The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(73)

“Return to your post. I’ll inform the general of your report.”

“Yes, sir.” The words came out in a relieved rush.

“Not quite yet.” The officer set the lamp down on the forest floor and backed away. “Pick up the lamp.”

Dread mounted in her throat. “Sir?”

“Pick up the lamp and show me your face.”

“But.” She swallowed. “The infection.”

“I want to see it. I’ll keep my distance.”

“The risk—”

“Soldier. Pick up the lamp. Show me your face.”

Trust me, she’d told Arin. She remembered the strength in her voice and tried to summon that strength again. She thought, fleetingly, that this must be what memory was for: to rebuild yourself when you lose the pieces.

Slowly, Kestrel walked toward the lamp. She kept her head down, though she didn’t think he could see her face yet—she’d seen nothing of his during the moment after he’d set the lamp at his feet, just before he’d backed away. She closed one eye: an old trick her father had taught her for night-fighting that involved torches or lamps. One eye adjusted to see by torchlight. One eye kept in reserve, to see in total darkness if the light went out.

“I don’t want anyone to see me,” she told the officer. “The disease has ruined my face.”

“Show me. Now.”

She grabbed the lamp and smashed it against a boulder.

He swore. Her dagger was in her hand. She heard him draw his sword.

I don’t want to kill, she’d told Arin long ago. Even if she’d wanted to, she’d fail. She felt the memory of failure, of her father watching while she couldn’t fight back, her arm sagging beneath the pressure of someone else’s sword.

“Who are you?” He advanced, his blade probing the shadows: darting, cautious, blind. His sight hadn’t yet adjusted.

But it would.

The officer would capture her and bring her to the general’s camp.

There’d be questions. She’d be made to answer. Pressed, split open along her weakest lines. She thought of the prison, her twilight drug, mud and agony. She imagined her father’s face as she was brought before him. She saw it in her memory. Her future. She saw it right now.

Pulse wild, stomach tight, she crouched to grasp a handful of soil. He heard her and turned. She flung the grit into his face.

A dirty trick, she heard her father say. Dishonorable.

But dirty tricks were her specialty.

She darted around the man, came up behind him, and slid the dagger’s tip into his back, just below the ribs. “Which code do you use to communicate with the general? Tell me.”

“Never.”

She dug a little harder. “I’ll kill you.”

He hooked a leg around hers and jerked hard. She toppled. Hit the ground. She scrambled to get up, and found a sword’s point at her throat.

“My turn to ask questions.” The officer kicked the dagger from her hand.

A bird sang. Morning was coming. Kestrel was dimly aware of this, and of the horse she had tethered and now would never untether. She imagined Arin, who wouldn’t be sleeping. He’d be watching the sky and the road. She felt the grass beneath his hand, damp with summer dew.

Half sitting, half crouching, she backed shakily away from the sword.

It followed. An axinax sword. She recognized the shorter blade, favored for fighting in forests. She shrank from it, felt a sharp rock dig into her back, and thought, oddly, of the piano. A whole passage burst into her mind, one that she hadn’t played in years but had loved for its dramatic swings from high to low registers. She had liked to cross her right hand over and drive the sound down into darkness. She didn’t have to stretch hard. Although Kestrel was small, she had long hands. Long arms.

Very good reach.

She groped the forest floor behind her and curled her fingers around the jagged rock that poked into her back. She swung it, smashing the man’s hand where he held the sword’s hilt.

He made a terrible sound. The sword fell. Its tip glanced off her thigh, slicing through her trousers. It struck the earth. Pain seared down her leg.

But she was up. Her fisted rock crunched into the man’s face. His head dented. Her fingers were greasy and warm. Liquid ran under the leather of her forearm guard.

He thudded down. She dropped the rock.

The birds were mad. There was a whole chorus of them now. Her thigh was hot, sticky. There was something meaty on her fingernails. Her hand was a glove of blood.

I don’t want to kill, she had told Arin. She slid into the memory and saw herself sitting in her music room across from Arin. An open window sighed on its hinges. Warm autumn air. Bite and Sting tiles, all faceup.

Her hands were shaking. She was going to come apart.

And if you do?

Her plan was already in near ruins.

Salvage the situation, then.

Look at the body. Go on. Make certain he’s dead.

He was.

Now yourself. Look.

Kestrel peeled back the torn flap of cloth at her thigh. Blood seeped, it hurt, but she thought that maybe it wasn’t too bad. Her leg could bear her weight.

She wiped her bloody hand in the dirt.

The tent, she told herself. Go.

She walked unsteadily to the officer’s small tent and entered.