Page 25 of The Winner's Curse
“I hope you see the irony in what you have just said.”
He smiled.
Kestrel said, “You will stop trying to persuade me? No more lectures?”
“None.”
“I will play the piano whenever I like. You won’t say a word about it.”
His smile shrank. “Fine.”
“And”—her voice faltered—“if I marry, it will be to whom I choose.”
“Of course. Any Valorian of our society will do.”
This was fair, she decided. “I agree.”
The general patted her cheek with a damp hand. “Good girl.”
* * *
Kestrel walked down the hall. The night before her father’s return she had lain awake, seeing the three bee tiles behind her closed eyes, and Irex’s knife, and her own. She had thought about how powerful she had felt in one situation, and how helpless in the other. She studied her life like a draw of Bite and Sting pieces. She believed she saw a clear line of play.
But she had forgotten that it was her father who had taught her that game.
Kestrel had the feeling that she had just made a very bad bargain.
She passed by the library, then stopped and returned to its open door. Two house slaves were inside, dusting. They paused at the sound of her feet on the threshold and looked at her—no, peered, as if they could see all her mistakes imprinted on her face.
Lirah, a lovely girl with greenish eyes, said, “My lady—”
“Do you know where Smith is?” Kestrel wasn’t sure what had made her use Arin’s other name. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized she hadn’t shared his true one with anybody.
“At the forge,” Lirah said promptly. “But—”
Kestrel turned and walked toward the garden doors.
* * *
She thought that she had been seeking a light distraction. But when she heard the clang of metal on metal and saw Arin scraping a shaft of steel across the anvil with one set of tools and beating at it with another, Kestrel knew she had come to the wrong place.
“Yes?” he said, keeping his back to her. His workshirt was soaked through with sweat. His hands were sooty. He left the blade of the sword to cool on the anvil and moved to place another, shorter length of metal on the fire, which lined his profile with unsteady light.
She willed her voice to be her own. “I thought we could play a game.”
His dark brows drew together.
“Of Bite and Sting,” Kestrel said. More firmly, she added, “You implied you know how to play.”
He used tongs to stoke the fire. “I did.”
“You implied that you could beat me.”
“I implied that there was no reason a Valorian would want to play with a Herrani.”
“No, you worded things carefully so that what you said could be interpreted that way. But that isn’t what you meant.”
He faced her then, arms folded across his chest. “I have no time for games.” The tips of his fingers had black rings of charcoal dust buried under the nail and into the cuticle. “I have work to do.”
