Page 147 of The Winner's Kiss
Then she saw that his gaze had shifted to her hands.
They were trembling. She pressed them down against the table.
“I’m thinking about what I’ll claim from you when I win,” he said. “The particularly appealing part of the deal you struck is the openness of your offer. ‘What ever you like.’ ”
She wished she’d phrased things differently, though she didn’t know what else she would have said, since part of what had made him agree to the game was his anticipation of the plea sure of what he was doing now.
“I could make you bring Arin of Herran to me,” the emperor said. “He’d surrender, for you.”
The world deadened.
“I never finished what I started with that boy’s face.” The emperor pushed the hilt of Kestrel’s dagger with one finger.
The sound it made, though small, scraped down her spine.
“Or perhaps it’s not his face that appeals to me most. We could see what might be done with yours.”
Silence.
“No, Lady Kestrel?”
His gaze drifted over her shoulder. He continued to speak, voice soft as his list continued, and Kestrel’s mind jumped between thinking that he chose to name the things that would torment her most, and meant none of it, or that he did mean it and wanted her to hope that he didn’t, and that this hope was his most delicious form of brutalization.
Her heart was loud in her ears. This wasn’t working. She’d made a grave mistake in coming.
“But of course,” the emperor finally said, “with such an offer as you made, I could exact it all.”
Arin ordered his vanguard to fall to the sides of the road.
The black powder sacks were lit.
The Valorian cavalry reared back from what they saw too late.
The sacks burst under their hooves. Chunks of paving stone exploded into the air.
“Do you forfeit your turn?” Kestrel asked.
“Not at all.”
“You’re afraid to play.”
“We both know,” he said, “which of us is afraid.”
She reached for her wine glass and drank.
“I do admire your love for a gamble.” He took her cup and drank from it as well. “I was simply thinking out loud earlier. There’s no harm in thinking.”
“I have my own thoughts. I am wondering why my father ever respected you.”
The emperor set down the cup. “He’s my friend.”
“Yet you say the things that you say.”
“He’s not here, and if he were, he wouldn’t care.”
“Yes, he would.”
The emperor scrutinized her. “You don’t look like him. Except the eyes.”
