Page 70 of The Winner's Curse
“Really? Where were you during the assault on the estate? I expected to find my second-in-command here. Instead, you were at a party.”
“Because I learned that a slave to the harbormaster would be there. He gave me valuable information. We still have to deal with the merchant ships, Cheat. Send me. Let me do this for you.” The need to please this man was clear on Arin’s face.
Cheat saw it, too. He sighed. “Take some fighters. You’ll find more at the docks. Seize all the ships or burn them. If even one leaves to alert the empire that we’ve taken the city, this is going to be a very short-lived revolution.”
“I’ll take care of it. They won’t leave the harbor.”
“Some might already have. The sailors on board will have heard the explosions.”
“All the more reason for them to wait until their shipmates on shore return.”
Cheat acknowledged this with a grimace of guarded optimism. “Go. I’ll mop up what’s left at the governor’s house.”
Kestrel thought of her friends. She stared at the blood on the floor. She wasn’t watching or listening as Arin strode toward her. Then the auctioneer said, “Her hands.”
She glanced up. Arin’s gaze flicked toward her fists. “Of course,” he said to the auctioneer, and Kestrel understood that they had just discussed the best way to threaten her.
Her arm went limp when Arin gripped it. She remembered the auctioneer in the pit, in the full heat of summer. This lad can sing, he had said. She remembered the man’s boot on her hand. The fact that the whole city knew her weakness for music. As Arin pulled her from the room, Kestrel thought about how this might be what hurt the most.
That they had used something she loved against her.
* * *
She had sworn to herself not to speak to Arin, but then he said, “You’re coming with me to the harbor.”
This surprised her into saying, “To do what? Why not lock me up in the barracks? It would be a perfect prison for your prize.”
He continued to walk her down the halls of her home. “Unless Cheat changes his mind about you.”
Kestrel imagined the auctioneer unlocking her cell door. “I suppose I’m no good to you dead.”
“I would never let that happen.”
“What a touching concern for Valorian life. As if you hadn’t let your leader kill that woman. As if you’re not responsible for the death of my friends.”
They stopped before the door to Kestrel’s suite. Arin faced her. “I will let every single Valorian in this city die if it means that you don’t.”
“Like Jess?” Her eyes swam with sudden, unshed tears. “Ronan?”
Arin looked away. The skin above his eye was beginning to blacken from where she had kicked him. “I spent ten years as a slave. I couldn’t be one anymore. What did you imagine, tonight, in the carriage? That it would be fine for me to always be afraid to touch you?”
“That has nothing to do with anything. I am not a fool. You sold yourself to me with the intention of betrayal.”
“But I didn’t know you. I didn’t know how you—”
“You’re right. You don’t know me. You’re a stranger.”
He flattened a palm against the door.
“What about the Valorian children?” she demanded. “What have you done with them? Have they been poisoned, too?”
“No. Kestrel, no, of course not. They will be cared for. In comfort. By their nurses. This was always part of the plan. Do you think we’re monsters?”
“I think you are.”
Arin’s fingers curled against the door. He shoved it open.
He led her to the dressing room, opened the wardrobe, and riffled through her clothes. He pulled out a black tunic, leggings, and jacket and thrust them at Kestrel.
