Page 23 of The Winner's Kiss
“Please leave,” Arin said. “I answered your question. I want to be alone. I need to think,” he added, though he wasn’t even sure what he was thinking.
When she’d gone, Arin threaded fingers through the horse’s mane. Kestrel loved Javelin. She’d left him behind anyway.
Arin remembered seeing her hand in Javelin’s mane, curling into the coarse strands. This made him remember the almost freakish length between her littlest finger and thumb as her hand spanned piano keys. The black star of the birthmark. He saw her again in the imperial palace. Her music room. He’d seen that room only once. About a month ago, right before Firstsummer. Her blue sleeves were fastened at the wrist.
Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.
Do you sing?
Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him.
A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason.
She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.
“I told you every thing I know,” said the messenger. Arin had gone to his childhood suite, feeling an anxiety verging on panic at the thought of not finding the man there, of having to track him down, of time lost . . . but the man had opened the outermost door almost immediately after Arin’s pounding knock.
“I didn’t ask you the right questions,” Arin said. “I want to start again. You said that the prisoner reached through the bars of the wagon to give you the moth.”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t really see her.”
“That’s right.”
“But you said she was Herrani. Why would you say that if you couldn’t see her?”
“Because she spoke in Herrani.”
“Perfectly.”
“Yes.”
“No accent.”
“No.”
“Describe the hand.”
“I’m not sure . . .”
“Start with the skin. You said it was paler than yours, than mine.”
“Yes, like a house slave’s.”
Which wasn’t very different from a Valorian’s. “Could you see her wrist, her arm?”
“The wrist, yes, now that you mention it. She was in chains. I saw the manacle.”
“Did you see the sleeve of a dress?”
“Maybe. Blue?”
Dread churned inside Arin. “You think or you know?”
“I don’t know. Things happened too fast.”
“Please. This is important.”
