The Winner's Curse(87)

She had baited her own trap, too.

Kestrel moved on. She took the stairs down to the work-rooms. The lower level was warmed throughout by the kitchens’ constant fires. She passed the still room. The laundry, with its sails of hung sheets. She saw people busy in the scullery, where tubs were filled with pots and steaming water, and bare, copper-lined sinks waited for the washing of porcelain dining sets.

She walked past the scullery, then paused to feel a chill breeze curl around her ankles. A draft. Which meant that somewhere nearby, a door had been left open to the outside.

Was this Kestrel’s chance to leave?

Could she take it?

Would she?

She followed the current of cold air. It led her to a dry pantry, whose door was ajar. Grain sacks were stacked inside.

But this was not the source of the draft. Kestrel continued down the empty hallway. At its end, a pale blade of light cut across the floor. Cold flowed in.

The door to the kitchen yard was open. A few snowflakes swirled into the hallway and vanished.

Maybe now. Maybe now was the moment when she would flee.

Kestrel took another step. Her heartbeat trembled in her throat.

Then the door sang wide on its hinges, light flooded the hallway, and Arin walked in.

She bit back a gasp. He, too, was surprised to see her. He straightened suddenly under the weight of the grain sack over his shoulder. Quick as thought, his eyes went to the open door. He set down the sack and locked the door behind him.

“You’re back,” she said.

“I’m leaving again.”

“To steal more grain from a captured country estate?”

His smile was perfectly mischievous. “Rebels must eat.”

“And I suppose you use my horse in these battles and thefts of yours.”

“He’s happy to support a good cause.”

Kestrel huffed and would have turned to wend her way back through the workrooms, but he said, “Would you like to see him? Javelin?”

She stood still.

“He misses you,” said Arin.

She said yes. After Arin had stacked his final load of grain in the pantry and given her his coat, they walked out into the kitchen yard and crossed its slate flagstones to reach the grounds and the stables.

It was warm inside the stables. It smelled like hay, leather, grassy manure, and somehow sunshine, as if it had been stored here for the winter. Irex’s horses were sleek beauties. High-spirited. Several of them stamped in their stalls as Kestrel and Arin entered, and another tossed its head. But Kestrel had eyes for only one horse.

She went straight to his stall. He towered over her, but lowered his head to push against her shoulder, breathe gustily over her uplifted hands, and lip the ends of her hair. Kestrel’s throat tightened.

She had been lonely. She thought that loneliness shouldn’t hurt so much—not when there was everything else. But here was a friend. Running a hand down Javelin’s velvet nose reminded her of how few she had.

Arin had been hanging back, but now he came near. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I need to ready him to ride. Daylight’s fading. I have to leave.”

“Of course you do,” she said, and was horrified to hear the choked sound of her voice. She felt Arin looking at her. She felt the question in his gaze, the way he saw her near tears, and this hurt, too, more than the loneliness, because it made her know that her loneliness had been for him, that it had sent her wandering through the house, looking for yet another little lesson.

“I could stay,” he said. “I could leave tomorrow.”

“No. I want you to go now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, but what about what I want?”

The softness in his voice made her lift her gaze. She would have answered him—how, she wasn’t sure—if Javelin’s attention hadn’t turned to him. The stallion began nuzzling Arin as if he were the horse’s favorite person in the world. Kestrel felt a pang of jealousy. Then she saw something that sent thoughts of jealousy and loneliness and want right out of her head, and just made her mad. Javelin was nibbling a certain part of Arin, whuffling around a pocket exactly the right size to hold a—

“Winter apple,” Kestrel said. “Arin, you have been bribing my horse!”

“Me? No.”

“You have! No wonder he likes you so much.”

“Are you sure it’s not because of my good looks and pleasing manners?” This was said lightly—not quite sarcastically, yet in a voice that nevertheless told Kestrel that he doubted he possessed either of these things.

But he was pleasing. He pleased her. And she could never forget his beauty. She had learned it all too well.

She blushed. “It’s not fair,” she said.