The Winner's Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

her shoes. The air was chilly and damp. She missed the velvet warmth of her nighttime drug. It always swaddled her thickly. It smothered her to sleep. She’d grown to like that.
    Kestrel knew that she was forgetting things. It was horribly unsettling, like walking down a staircase in the dark, hand on the rail, and then the rail vanished and she held nothing but air. Try as she might, Kestrel couldn’t remember the name of her horse in Herran. She knew that she had loved Enai, her Herrani nurse, and that Enai had died, but Kestrel couldn’t remember
how
she’d died. When Kestrel had first come to the camp, she’d had the idea of searching the prisoners for the face of someone she knew (a disgraced senator, wrongfully convicted of selling black powder to the east, had been sent here last autumn), but she found that she didn’t recognize anyone and wasn’t sure if that was because she knew no one here, or if she
did
and had simply forgotten his features.
    Kestrel coughed. The sound rattled in her lungs.
    That night, Kestrel pushed away thoughts of Arin and her father. She tried to remember Verex instead. When she’d first met the prince she’d agreed to marry, she’d thought him weak. Petty, childish. She’d been wrong.
    He hadn’t loved her. She hadn’t loved him. Yet they’d cared for each other, and Kestrel remembered how he’d set a soft black puppy into her hands. No one had given her such a gift. He’d made her laugh. That, too, was a gift.
    Verex was prob ably in the southern isles now, pretending to be on a romantic excursion with her.
    Maybe you think that I can’t make you vanish, that the court will ask too many questions
the emperor had said as the captain of his guard had held Kestrel and the sour scent of terror rose off her skin. Her father had watched from the other side of the room.
This is the tale I’ ll tell. The prince and his bride were so consumed by love that they married in secret and slipped away to the southern isles.
    Verex would obey the emperor. He knew what happened to people who didn’t.
    The emperor had whispered,
After some time—a month? two?—news will come that you’ve sickened. A rare disease that even my physician can’t cure. As far as the empire is concerned, you’ ll be dead. You’ ll be mourned.
    Her father’s face hadn’t changed. Something fractured inside Kestrel to remember this.
    She looked out the bars of her cell but saw only the dark hallway. She wished she could see the sky. She hugged her arms to her.
    If she’d been smart, she would have married Verex. Or she would have married no one and joined the military like her father had always wanted. Kestrel tipped her head back against the stone wall with its cushion of mold. Her body shuddered. She knew that this wasn’t just from cold or hunger. It was withdrawal. She craved her nighttime drug.
    But it wasn’t simply withdrawal, either, that racked her limbs. It was grief. It was the horror of someone who’d been dealt a winning hand, had bet her life on the game, and then proceeded (deliberately?) to lose.
    The next night, Kestrel ate and drank every thing she was given.
    â€œGood girl,” said the silver-haired guard. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to. I’ve seen you spill your soup and pretend to drink from a cup. This way”—the woman pointed at Kestrel’s empty bowl—“is better, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes,” Kestrel said, and was tempted to believe it.
    She woke to see, in the weak dawn light that filtered from the corridor through the bars to her cell, that she had been drawing in the dirt floor. She jerked upright.
    One vertical line, four wings. A moth.
    She had no memory of doing this. This was bad. Worse: maybe soon she might not even understand what such a drawing meant. She traced the moth. She must’ve sketched it last