The Winner's Crime(18)

Arin.





8

Kestrel had forgotten. She had thought that she remembered only too well the lines of his face. The restless quality to how he would stand still. The way he looked fully into her eyes as if each glance was an irrevocable choice.

Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him? He looked at her, and she knew that she had remembered nothing at all.

“I can’t be seen with you,” she said.

Arin’s eyes flashed. He raked the curtain shut behind him. The closed-off balcony became deeply dark.

“Better?” he said.

Kestrel backed away until the heel of her shoe met the balustrade and her bare shoulder blades touched the glass. The air had changed. It was warm now. And scented, strangely, with brine.

“The sea,” she managed to say. “You came by sea.”

“It seemed wiser than riding my horse to death through the mountains.”

“My horse.”

“If you want Javelin, come home and claim him.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe you sailed here.”

“Technically, the ship’s captain did, cursing me the entire time. Except when I got sick. Then he just laughed.”

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I changed my mind.” Arin came to lean against the balustrade beside her.

It was too much. He was too close. “I’ll thank you to keep your distance.”

“Ah, the empress speaks. Well, I must obey.” Yet he didn’t move except to turn his head toward her. Light from the curtain’s seam cut a thin line down his cheek in a bright scar. “I saw you. With the prince. He seems bitter medicine to swallow, even for the sweets of the empire.”

“You know nothing of him.”

“I know you helped him cheat. Yes, I watched you. I saw you play at Borderlands. Others might not have noticed, but I know you.” His voice grew rough. “Gods, how can you respect someone like that? You’ll make a fool of him.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I won’t.”

Arin went quiet. “Maybe you won’t mean to.” He edged away, and that line of light no longer touched him. His form was pure shadow. But her sight had adjusted, and she saw him tip his head back against the window. “Kestrel…”

An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.

Something was tugging inside her. It yanked at her soul. Tell him, that part of her said. He needs to know.

Yet those words had a quality of horror to them. Her mind was sluggish to understand why, so caught it was in the temptation to tell Arin that her engagement had been the bargain for Herran’s freedom.

“I don’t want to talk about your fiancé.” Arin pushed away from the balustrade and stood tall enough to cast a shadow over her if there had been any light. “I seek information.”

“Gossip, Arin?” she said lightly, and toyed with her necklace in the dark until its fretful clicking made her let go.

“I’m looking for a Herrani servant. He’s missing.”

The memory of Thrynne welled up. Tell him. He needs to know. Those had been the tortured man’s words. “Who is he to you?” Kestrel asked.

“A friend.”

“You could ask the palace steward.”

“I’m asking you.”

She couldn’t believe it. The mere fact of Arin’s asking was so reckless. No matter that his trust didn’t extend quite so far as to admit the truth of the situation: that Thrynne had been a spy sent to gather information on the emperor, and must be assumed caught. It was nevertheless clear that Arin was the sort of person who would dash safety to pieces. No one with any sense of self-preservation would inquire after the whereabouts of his spy from the emperor’s future daughter-in-law, who had already betrayed Arin once.

But self-preservation had never been Arin’s strong suit.

What would he do with the truth of Kestrel’s engagement?

Where is my honor in all this? he’d asked her once. She didn’t know what honor was to him. She thought that it wasn’t the same as her father’s: monumental, marble-cut. No, Arin’s honor was alive. She sensed the way it moved. She couldn’t see its face—maybe it had many faces—but she believed that Arin’s honor was the kind that would hold its breath and bite its lip until it bled.

If she told Arin the truth, he’d wreck the peace she’d bought. It almost didn’t matter whether he loved her. Arin wouldn’t let someone imprison herself so that he could go free. He’d find a way to end her engagement … and she would let him.

She’d felt it before, she felt it now: the pull to fall in with him, to fall into him, to lose her sense of self.

There would be scandal, and then there’d be war.

Kestrel must keep her secret. She was going to have to lie with her whole self. She could be cold. She could be distant. Even with him.