Free The Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkoski Page B

separated her rooftop garden from his. From a window in his suite, he’d seen the door open. He had waited, pulse rising. Moments like that, right before she had shut the door again, haunted him in the capital, made him imagine things about her. Lovely, tempting scenarios. He remembered how he’d even wondered if she could be Tensen’s Moth.
    â€œFirstsummer was about a month ago,” he heard himself saying.
    Javelin huffed and stamped. He curved his neck to whuffle Arin’s chest.
    Sarsine started to speak.
    â€œPlease leave,” Arin said. “I answered your question. I want to be alone. I need to think,” he added, though he wasn’t even sure what he was thinking.
    When she’d gone, Arin threaded fingers through the horse’s mane. Kestrel loved Javelin. She’d left him behind anyway.
    Arin remembered seeing her hand in Javelin’s mane, curling into the coarse strands. This made him remember the almost freakish length between her littlest finger and thumb as her hand spanned piano keys. The black star of the birthmark. He saw her again in the imperial palace. Her music room. He’d seen that room only once. About a month ago, right before Firstsummer. Her blue sleeves were fastened at the wrist.
    Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.
    Do you sing?
    Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him.
    A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason.
    She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.
    â€œI told you every thing I know,” said the messenger. Arin had gone to his childhood suite, feeling an anxiety verging on panic at the thought of not finding the man there, of having to track him down, of time lost . . . but the man had opened the outermost door almost immediately after Arin’s pounding knock.
    â€œI didn’t ask you the right questions,” Arin said. “I want to start again. You said that the prisoner reached through the bars of the wagon to give you the moth.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd you couldn’t really see her.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œBut you said she was Herrani. Why would you say that if you couldn’t
see
her?”
    â€œBecause she spoke in Herrani.”
    â€œPerfectly.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNo accent.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDescribe the hand.”
    â€œI’m not sure . . .”
    â€œStart with the skin. You said it was paler than yours, than mine.”
    â€œYes, like a house slave’s.”
    Which wasn’t very different from a Valorian’s. “Could you see her wrist, her arm?”
    â€œThe wrist, yes, now that you mention it. She was in chains. I saw the manacle.”
    â€œDid you see the sleeve of a dress?”
    â€œMaybe. Blue?”
    Dread churned inside Arin. “You think or you know?”
    â€œI don’t know. Things happened too fast.”
    â€œPlease. This is important.”
    â€œI don’t want to say something I’m not sure is true.”
    â€œAll right, all right. Was this her right hand or her left?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œCan you tell me
anything
about it? Did she wear a seal ring?”
    â€œNot that I saw, but—”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œShe had a birthmark. On the hand, near the thumb. It looked like a little black star.”
    â€œArin.” Roshar briefly squeezed his eyes shut, then regarded him with the slightly repelled, slightly fascinated look reserved for aberrations of nature, such as animals born with two heads. “This sounds—”
    â€œI don’t care how it sounds.”
    â€œYou’ve thought this kind of thing about her before.”
    â€œI should have trusted myself. She lied. I believed her. I shouldn’t have.”
    â€œArin, she’s dead.”
    â€œ Show me the