The Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkoski Page A

care.”
    He was angry. “I do.”
    She knew why his eyes had been too bright earlier. Her own were stinging.
    He shifted. She kept her back to him as she felt him move closer. The warmth of him slowly fitted along her spine. It was like sinking into a bath. His words brushed the back of her neck: “Just to keep you warm,” he said, a question in his tone.
    â€œYou say that we’re friends.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHave we done this before?”
    Another pause. “No.”
    Her shaking quieted to a shiver. She found that she’d moved even closer to him, had sealed herself against him. His heart beat fast against her back. He held her, and the weight of his arm made her feel more solid, more real, less ready to shatter into mirrorlike pieces. She calmed, relaxing into his warmth.
    She still didn’t sleep. Neither did he. She could feel his wakefulness. She thought, fleetingly, that it was like him not to fall asleep before she did. She didn’t know how she could believe this to be true. It was hard to reconcile with the one memory she had of him: his face in the market, across a distance. An enemy’s mouth, enemy’s eyes.
    But he was here, he had saved her, and he’d asked nothing of her except to remember, and had stopped asking even for that. She knew his scent. Knew that she liked it. His hand reached to touch the pulse in her neck. He kept his fingers there, slightly too firm to be gentle, as if he doubted she was alive.
    Had they really never shared a bed? No. She would remember that. Wouldn’t she?
    There was a musical cry far off, out on the tundra.
    Wolves. They sounded lonely. Beautiful, though, as they called to each other.
    In the morning, she discovered that she had, at some point, fallen asleep. It was brutal to be awake. He wasn’t in the tent.
    A feeling jolted her heart. The movement she made then must have been loud. “I’m here,” he called from outside the tent, and she emerged to see him in front of the fire that she should have smelled and interpreted as meaning he must be there or nearby—or she would have, if she hadn’t been so afraid that he had left her.
    She walked to the fire, still stumbling on her feet. She had the frustrated idea that she’d never been especially graceful in her body, but that she’d at least been
competent
. Before.
    She sat across from him. The pale fire leaped between them. Snapped.
    He was no longer wearing the heavy ring. She wondered what he’d done with it, then decided that she wouldn’t ask as long as he said nothing about the night before.
    They sat and ate in silence.
    He kept looking at the injured mare, the one they didn’t ride. She caught him doing it, and knew that he didn’t want her to see him doing it.
    When they stopped later in the day to rest, she held his gaze just as it was about to flick back to the mare. “Don’t,” she said.
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    â€œHow would you, even?”
    He shrugged, and she became conscious of the dagger at his hip, the one he’d taken off a prison guard. She recognized the dagger as the sort of thing that should belong to her and not to him. She had a sudden, intense feeling of difference. She realized that they’d been speaking in his language, not hers.
    She imagined him taking the knife and cutting into the horse’s throat. There was no other way to do it. A massive gush of blood. Thrashing body. The slide of hooves.
    â€œShe’s slowing us down.”
    â€œI said
no
.”
    Finally, he nodded.
    That felt familiar: his obedience. She had commanded him before. But she also thought that he had never obeyed her this way, and that even when he’d appeared to, he
hadn’t
, really.
    Definitely not friends. Something else.
    That night was like the one before. He held her. She warmed. Her limbs softened. It seemed to be the only thing that could possibly make her