Page 45 of The Winner's Kiss
“I’m not asking for information,” he hastened to say. “I don’t want anything. Or, I suppose I do want something, but it’s to understand. That’s different, isn’t it, from asking for a favor, or . . . an emotion?” He stopped, blocked by the difficulty of holding himself to honesty and finding the way language fails, sometimes, to get honesty right. “Maybe it’s not different. You don’t have to answer.”
“Just say it.”
“You’ve not wanted me to talk about what you can’t remember. Not to ask. Not to tell. You’re . . .” He didn’t say the words. Kestrel thought them anyway. Angry. Terrified. “Is it because you really don’t want to hear it, or . . . because you don’t want it to be me who tells you?”
“I want to ask a question of my own first.”
This took him aback. “Of course.”
“On the tundra, you said that it was your fault that I was in prison.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“How . . . ?”
“Did you tell someone I was spying for Herran?”
He recoiled. “No. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t do that.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“I . . .”
“I have the right to know.”
“You lied,” he burst out. “You lied to me, and I believed you. I didn’t ask you to risk yourself. I never wanted you to do any of what you did. I never would have wanted this.” His mouth was tight, eyes wide: flooded with something hot and rich and hurt. “I had so many chances to see what you were doing. And I didn’t. I didn’t stop you. I didn’t help you. I despised you.”
She said, “I lied.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me my lies.”
“Gods.” He raked a hand through his hair. “You lied about the treaty. You agreed to marry someone else so that I could have a piece of paper. You tried to help the eastern plainspeople, yet let me think that you were responsible for their deaths. The way you acted. Selfish. Horrible. You worked for my spymaster and you lied about that, too, and he lied to me, and it makes me hate him now. I hate myself for not seeing it. He knew. He let you. You committed treason, Kestrel. How could you do that? You should be dead.” His voice lowered, dug in deep. “The worst—I don’t know—the worst is that you lied about—” He stopped himself, drawing a ragged breath. “You lied for a very long time.”
There was a silence. Slowly, Kestrel said, “I did all that for you.”
He flushed. “Maybe you had other reasons.”
“That’s the one you care about.”
“Yes.”
She warred with what to say. It was strange to talk about reckless choices she didn’t remember. It helped to see his anger, the way it blistered the surface of things. It was a relief not to be alone in her anger. It was folly, what her old self had done, but brave, too. She could see that. She could see how he saw it, and how it made things worse for him.
Easier, though, for her: to know she hadn’t always been this husk of a vanished person. Then harder, to glimpse who she’d been. She saw the great difference between that person and the one sitting in a chair because she was too weak to stand. Emotions whirl pooled inside her. “Your question.”
“Never mind.”
“I’ll tell you.”
He shook his head. “Not necessary.”
“It is you. It’s true, I haven’t wanted it to be you who tells me things I can’t recall. Not you.” She saw his flinch, and the effort to hide it. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Who are you, that you get to know so much about me that even I don’t know? Why do you get to tell me who I am? How did you get so much power? I have none. It’s not fair. You are unfair.” Her voice broke. “I am unfair.”
His expression changed. “Kestrel.”
