The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(66)

She dropped her hand to her lap. She hadn’t been conscious of lifting it.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Arin said.

The crowd’s anger toward her had been unsettling, but not surprising. It wasn’t only that that troubled him. “What exactly did happen? With the mother and her baby.”

He tunneled fingers through his hair and rubbed the heel of his hand against his brow. “A misapprehension.”

“That you’re god-touched?” Kestrel had heard the rumors.

“No, that’s true. I am.”

She stared.

“But I don’t think the mother would be happy if she knew which god.” He glanced at her, catching her surprise. “My twentieth nameday was on the winter solstice.” The start of a new Herrani year. “But I’m older than that by the way Valorians reckon time. I was born nearly two full seasons before. My mother waited to name me. It was her right, the priests didn’t disagree. The nameday is meant to celebrate not only the baby, but also the mother’s recovery. Women recover differently, so the mother decides when. But in the year I was born, each new mother found a reason to wait until the year turned. You know, don’t you, the way we mark time? Each year belongs to one god in the pantheon of the hundred, each hundred years measures an era. The sign of each god rules once every hundred years. My year—my birth year—belonged to the god of death.”

“Arin,” she said slowly, seeing his anxiety, “do you think you’re cursed?”

He shook his head.

“Your mother named you in the following year. That’s your year, then, isn’t it? Herrani celebrate the nameday, not the birthday. It shouldn’t matter when you were born.”

“It matters.”

“Why?”

“My whole family. I survived. There’s a reason.”

“Arin—”

“I didn’t know then that I was marked.”

“Arin, the only reason for what you suffered is that my father is a monster and he wanted your country.”

“It’s not so simple. I hear the god of death in my head. He advises me, comforts me.”

Kestrel wasn’t sure what to believe.

“I don’t know what his blessing means,” Arin said. “Do you see? When I look at what happened to me. What I’ve done. What I do. His favor is hard.”

“Maybe the voice you hear is your own,” she said gently, “and you just don’t recognize it.”

He made no reply.

She didn’t like his belief that death had marked him. His fear—and pleasure—troubled her. A deep, alien satisfaction lurked in his eyes. “Isn’t it possible that you’ve made this up without meaning to?”

“I’m his. I know it.”

“And the baby in the village?”

Arin winced. “It would have been a sin to deny the mother. I couldn’t. You understand, don’t you? I should have told her, but if I had and she withdrew her request, that might catch the god’s attention, and what might he do then? If she’d known it was the god of death, she never would have asked.”

Kestrel tried to set aside his intricate understanding of cause and effect. It felt beyond her, and dangerous, operating on the whims of an unpredictable deity. “The mother knew whose blessing she sought,” she said. “It can’t be that hard to guess your age, give or take a year. Which god ruled your nameyear?”

“Sewing.”

She squinted, then laughed.

He smiled a little, yet said, “You shouldn’t laugh.”

She laughed harder.

“Actually, I sew quite well.”

“Perhaps. But you don’t exactly seem like the god of sewing’s chosen one. The baby’s mother knew what she asked for.”

The wind stirred the tree. Shadows moved in patterns around them.

Kestrel’s heart was in her throat even before she knew what she’d say. “Would you do what your mother did? Would you delay the naming of your child for the favor of one god or another?”

There was a startled silence. “My child.” Arin tried the words, exploring them. She heard in his voice what she’d seen on his face in the village as he’d held the baby.

She looked at the tree. It was a tree. A leaf, a leaf. Some things just are. They don’t signal other meanings. They aren’t like a god, casting its meaning over an entire year, or like a conversation, which is itself and also all the things that aren’t said.

Her swift heart scurried along.

“It wouldn’t be up to me,” he said finally. “It would be my wife’s choice.”

She met his eyes. He touched her hot cheek.

A tree was not a tree. A leaf, not a leaf. She understood what he didn’t say.

She stood. “Come, the stream is amazing. Aren’t you thirsty? Your horse has better sense than you.” A smile. Teasing . . . a little shy, too, yet discovering a newfound safety in showing shyness. She held out her hand.

He took it.

The army camped in the forest on the height of the hills outside Errilith’s manor. Another stream coursed through the trees, wide and rough. It fed over rocks and went down deep. Kestrel went with the women soldiers to bathe. She thought about Sarsine, wishing she had the woman’s steady, clear way of seeing things. With a twinge of guilt, Kestrel realized that Sarsine had no way of knowing how or why Kestrel had disappeared from Arin’s house. Kestrel had been incapable of leaving any word behind and now it was too late. A message, no matter how obliquely worded, could be intercepted and understood. She imagined her father discovering exactly where she was. Her stomach shrank.