Page 61 of The Winner's Crime
“Arin … what I said earlier, about the wound—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” He sat, and repositioned his tiles.
“But I need to tell you. Arin, your face—”
“I don’t care about my face!”
Kestrel shut her mouth. Arin refused to look up at her. With a nauseating dread that she didn’t yet understand, she sank into her chair. “Why were those senators drinking to me?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you know why?”
Arin met her gaze with an unflinching stare. “Play.”
“You’ve no glass after all.” She poured wine into her own. She spilled a few drops. She wiped them away with her thumb, rubbing hard at the glass, and offered it to him. He ignored her.
So Kestrel played, and watched Arin toss down tiles and claim others. She felt the pulse of his fury. It was worse than when he’d left the table. It had grown fierce, practically solid. It was the kind of anger that comes close to trembling. The game slipped from Kestrel’s control.
In the end, she welcomed the loss. She would tell Arin the truth. She swore to herself that she would. Everything could be explained. She was afraid of it, afraid of the anger in him now, and of what he would do with the truth. But she would give it to him. She could no longer bear not to.
Arin said, “Did you tell the general to poison the horses of the eastern plainspeople?”
“What?”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” she said haltingly, “but—”
“Do you realize what you’ve done? Hundreds of people—innocent people—died in the exodus to the queen’s city.”
“I know. It was a horrible thing—”
“Horrible? Children starved while their mothers wept. There are no words for that.”
Guilt swelled in her throat. “I can explain.”
“How do you explain murder?”
“How do you?” she said with a flash of her own anger. “People died because of you, too, Arin. You have killed. Your hands aren’t clean. The Firstwinter Rebellion—”
“This is not the same.”
He seemed to choke on his words, and Kestrel was appalled at how everything she said went so wrong. “I meant that you had your reasons.”
“I can’t even speak of my reasons. I can’t believe that you’d bring them up, that you would compare…” His voice shook, then dropped low. “Kestrel. The empire’s only reason is dominion. And you have helped.”
“I had no choice. My father would’ve—”
“Thought you weak? Disowned you for not being his warrior girl, ready with the perfect plan of attack? Your father.” Arin’s mouth curled. “I know you want his approval. I know that you’d marry the prince to get it. But your father’s hands run with blood. He is a monster. What kind of person feeds a monster? What kind of person loves one?”
“Arin, you’re not listening. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“You’re right. I haven’t been thinking clearly, not for a long time. But I understand now.” Arin pushed his tiles away. His winning hand scattered out of line. “You have changed, Kestrel. I don’t know who you are anymore. And I don’t want to.”
Later, when Kestrel remembered this moment, she said the right things. In her imagination, he understood.
But that was not what happened.
