The Winner's Curse(58)

There was a silence. “I don’t understand.”

Kestrel shrugged. She shouldn’t care whether he understood or not.

“You would give up your music?”

Yes. She would.

“But your bargain with the general was for spring.” Arin still sounded confused. “You have until spring to marry or enlist. Ronan … Ronan would ask the god of souls for you. He would ask you to marry him.”

“He has.”

Arin didn’t speak.

“But I can’t,” she said.

“Kestrel.”

“I can’t.”

“Kestrel, please don’t cry.” Tentative fingers touched her face. A thumb ran along the wet skin of her cheekbone. She suffered for it, suffered for the misery of knowing that whatever possessed him to do this could be no more than compassion. He valued her that much. But not enough.

“Why can’t you marry him?” he whispered.

She broke her word to herself and looked at him. “Because of you.”

Arin’s hand flinched against her cheek. His dark head bowed, became lost in its own shadow. Then he slipped from his seat and knelt before hers. His hands fell to the fists on her lap and gently opened them. He held them as if cupping water. He took a breath to speak.

She would have stopped him. She would have wished herself deaf, blind, made of unfeeling smoke. She would have stopped his words out of terror, longing. The way terror and longing had become indistinguishable.

Yet his hands held hers, and she could do nothing.

He said, “I want the same thing you want.”

Kestrel pulled back. It wasn’t possible his words could mean what they seemed.

“It hasn’t been easy for me to want it.” Arin lifted his face so that she could see his expression. A rich emotion played across his features, offered itself, and asked to be called by its name.

Hope.

“But you’ve already given your heart,” she said.

His brow furrowed, then smoothed. “Oh. No, not the way you think.” He laughed a little, the sound soft yet somehow wild. “Ask me why I went to the market.”

This was cruel. “We both know why.”

He shook his head. “Pretend that you’ve won a game of Bite and Sting. Why did I go? Ask me. It wasn’t to see a girl who doesn’t exist.”

“She … doesn’t?”

“I lied.”

Kestrel blinked. “Then why did you go to the market?”

“Because I wanted to feel free.” Arin raised a hand to brush the air by his temple, then awkwardly let it fall.

Kestrel suddenly understood this gesture she’d seen many times. It was an old habit. He was brushing away a ghost, hair that was no longer there because she had ordered it cut.

She leaned forward, and kissed his temple.

Arin’s hand held her lightly to him. His cheek slid against hers. Then his lips touched her brow, her closed eyes, the line where her jaw met her throat.

Kestrel’s mouth found his. His lips were salted with her tears, and the taste of that, of him, of their deepening kiss, filled her with the feeling of his quiet laugh moments ago. Of a wild softness, a soft wildness. In his hands, running up her thin dress. In his heat, burning through to her skin … and into her, sinking into him.

He broke away, barely. “I haven’t told you everything,” he said. The carriage jostled, swaying the weight of his body against hers, then away again.

Kestrel smiled. “Do you have more imaginary friends?”

“I—”

A distant explosion rumbled through the night. One of the horses screamed. The carriage shook, knocking Kestrel’s head against the window frame. She heard the driver’s shout, the crack of a whip. The carriage ground to a halt. The hilt of Kestrel’s dagger jabbed her side.

“Kestrel? Are you all right?”

Dazed, she touched the side of her head. Her fingers came away wet.

There was a second explosion. The carriage jerked again as the horses shied, but Arin’s hand held Kestrel steady. She looked out the window, toward the city, and saw a faint glow in the sky. “What was that?”

Arin was silent. Then: “Black powder. The first explosion was at the city guards’ barracks. The second was at the armory.”

That might have been a guess, but it didn’t sound like one. Half of Kestrel’s mind knew exactly what it meant if Arin knew this, but the other half slammed a door on this knowledge, letting her understand only what it meant if he was correct.

The city was under attack.

Sleeping city guards had been killed.

Enemies were ransacking weapons from the armory.

Kestrel scrambled out the carriage door.

Arin was right behind her. “Kestrel, you should get back in the carriage.”