Page 37 of The Winner's Kiss
She closed her eyes. Her rabbit heart slowed, curled up in its warren, and seemed to become fully itself: warm fur, soft belly. A thrum of breath in the dark.
When she woke again, the curtains were wide open. Midday. Yellow light. The pearl-colored chair was empty.
An unpleasant bolt shot through her. She didn’t know what it meant, exactly, but it made her feel small.
She pushed herself up. A mirror stood on a nearby dressing table. Kestrel slipped from the bed: hollow, unsteady. The dressing table and its chair weren’t so nearby after all. The distance between her and them yawned wide. When she reached the chair, she dropped down into it.
The girl in the reflection looked so shocked that Kestrel’s first instinct was to touch her. To reassure. Fingertips met. The mirror was cool.
“Planning on breaking it?” said a voice.
Kestrel’s hand fell, and her gaze jerked away to find Sarsine standing behind her in the open doorway. Kestrel hadn’t been alone after all. The woman’s expression had the thoughtful cast of someone who’d been watching for a while. She carried a bundle of fabric in her arms.
“That’s not me,” Kestrel said.
Sarsine draped the fabric (a dress) over the back of the pearl-gray chair. She came close and rested a hand on Kestrel’s shoulder—warmly, yet at a careful distance from the raised marks she could prob ably see on Kestrel’s back through her shift.
Kestrel glanced again at the too-thin girl with the sunken eyes. Cracked lips. The knobs of her clavicle.
“Here,” Sarsine said, and gathered Kestrel’s hair. She wove a quick, practical braid.
“He did that,” Kestrel said suddenly. He had braided her hair, before. That (that?) was the unnamed, lost plea sure she had tried to remember. He had taken his time. A sensual slowness. The brush of his thumb against the nape of her neck. Mesmerizing. Then later, the next morning: all those little braids transformed into miserable knots.
“What?” Sarsine tied the braid with a ribbon.
“Nothing.”
Sarsine met her eyes in the mirror, but said only, “Come, let’s get you dressed.”
“To do what?”
“To look more like yourself.” Sarsine pulled her to her feet.
The dress was too loose. But it fit well in the shoulders and was the perfect length. The fabric. That pattern of sprigged flowers. “This is mine.”
“Yes.”
“But this isn’t my home.”
Sarsine’s fingers paused in their buttoning. “No.”
“Then what am I doing here? Where did you get this?”
Sarsine fastened the last button. “How much do you remember?”
“I don’t know.” She was frustrated. “How am I supposed to know how much? For that, I’d have to know what I’ve forgotten. You tell me.”
“Better if you asked someone else.”
Kestrel knew whom she meant. There it was again: his fingers sliding through her hair. It was true, what she’d suspected on the tundra was true. A lover? Maybe. Something tender, anyway. But tender like a bruise.
“No,” Kestrel told Sarsine. “I trust you.”
Sarsine knelt to put slippers on her feet. “Why?”
“You don’t want anything from me.”
“Who says I don’t? A maid might seek any number of things from her mistress.”
