The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(9)

The senator’s eyes snapped to Kestrel. She stood only a few feet away. “Guard,” he said to the woman who’d cut Kestrel’s skirts on the first day. “Keep your prisoners in line.”

The woman laid a heavy hand on Kestrel’s shoulder. The weight settled, gripping hard.

“Time for dinner,” the guard said.

Kestrel thought of the drug in the soup and longed for it. She let herself be led away.

Her father knew full well what the prison camp was like. He was General Trajan, the highest-ranking Valorian save the emperor and his son. He knew about his country’s assets and weaknesses—and the camp was a huge asset. Its sulfur was used to make black powder.

Even if the general didn’t know the details of how the camp was run, what did it matter? He’d given her letter to the emperor. She’d heard his heart thump calmly as she’d wept against his chest. It had beaten like a perfectly wound clock.

Someone was stabbing her. Kestrel opened her eyes. She saw nothing but the low black ceiling of her cell.

Another prod against her ribs, harder.

A stick?

Kestrel climbed out of gooey sleep. Slowly—it hurt to move, she was a tangle of bones and bruises and blue rags—she pulled herself up into a sitting position.

“Good,” came a voice from the hallway, clearly relieved. “We don’t have much time.”

Kestrel shifted toward the bars. There was no torchlight in the hallway, but it never got fully dark this far north, even in the dead of night. She could make out the senator, who pulled his cane back through the bars.

“My father sent you.” Joy rushed through her, popping and sparkling all over her skin. She could taste her tears. They ran freely down her face.

The senator gave her a nervous smile. “No, Prince Verex did.” He held out something small.

Kestrel kept crying, differently now.

“Shh. I can’t be caught helping you. You know what would happen to me if I were caught.” In his hand was a key. She took it. “This is for the gate.”

“Let me out, take me with you, please.”

“I can’t.” His whisper was anxious. “I don’t have the key to your cell. And you must wait until at least several days after I’ve left. Your escape can’t be tied to me. Do you understand? You’d ruin me.”

Kestrel nodded. She’d agree to anything he said, if only he wouldn’t leave her.

He was already backing away from her cell. “Promise.”

She wanted to scream at him to stop, she wanted to grab him through the bars and make him stay, make him get her out now. But she heard herself say, “I promise,” and then he was gone.

She sat for a long time looking at the key on her palm. She thought about Verex. Her fingers curled around the key. She dug a hole in the dirt and buried it.

Curling up with her hands beneath her cheek, she rested her head right above the buried key. She tucked her knees in close and toyed with the knots that bound her cut dress to her legs. Kestrel’s mind, though still sticky and slow, began to work. She didn’t sleep. She began to plan—a real plan, this time—and as she arranged the different possibilities there was a part of her that reached for Verex in her mind. She embraced her friend. She thanked him. She dropped her head to his shoulder, breathing deeply. She was strong now, she told him. She could do this. She could do it because she knew that she hadn’t been forgotten.

The senator left. There were several lean, thirsty days. Once Kestrel caught the guard in charge of the women prisoners watching as she spilled her drugged water to the dirt, but the guard just gave her the sort of look a mother gives a misbehaving child. Nothing was said.

It worried Kestrel to grow weaker than she already was. She wasn’t sure how she’d survive the tundra in her condition. But she needed to keep her wits about her. She was lucky it was summer. The tundra was brimming with fresh water. It was full of life. She could raid birds’ nests. Eat moss. She could avoid the wolves. She could do anything, as long as she got out of here.

Her body didn’t like being weaned off the drugs. She shook. Worse, she craved the nighttime drug. In the morning, it wasn’t so hard to pretend to eat and drink, but at twilight she wanted to gulp every thing down. Even the thought of it made her throat dry with desire.

She waited as long as she could for the senator’s sake. One warm night in her cell, she untied two lengths of rope from around her legs. She adjusted her makeshift trousers, which were held together with the remaining knots the guard had tied on Kestrel’s first day in the camp. The trousers looked more or less the same as they had before.

Kestrel knotted her two pieces of rope together. She tied them with the strongest knot her father had taught her to make. She tugged at the new length—about as long as four of her hands, from fingertips to wrist. It held. She curled it up and shoved it down her dress.

Tomorrow would be the day.

Kestrel made her move after the prisoners returned from the mines.

In the fuzzy, greenish twilight, Kestrel pretended to take her meal. Her heartbeat still held a trace of the morning drug; it tripped over itself. Then it seemed to steady, pulse strong. Kestrel should have been nervous, but she wasn’t. She was sure. This would work. She knew that it would.

The silver-braided guard led Kestrel and the other female prisoners into their block of cells. They turned down Kestrel’s hallway. Unseen, Kestrel slipped the knotted rope from her dress. She made a fist around it and let that fist rest against her thigh in the shadows. The guard imprisoned women one by one. Then, her back turned, she stood before Kestrel’s cell and unlocked it.