The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(32)

It was you, she’d told him on the tundra. You’re the reason I was in that prison.

Yes.

Flatly, Kestrel said, “I sound very stupid.”

“You sound like the person who saved my life.” Sarsine touched three fingers to the back of Kestrel’s hand.

Kestrel remembered what that gesture meant. The knowledge opened inside her. The gesture was Herrani. It meant gratitude, or apology, or both.

She plucked at the loose dress. Her thoughts whirled. Her eyelids were heavy, lowering. She tried to imagine her former self. Enemy. Prisoner. Friend? Daughter. Spy. Prisoner again. “What am I now?”

Sarsine held both of Kestrel’s hands. “What ever you want to be.”

What Kestrel wanted to be was asleep. She wavered to the nearest piece of furniture—a divan, but the blackness came too quickly for her to see it for what it was. It was just an object that wasn’t the floor. She surrendered herself to it and sank swiftly into sleep. A cushion. A drawn coverlet. A dress that had been hers.

Someone had moved her back into her bed. Not Sarsine.

It was dark, but a low-lit lamp had been left. The chair was empty.

She lay curled on her side. Her back had healed into a dull ache. A few deep grooves stung. On the tundra, she hadn’t noticed pain much while the drugs were still in her. Then they weren’t, and the sickness and craving had been worse than anything else.

The ache gnawed through her back, coming up through her heart. She eyed the empty chair.

It occurred to her that after the last time, when she’d woken in the night, he’d decided to keep a better distance.

It occurred to her that the cold, small thing she felt was abandonment.

Which should have made her queasy with anger at her own confusion. Who was she, that she would strike the person who had saved her, and then feel bereft at his absence?

She wasn’t a person, really, but two. The Kestrel from before and the one now, each grating against the other like halves of a split bone.

She turned onto her other side, faced the wall, and reached to touch, for the first time, the ridges on her back. Wincing flesh. Long, clotted scales. Repulsed, she withdrew her hand and tucked it close to her breast.

Go back to sleep, she commanded herself.

She didn’t need the nighttime drug anymore. Not exactly. Yet the thought of it made her throb with longing. If offered a cup, she’d gulp it down.

The following day (at least, Kestrel thought it was the following day. It seemed entirely possible that she might have slept straight through more than one night), Sarsine helped her walk to the breakfast room. The table bore ilea fruit, bread, tea, milk, a set of iron keys, and one other item, muslin-wrapped. Large. A clunky-looking shape. Set right next to the keys at the head of a plate.

“For you,” Sarsine said.

“Is it Ninarrith?” The word came to her, alien in her mouth. From the ancient Herrani tongue, she remembered, which was so old that it was its own language. No one spoke it, though a few words lingered. Before the war, Herrani used to give each other gifts on Ninarrith. A holiday.

“Not yet.” Sarsine peered at her.

“What?”

“It’s an odd thing for you to remember.”

“I can remember some things.”

“It’s been eleven years since we’ve celebrated Ninarrith.”

“What does the word mean?”

“It’s two words, joined together. For ‘hundred’ and ‘candles.’ The holiday marks the last day the gods walked among us. We celebrate the hope of their return.”

Kestrel pulled at the memory, drew it out, thick and slow. “My nurse. She was Herrani. I celebrated with her in secret.” She wondered what would have happened if they’d been caught. Fear puddled in her heart. But there was no one to catch her now, no one here who’d punish her. “I loved her.” Yet she couldn’t remember the woman’s name anymore. Kestrel’s fear condensed into loss. She tried to smile, felt it waver.

“The tea will get cold.” Sarsine bustled unnecessarily with the pot, and Kestrel was grateful to have a moment for her expression to be what ever it was without the burden of someone else’s gaze.

She told Sarsine, “I’d like to celebrate Ninarrith with you.”

“If we’re here come then,” the woman said darkly, but shook her head when Kestrel peered at her. “Go on. Take them.”

The keys were heavy.

“They’re for the house,” Sarsine said. “A full set.”

Their weight on her palm. Something she thought she should remember.

She set the keys aside. “And this?” She ran a finger down a crease in the muslin of the clunky, wrapped thing.

Sarsine lifted her brows—a little sardonically, Kestrel thought, although the edge of the woman’s expression appeared less to do with Kestrel and more to do with a knowledge Sarsine had and Kestrel didn’t. The black brows, their quality of curbed cynicism, dry amusement . . . again Kestrel recognized him in her. He’d looked at Kestrel like that, before. She wondered why she felt comfortable with Sarsine and not with him, and if that ease was despite the resemblance, or because of it.

“See for yourself,” Sarsine said.

It was a dagger, bright beneath the opened muslin. Nestled in its scabbard, hooked to a slim belt. The leather of the belt was sturdy yet supple, not made with any particular elegance but with an eye for durability and comfort. There were few holes for the buckle’s tongue: a sign that the maker was assured of the belt’s fit. The scabbard, like the belt, was clean and strong in design, not given to the fanciful, though the ferrule was more severely pointed than Kestrel had seen before (yes, she realized. She knew daggers well). Not so sharp that it’d be likely to hurt the bearer, but pointed enough to do damage if the scabbard were gripped in the fist and driven into an opponent. And the scabbard wasn’t entirely without decoration. Just below its throat was a symbol: two rings, one fitted inside the other, distinguishable only because the raised texture of each was different. The symbol was echoed on the dagger’s hilt, in the round of the pommel, which was weighted enough to kill if brought down on certain parts of the skull. The hilt—Kestrel wrapped her fingers around it—was a perfect fit for her hand, cross guards hooked to protect the fingers.