Page 8 of The Winner's Kiss
Yet at night before sleep, she knew that her darker emotions, the ones that curled inside her heart and ate away at it, were the only ones she could trust were true.
One day, something was different. The air—hazy and chilled, as usual—seemed to buzz with tension.
It came from the guards. Kestrel listened to them as she filled her baskets.
Someone was coming. There was to be an inspection.
Kestrel’s fast heart picked up even more speed. She discovered that she had not, in fact, lost hope that Arin had received her moth. She hadn’t stopped believing that he would come. Hope exploded inside her. It ran through her veins like liquid sunlight.
It wasn’t him.
If Kestrel had been herself, she would have known from the moment she’d heard about an inspection that it couldn’t be Arin, pretending to have come in some official imperial capacity to inspect the work camp.
What an idiotic, painful idea.
Arin was visibly Herrani—dark-haired, gray-eyed—and scarred in a way that announced his identity to anyone who cared to know it. If he’d received her message, and if he’d understood it, and if he came (she was beginning to despise herself for even contemplating such implausible ifs), every Valorian guard in the camp would arrest him, or worse.
The inspection was just an inspection. From the prison yard that evening, Kestrel saw the elderly man who wore a jacket with a senator’s knot tied at the shoulder. He chatted with the guards. Kestrel winnowed through the prisoners, who milled aimlessly in the yard after a full day’s work, the morning drug still jangling inside their veins as it did in hers. Kestrel tried to get close to the senator. Maybe she could get word to her father. If he knew how she suffered, how she was losing pieces of herself, he would change his mind. He would intervene.
The senator’s eyes snapped to Kestrel. She stood only a few feet away. “Guard,” he said to the woman who’d cut Kestrel’s skirts on the first day. “Keep your prisoners in line.”
The woman laid a heavy hand on Kestrel’s shoulder. The weight settled, gripping hard.
“Time for dinner,” the guard said.
Kestrel thought of the drug in the soup and longed for it. She let herself be led away.
Her father knew full well what the prison camp was like. He was General Trajan, the highest-ranking Valorian save the emperor and his son. He knew about his country’s assets and weaknesses—and the camp was a huge asset. Its sulfur was used to make black powder.
Even if the general didn’t know the details of how the camp was run, what did it matter? He’d given her letter to the emperor. She’d heard his heart thump calmly as she’d wept against his chest. It had beaten like a perfectly wound clock.
Someone was stabbing her. Kestrel opened her eyes. She saw nothing but the low black ceiling of her cell.
Another prod against her ribs, harder.
A stick?
Kestrel climbed out of gooey sleep. Slowly—it hurt to move, she was a tangle of bones and bruises and blue rags—she pulled herself up into a sitting position.
“Good,” came a voice from the hallway, clearly relieved. “We don’t have much time.”
Kestrel shifted toward the bars. There was no torchlight in the hallway, but it never got fully dark this far north, even in the dead of night. She could make out the senator, who pulled his cane back through the bars.
“My father sent you.” Joy rushed through her, popping and sparkling all over her skin. She could taste her tears. They ran freely down her face.
The senator gave her a nervous smile. “No, Prince Verex did.” He held out something small.
Kestrel kept crying, differently now.
“Shh. I can’t be caught helping you. You know what would happen to me if I were caught.” In his hand was a key. She took it. “This is for the gate.”
“Let me out, take me with you, please.”
“I can’t.” His whisper was anxious. “I don’t have the key to your cell. And you must wait until at least several days after I’ve left. Your escape can’t be tied to me. Do you understand? You’d ruin me.”
Kestrel nodded. She’d agree to anything he said, if only he wouldn’t leave her.
He was already backing away from her cell. “Promise.”
