobs, was silent in his terror. He did as he was told. Come along nicely, the soldier had said.

He saw an armored man stalking among his troops. Later, Arin would learn that the general had been young at the time of the invasion. But that night the man had seemed ancient, enormous: a flesh-and-metal monster.

Arin imagined how, if he could, he would kneel before the boy he had been. He’d cradle himself to his chest, let the child bury his wet face against his shoulder. Shh, Arin would tell him. You will be lonely, but you’ ll become strong. One day, you will have your revenge.

What had happened with Kestrel was not the worst thing. It did not compare.

Arin thought about this as his ship, with the rest of his victorious fleet, dropped anchor in Herran’s moonlit bay. He ran a thumb along the scar that cut down through his left brow and into the hollow of his cheek. Rubbed at the line of raised flesh. A recent habit.

No, it didn’t hurt anymore to think about Kestrel. He’d been a fool, but he’d had to forgive himself for worse. Sister, father, mother. As for Kestrel . . . Arin had some clarity on who he was: the sort of person who trusted too blindly, who put his heart where it didn’t belong.

She might even be married to the Valorian prince by now. She was playing her games at court. No doubt winning. Maybe her father would write to her from the front and ask for more of the same excellent military advice she had given him when she’d condemned hundreds of people in the eastern plains to starvation.

Arin used to clutch his head in disgusted wonder at how fascinated he’d once been by the daughter of the Valorian general. He used to sting at her rejection. Now, though, the thought of Kestrel gave him a cold relief. Ice on a bruise.

Gratitude. Because she meant nothing to him. Wasn’t that a gods-given gift, to remember her and feel nothing? Or if he felt something, it was really no more than the way it was to touch his scar and marvel at its long ridge, the nerve-dead skin. Arin knew that some things hurt forever, but Kestrel wasn’t one of them. She was a wound that had finally healed clean.