The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski Page B

Her eyes sought Arin across the room.
    She didn’t know if he had watched her play. He wasn’t looking at her now. His gaze was unfocused, directed toward the garden without really seeming to see it. The lines of his face had softened. He looked different, Kestrel realized. She couldn’t say why, but he looked different to her now.
    Then he glanced at her, and she was startled enough to let one hand fall onto the keys with a very unmusical sound.
    Arin smiled. It was a true smile, which let her know that all the others he had given her were not. “Thank you,” he said.
    Kestrel felt herself blush. She focused on the keys and played something, anything. A simple pattern to distract herself from the fact that she wasn’t someone who easily blushed, particularly for no clear reason.
    But she found that her fingers were sketching an outline of a tenor’s range. “Do you truly not sing?”
    “No.”
    She considered the timbre of his voice and let her hands drift lower. “Really?”
    “No, Kestrel.”
    Her hands slid from the keys. “Too bad,” she said.

 
    16
     
    When Kestrel received a message from Ronan inviting her to go riding with him and Jess at their estate, she remembered something her father had said recently about evaluating an enemy.
    “Everything in war hinges on what you know of your adversary’s skills and assets,” he had said. “Yes, luck will play some part. The terrain will be crucial. Numbers are important. But how you negotiate the strengths of your opponent is more likely to decide the battle than anything else.”
    Arin wasn’t Kestrel’s enemy, but their Bite and Sting games had made her see him as a worthy opponent. So she considered her father’s words. “Your adversary will want to keep his assets hidden until the final moment. Use spies if you can. If not, how might you trick him into revealing the knowledge you seek?” The general had answered his own question: “Nettle his pride.”
    Kestrel sent a house slave to the forge with a request for Arin to meet her in the stables. When he arrived, Javelin was already saddled and Kestrel was waiting, dressed for riding.
    “What is this?” Arin said. “I thought you wanted an escort.”
    “I do. Pick a horse.”
    Warily, he said, “If I am to go with you, we need the carriage.”
    “Not if you know how to ride.”
    “I don’t.”
    She mounted Javelin. “Then I suppose you must follow me in the carriage.”
    “You’ll get in trouble if you ride alone.”
    She gathered the reins in her hands.
    “Where are you going?” Arin demanded.
    “Ronan invited me to ride on his grounds,” she told him, and kicked Javelin into a canter. She rode out of the stables, then out of the estate, pausing only to tell the guards at the gate that a slave would be following her. “Probably,” she added, spurring Javelin through the gate before the guards could question the irregularity of it all. She turned Javelin down one of the many horse paths Valorians had carved through the greener parts of the city, creating roads only for riders traveling at a good speed. Kestrel resisted the urge to slow her horse. She pressed him still further, listening to hooves hit the dirt with its blanket of fire-colored leaves.
    It was some time before she heard galloping behind her, and then she did ease up, instinctively wheeling Javelin around to see the blur of horse and rider coming down the path.
    Arin slowed, and sidled alongside Kestrel. The horses whickered. Arin looked at her, at the smile she couldn’t hide, and his face seemed to hold equal parts frustration and amusement.
    “You are a bad liar,” she told him.
    He laughed.
    She found it hard to look at him then, and her gaze dropped to his stallion. Her eyes widened. “ That is the horse you chose?”
    “He is the best,” Arin said seriously.
    “He is my father’s.”
    “I won’t hold that against the horse.”
    It was Kestrel’s turn to laugh.
    “Come.” Arin nudged the stallion