Page 85 of The Winner's Kiss
“I didn’t know then that I was marked.”
“Arin, the only reason for what you suffered is that my father is a monster and he wanted your country.”
“It’s not so simple. I hear the god of death in my head. He advises me, comforts me.”
Kestrel wasn’t sure what to believe.
“I don’t know what his blessing means,” Arin said. “Do you see? When I look at what happened to me. What I’ve done. What I do. His favor is hard.”
“Maybe the voice you hear is your own,” she said gently, “and you just don’t recognize it.”
He made no reply.
She didn’t like his belief that death had marked him. His fear—and pleasure—troubled her. A deep, alien satisfaction lurked in his eyes. “Isn’t it possible that you’ve made this up without meaning to?”
“I’m his. I know it.”
“And the baby in the village?”
Arin winced. “It would have been a sin to deny the mother. I couldn’t. You understand, don’t you? I should have told her, but if I had and she withdrew her request, that might catch the god’s attention, and what might he do then? If she’d known it was the god of death, she never would have asked.”
Kestrel tried to set aside his intricate understanding of cause and effect. It felt beyond her, and dangerous, operating on the whims of an unpredictable deity. “The mother knew whose blessing she sought,” she said. “It can’t be that hard to guess your age, give or take a year. Which god ruled your nameyear?”
“Sewing.”
She squinted, then laughed.
He smiled a little, yet said, “You shouldn’t laugh.”
She laughed harder.
“Actually, I sew quite well.”
“Perhaps. But you don’t exactly seem like the god of sewing’s chosen one. The baby’s mother knew what she asked for.”
The wind stirred the tree. Shadows moved in patterns around them.
Kestrel’s heart was in her throat even before she knew what she’d say. “Would you do what your mother did? Would you delay the naming of your child for the favor of one god or another?”
There was a startled silence. “My child.” Arin tried the words, exploring them. She heard in his voice what she’d seen on his face in the village as he’d held the baby.
She looked at the tree. It was a tree. A leaf, a leaf. Some things just are. They don’t signal other meanings. They aren’t like a god, casting its meaning over an entire year, or like a conversation, which is itself and also all the things that aren’t said.
Her swift heart scurried along.
“It wouldn’t be up to me,” he said finally. “It would be my wife’s choice.”
She met his eyes. He touched her hot cheek.
A tree was not a tree. A leaf, not a leaf. She understood what he didn’t say.
She stood. “Come, the stream is amazing. Aren’t you thirsty? Your horse has better sense than you.” A smile. Teasing . . . a little shy, too, yet discovering a newfound safety in showing shyness. She held out her hand.
He took it.
The army camped in the forest on the height of the hills outside Errilith’s manor. Another stream coursed through the trees, wide and rough. It fed over rocks and went down deep. Kestrel went with the women soldiers to bathe. She thought about Sarsine, wishing she had the woman’s steady, clear way of seeing things. With a twinge of guilt, Kestrel realized that Sarsine had no way of knowing how or why Kestrel had disappeared from Arin’s house. Kestrel had been incapable of leaving any word behind and now it was too late. A message, no matter how obliquely worded, could be intercepted and understood. She imagined her father discovering exactly where she was. Her stomach shrank.
So instead she thought about what she’d say to Sarsine when she returned to the city. I missed you, she’d say. I never thanked you for what you did for me.
