Page 58 of The Winner's Crime
“You’ve stopped,” Arin murmured in her ear.
Her heart still hammering, Kestrel spun so abruptly to face Arin that she jostled into him. His hand caught her shoulder.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
“You promised. One game.”
“Not here. Not now.”
Arin’s grip tightened. “Then you forfeit. I win.”
Her heartbeat changed in her ears. It rode high at his touch. There was temptation, and then there was … something else, that might have been the smart thing if she hadn’t forgotten it.
That something else shape-shifted. It hardened inside her. It pushed for yes, spurned no, and called Kestrel a coward. It joined hands with temptation.
“I never forfeit,” she said. He smiled. She led him to a far corner with a cluster of tables. The tables were all occupied. A pair of Valorian merchants sat at the one farthest from the senators. Kestrel went up to the merchants. “Give us your seats,” she said, and dropped the purse she’d stolen from the harbormaster onto the table. The merchants looked at it, looked at her, and decided to drink on their feet. They took the purse and left.
“Blunt, but effective,” Arin commented as Kestrel claimed a chair, her back to the courtiers. Arin remained standing. She thought he might say something teasing. That steely mirth hadn’t quite left him, but it had softened during their push through the tavern. He looked a little tired, like a runner done running. Whatever thought had seized him in the alleyway was gone … or had gone away enough. She couldn’t see it anymore on his torn face.
His dear face, dear to her, dearer still. How could she love his face more for its damage? What kind of person saw someone’s suffering and felt her heart crack open even wider, even more sweetly than before?
There was something wrong with her. It was wrong to want to touch a scar and call it beautiful.
Arin wasn’t looking at her anymore. He’d been distracted.
Kestrel followed his gaze to see a black-eyed redhead at a nearby table giving Arin a cool look. His expression didn’t change, but something inside him did. Kestrel felt it. It twisted her heart.
When Arin’s attention returned to Kestrel, she examined the splintery surface of the table. “I’m going to get a Bite and Sting set,” he said. “And wine. Should I get wine?”
The answer to that was a clear no. Kestrel needed all her wits about her for a game she shouldn’t—couldn’t—lose. But she felt suddenly miserable, and realized that she’d been nervous ever since Arin had found her by the river. She said yes.
He hesitated, like he might counsel her against that choice. Then he left the table.
The crowd swallowed him. Kestrel couldn’t see where he had gone.
* * *
Arin didn’t like to leave her for long. She was going to attract attention. It was her nature. But when he returned with wine and a game set, she was alone and quiet: an almost eerie silence in the tavern’s storm.
He saw her before she did him. He saw that she was unhappy. He realized that this was what had arrested him by the canal when he’d thought she was a nameless maid: the sense that this stranger had lost something as precious to her as what he had lost was to him.
In his mind, Arin lost to Kestrel at Bite and Sting, and let all of his questions slip away.
In his mind, he said, Tell me what you want.
And she said, Leave this city.
She said, Take me with you.
Kestrel lifted her gaze. As he met her eyes—an extremely light brown, the lightest shade before brown becomes gold—Arin knew that he was a fool. A thousand times a fool.
He must stop. They were painful, these waking dreams. Why did he allow himself to think them? They skewed everything. Arin was ashamed now, remembering how he’d pretended—even if for a moment—that Kestrel was the Moth. He shoved that lovely little lie from his head. He refused to think of it again. Thoughts like this made him feel split in two, just as his face was: one side fine and the other sore and throbbing.
He sat, and set the game, wine bottle, and glass on the table. He poured.
“Only one glass?” she said.
He handed it to her. “I’ve no head for wine. How is it?”
