Free The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski Page A

she would hate
    ’S
    the scent of cere fl owers all her life, as she ruled the empire,
    as she bore her husband’s children. As she aged and the
    ghosts of her choices haunted her.
    THE WINNER
    There was a sudden sound. The slide of wooden cur-
    tain rings on the rod. Light brightened behind Kestrel.
    Someone was coming through the velvet.
    He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s
    balcony— close, closer still as she turned and the curtain
    swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against the
    frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray
    eyes, which were silver in the shadows.
    He was here. He had come.
    Arin.
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    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 irre-
    vocable 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 remem-
    bered nothing at all.
    “I can’t be seen with you,” she said.
    Arin’s eyes fl ashed. 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.
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    “The sea,” she managed to say. “You came by sea.”
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    “It seemed wiser than riding my horse to death through
    the mountains.”
    CRIME
    “ My horse.”
    ’S
    “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 en-
    THE WINNER
    tire 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 no-
    ticed, 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
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    saw him tip his head back against the window. “Kes-
    SKI
    O
    trel . . .”
    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.
    MARIE RUTK
    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