The Winner's Kiss (21 page)

Protective
. That was the word for Sarsine's furrowed brow, her gentle mouth.

“Does something else trouble you?” she asked. “You can talk to me. I can keep a secret.”

Kestrel felt her eyes glitter. She started and stopped and finally said, “I don't know how to say what's wrong. I don't know anything.”

“I'm your friend. That much, you can know for certain.” Sarsine touched Kestrel's cheek, letting silence be a comfort. Then she blew out the light.

But Kestrel couldn't sleep. Sarsine was an eerily quiet sleeper. Kestrel was used to Jess, and remembered how her friend would kick. Jess muttered as she dreamed. Kestrel missed her, remembered and missed her at the same time, which made her wonder if memory is always a kind of missing. The pillow was hot and damp beneath her cheek.

Kestrel imagined a melody. A tight rhythm, each note crisp and clean. She imagined how she'd play it. The control. Little bright pops of sound. She focused on that, because if she didn't, she knew where her thoughts would go next . . . though as soon as she glimpsed what she'd have to avoid, it rose up within her in full being.

Jess's rejection. It had been in Jess's townhome in the Valorian capital. Fawn-colored curtains. Kestrel couldn't remember all the exact words, but she knew now why the friendship had broken. She heard herself quietly saying
the
very things that Jess would never forgive, saw her former self choosing against her own people, her friends, her father.

He has done this to you,
Jess had accused.

No one has made me change.

But you have
.

Kestrel turned onto her other side. Arin had been in the queen's city then. She knew that now.

She sat up, flung the sheet aside.

It was not natural. It wasn't possible that she'd given up so much. And for what?

She was ready to believe in enchantments. How else could it be that her body still felt the pull of Arin, seemed to remember him all too clearly when her mind didn't, and sent her to his empty bed, sealed her between his sheets, made her care where he went and what he risked and what he did and with whom?

She reached for her set of keys.

Chapter 17

She went swiftly through the dark house, her feet bare and noiseless on the tiles, the carpet, the steps. Up one flight, hand skimming the balustrade. At the landing, her palm spun around the newel. She went left. She knew Arin's home well.

Knew it now, knew it then. She felt time layer. The present slipped over the past.

She'd never taken this path before. But she'd thought about it.

She flipped through the keys, found the right one, set it into the outermost door of Arin's suite, and opened it.

She stepped into white light. It startled her, seemed hallucinatory, impossible, as if she'd dropped into a silver pond. But then she glanced up and saw a skylight above the entry way. The moon hung low and large. Though the oil lamp sconces were unlit, the hallway was almost as bright as day. At the other end of it: darkness.

A brief clinking sound came from the recesses of the suite.

She
drew closer to the shadowed end of the hallway, passed through a dark receiving room. She barked her thigh against a console table and swore under her breath.

Another hallway, a turn. Then . . . a soft glow. A lamp.

A liquid sound. A muffled thump. Glass on wood?

She stepped into the lamplit room.

Arin looked up from where he sat. His fingers tightened around the glass in his hand. He stared.

She flushed, realizing that she'd forgotten to throw a robe over her thin nightdress.

Or
had
she forgotten? Had she not decided in some way too quick for thought that this was exactly what she'd wanted? She glanced down at the shift's hem, which hit just below the knees. The cloth was as sheer as melted butter. Her flush deepened. She saw the expression on Arin's face.

He glanced away. “Gods,” he said, and drank.

“Exactly.”

That brought his gaze back. He swallowed, winced, and said, “It's possible that I've lost any claim to coherent thought, but I've no idea what you mean.”

“Those gods of yours.”

His dark brows were lifted. His eyes had grown round. The glass in his hand was a tumbler, the liquid a thumb's width high and deep green. It looked like the blood of leaves. He cleared his throat. Hoarsely, he said, “Yes?”

“Did you pray to them?”

“Kestrel, I am praying to them right now. Very hard, in fact.”

She shook her head. “Did you pray to your”—she rum
maged
through her memory—“god of souls?” She was ready to believe in a supernatural reason. It would explain his power over her.

He coughed, then gave a short, rasping laugh. “That god doesn't listen to me.” He set the tumbler next to the carafe on the table. He paused, thinking. In a new, slow tone, he said, “Except perhaps now.” He dropped his cheek into an open palm and rubbed fingers into one closed eye. He nodded at the chair across the table from him. “Would you like to sit?”

Now that she was here, she wasn't sure she actually wanted to get closer to him. Her pulse had gone erratic. “I'm fine here.”

“I'd really rather.”

“If I make you uncomfortable, why don't you leave?”

He laughed again. “Ah, no. No, thank you. Here.” He slid the glass across the table. The remaining liquid sloshed but didn't spill. When she sat, curious (what would the blood of leaves taste like?), he said, “You might want to try only a bit first.”

“That's not wine.”

“It decidedly is not.”

“What is it?”

“An eastern liquor. Roshar gave it to me. He said that if you drink enough of it, the dregs start to taste like sugar. I suspect a prank.”

“But you've no head for drink.”

He looked as startled as she felt. “Of all the things, you remember
that
.”

She had remembered something else, too, as she'd tried
to
sleep. She'd come to ask him about it, but the words stuck in her throat. Instead, she appraised him. “You seem clear-minded enough.”

“It's early. Still, I don't know. This conversation feels just shy of a delusion.”

She fiddled with the glass. “I want to understand a few things.”

“Ask me.”

She wasn't yet ready to share what she remembered. She set the glass down. “What did you tell the queen?”

“I told Inisha about you.”

“What, exactly?”

He hesitated. “I'm afraid to say.”

“I want you to.”

“You might leave.”

“I won't.”

He stayed silent.

She said, “I give you my word.”

“I told her that I belong to you, and no other. I said that I was sorry.”

She couldn't help the rush of plea sure . . . and jealousy. His words
did
make her want to leave. She felt so unalterably his. It was bewildering, because she didn't know him, not really, and he knew two halves of her that she couldn't fit together.

He was waiting for her to speak. He was so still. She realized he was holding his breath.

She said, “That's political suicide.”

He smiled a little.

“How did she respond?”

“
She said, ‘You overestimate your importance.' ”

“Is that why you're drinking?”

“Kestrel, you know why I am drinking.”

She looked into the shadowed corners of the room. Talking with him was like having a flower unfold inside her chest, then close up tight. Creep open. Collapse in on itself. Voice low, she said, “Why do you call her Inisha? That's not her name.”

“It's . . . her little name.” The pause made Kestrel think that he'd been translating a Dacran term in his mind before speaking it, but also that he'd been translating her question, and recognizing the implied intimacy it exposed between him and the queen. He held Kestrel's eyes. “There never would have been anything between her and me if I'd known the truth about you. I should have known it. I can't forgive myself for not knowing it. As it was . . . yesterday, in the garden, you asked if I used her for political gain. I didn't. I used her to forget about you. You prob ably don't want to know that. It's ugly. But I must tell you, because there's been too much hiding. More would break me.”

She looked at the green liquor left in the glass. It was green. It was liquid. This was a glass. To hide from her would break him. Simple things, so apparent, so not anything other than what they showed themselves to be. She dipped a finger into the liquor's dregs and touched it to her tongue. It burned.

Arin made a sound.

She glanced up. She didn't know where her voice had gone. She was nervous. Her flesh was resonant with the knowledge of what she wanted to understand and what she'd
come
here to find out. It was much riskier than what she'd already asked. She stood.

He watched her pace toward him.

She stopped just short of his chair and looked down at him. Her loose hair slipped over her shoulder. “I remember something. I'm not sure if it happened or not. Will you tell me?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“I remember lying with you on the lawn of the imperial palace's spring garden.”

He shifted. Lamplight pulsed over his face. He shook his head.

“I remember finding you in your suite.” This memory was coming to her now. It had a similar flavor as the last one. “I promised to tell you my secrets. You held a book. Or kindling? You were making a fire.”

“That didn't happen.”

“I kissed you.” She touched the hollow at the base of his neck. His pulse was wild.

“Not then,” he said finally.

“But I have before.” There was a rush of images. It was as if the melody she'd imagined while lying in the dark had been dunked in the green liquor. All the cold stops gained heat and ran together. It was easy to remember Arin, especially now. Her hand slid to his chest. The cotton of his shirt was hot. “Your kitchens. A table. Honey and flour.”

His heart slammed against her palm. “Yes.”

“A carriage.”

“Yes.”

“A balcony.”

Breath
escaped him like a laugh. “Almost.”

“I remember falling asleep in your bed when you weren't here.”

He pulled back slightly, searched her face. “That didn't happen.”

“Yes it did.”

His mouth parted, but he didn't speak. The blacks of his eyes were bright. She wondered what it would be like to give her body what it wanted. It knew something she didn't. Her heart sped, her blood was lush in her veins.

“The first day,” she said. “Last summer. Your hair was a mess. I wanted to sweep it back and make you meet my eyes. I wanted to see you.”

His chest rose and fell beneath her hand. “I don't know. I can't—I don't know what you wanted.”

“I never said?”

“No.”

She lowered her mouth to his. She tasted him: the raw burn of liquor on his tongue. She felt him swallow, heard the low, dry sound of it.

He pulled her down to him, tangled his hands in her hair, sucked the breath from her lips. She became uncertain whose breath was whose. He kissed her back, fingertips fanning across her face, then gone, nowhere. Then: a light touch along the curve of her hip, just barely. A stone skipping the surface of the water. “Strange,” he murmured into her mouth.

She wasn't listening. She was rippling, the sensation spreading wide. Stone on water, dimpled pockets of pressure. The wait for the stone to finally drop down.

Suddenly
she knew—or thought she knew—what he found strange as he traced where a dagger should have been. To see a part of her missing. She felt her missing pieces, the stark gaps. She was arrested by the thought (it pierced her, sharp and surreal) that she had become transparent, that if he touched her again his hand would go right through her, into air, into the empty spaces of who she was now.

She didn't want to be empty, didn't want to vanish. She wanted to be whole.

She said, “I want to remember you.”

An emotion flared in his face. He braced her hips, tugged her closer. His lids were heavy, eyes dark. His mouth was a wet gleam. She didn't recognize his expression. It was new. She leaned in and drank the newness of him.

Their kiss turned savage. She made it so. She felt his teeth, reveled in the sure knowledge that it had never been like this between them. Yet at the same time, she felt each kiss they'd shared before, felt them live inside this one. His mouth left hers, rasping down her neck. He buried his face in her skin.

She sought his mouth and found that he tasted different now. She was tasting the taste of her skin on his mouth. Coppery. She dipped her tongue into it again.

“Kestrel.”

She didn't answer him.

“This is a bad idea.”

“No,” she said. “It isn't.”

He pulled away, closed his eyes, and dropped his head to press his brow against her belly. She felt rich with the
words
he muttered against her nightdress. His mouth burned through the cloth.

His chair scraped back. He no longer touched her. “Not like this.”

“Yes. Exactly like this.” She tried to find the words to express how this helped, how he somehow mapped the country of herself, showed the ridges, the rise and valley of her very being.

“Kestrel, I think that you're . . . using me a little.”

She stopped, unpleasantly startled. It occurred to her that what he'd said was another version of what she'd been struggling to say.

“It's not, ah, a hardship.” He gave a rueful smile. “It's not that I don't want—” She'd never heard him stammer. Even with her untrustworthy memory, she knew this. You're easy to know, she wanted to say. Memories of him came quickly. It didn't hurt, not as much as she'd feared before, on the tundra, or in his empty bed. At least, it didn't hurt anymore. It was better. Better than . . . other things.