Page 40 of The Winner's Curse
“I doubt it,” she muttered, and told him to come near.
Arin did, slowly. He had the feeling he was not going to like this conversation.
“You spend a lot of time with Kestrel,” Enai said.
He shrugged. “I do what she asks.”
Enai held his gaze. Despite himself, he looked away first.
“Don’t hurt her,” the woman said.
It was a sin to break a deathbed promise.
Arin left without making one.
18
After Enai’s death, Kestrel sat in her rooms remembering how the woman had taught her to paint a tree by blowing through a hollow quill at a pool of ink on paper. Kestrel saw the white page. She felt the ache in her lungs, saw the black branches spreading, and thought this was what her grief felt like, digging roots and twigs into her body.
She had had a mother, and that mother was gone. Then she had had another mother, and that one was gone, too.
Daylight came and went and continued without Kestrel being truly aware that time was passing. She pushed away food that slaves brought her. She refused to read letters. She couldn’t even think of playing the piano, for it was Enai who had encouraged her to keep practicing after her mother’s death. She heard the memory of Enai saying what a pretty melody that was, and could Kestrel play it again? That memory became a refrain of its own: echoing, diminishing, returning. And then Kestrel saw again the skin and bone of Enai’s face, the coughed-up blood, and knew that she was to blame, that she should have insisted on a doctor earlier, and now Enai was dead.
It was late afternoon and she was sitting alone in her breakfast room, blankly staring out a window at bad weather, when she heard rapid, fierce footfalls striding toward her.
“Stop crying.” Arin’s tone was brutal.
Kestrel lifted fingertips to her cheek. They came away wet. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, her voice hoarse. The breakfast room was one into which men were not allowed.
“I don’t care.” He tugged Kestrel to her feet, and the shock of it forced her gaze to his. The blacks of his eyes were blown wide with feeling.
With anger. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop pretending to mourn someone who wasn’t your blood.”
His hand was iron around her wrist. She pulled free, the cruelty of what he had said bringing fresh tears to her eyes. “I loved her,” Kestrel whispered.
“You loved her because she did anything you wanted.”
“That’s not true.”
“She didn’t love you. She could never love you. Where is her real family, Kestrel?”
She didn’t know. She had been afraid to ask.
“Where is her daughter? Her grandchildren? If she loved you, it was because she had no choice, and there was no one else left.”
“Get out,” she told him, but he was already gone.
The light dimmed. The sky through the windows turned emerald. It was the first green storm of the season, and as Kestrel heard the wind pummel the house, she knew that Arin was wrong. He had wanted to punish her for months now. Hadn’t she bought him? Didn’t she own him? This was his revenge. That was all.
The rain drove nails against the windowpanes. The room grew almost black. Kestrel heard Arin’s voice again in her mind and felt suddenly broken. Even if she didn’t doubt her feelings for Enai, there had been truth in his words.
She didn’t notice him return. This storm was loud, the room was dark. She sucked in her breath when she realized he stood next to her. For the first time, it occurred to her to be afraid of him.
But he merely struck a match and touched it to the wick of a lamp. He was soaked with rain. His skin glittered with it.
When she looked at him, he flinched. “Kestrel.” He sighed. He rubbed a hand through his wet hair. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“You meant it.”
