Exclusive excerpt: 'The Winner's Crime' by Marie Rutkoski

HEA shares an exclusive excerpt from Marie Rutkoski's YA fantasy The Winner's Crime, book two in the Winner's Trilogy, which comes out March 3.

About The Winner's Crime (courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux):

Following your heart can be a crime.

A royal wedding is what most girls dream about. It means one celebration after another: balls, fireworks, and revelry until dawn. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement: that she agreed to marry the crown prince in exchange for Arin's freedom. But can Kestrel trust Arin? Can she even trust herself? For Kestrel is becoming very good at deception. She's working as a spy in the court. If caught, she'll be exposed as a traitor to her country. Yet she can't help searching for a way to change her ruthless world ... and she is close to uncovering a shocking secret.

This dazzling follow-up to The Winner's Curse reveals the high price of dangerous lies and untrustworthy alliances. The truth will come out, and when it does, Kestrel and Arin will learn just how much their crimes will cost them.

EXCERPT

Chapter 7

He was waiting in the reception hall, A lone figure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani representative was an elderly man whose thin frame leaned heavily on his walking stick.

Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She couldn't help looking over his shoulder for Arin.

He wasn't there.

"I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire were over," the man said dryly.

"What?" said Kestrel.

"You're barefoot."

She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet were freezing, that she'd forgotten even the existence of shoes when she'd left her dressing chamber and hurtled through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards flanking the reception hall to see right now.

"Who are you?" Kestrel demanded.

"Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture."

"And the governor? Where is he?"

"Not coming."

"Not ..." Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. "Them emperor issued a summons. To a state function. And Arin declines?" Her anger was folding onto itself in as many layers as her ball gown— anger at Arin, at the way he was committing political suicide.

Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they were proof— pure, naked, cold proof— of her hope, her very need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.

Arin had not come.

"I get that disappointed look all the time," Tensen said in a cheerful tone. "No one is ever excited to meet the minister of agriculture."

She finally focused on his face. His green eyes were small but clever, his wrinkled skin darker than hers. "You wrote me a letter." Her voice sounded strained. "You said that we had much to discuss."

"Oh, yes." Tensen waved a negligent hand. The lamplight traced the plain gold ring he wore. "We should talk about the hearthnut harvest. Later." His eyes slid slowly to glance at the Valorian soldiers lining the hall, then met Kestrel's gaze again and held it. "I could use your insight on a few matters concerning Herran. But I'm an old man, my lady, and very saddle sore. A little rest in the privacy of my rooms is in order, I think. Perhaps you could show me where they are?"

Kestrel didn't miss his message. She wasn't blind to the way he had indicated that their conversation could be overheard, nor was she deaf to his coded invitation that they could speak more freely in his guest suite. But she struggled against the pain in her throat, and said only, "Your ride here was hard?"

"Yes."

"And the snow. It's falling already?"

"Yes, my lady."

"The mountain pass will close."

"Yes," Tensen said gently, and he saw too much. Kestrel could tell that he heard that horrible note in her voice, and that he recognized it as the sound of someone fighting tears. "As expected," he added.

But she hadn't expected this: this stupid hope, this punishing one, for who would long to see someone who was already lost? What good would it have done?

None.

Apparently Arin knew this, too. He knew it better than she, or his hope would have been equal to hers, and would have driven him here.

Kestrel drew herself up straight. "You can find your rooms by yourself, Minister Tensen. I have more important matters to attend to."

She strode from the hall. The veined marble floor was icy beneath her feet: a frozen lake with fractures she did not care to see.

She walked, she did not care.

She did not.

Jess adjusted Kestrel's ball gown, stepped back, cocked her head, and peered. "You're anxious," Jess said, "aren't you? Your face looks pinched."

"I didn't sleep well last night." This was true. Kestrel had asked Jess to come early from her house in the city, and spend the night before the ball in Kestrel's palace rooms. Kestrel and Jess had shared a bed, like they sometimes did when they were little girls in Herran, and talked until the lamp had burned all its oil. "You snored," Kestrel said.

"I did not."

"You did. You snored so loudly that the people in my dreams complained."

Jess laughed, and Kestrel was glad for her silly little lie. Laughter softened Jess's face, filled the hollows of her cheeks. It drew attention away from the dark rings beneath her brown eyes. Jess never looked well. Not anymore, not since she had been poisoned on the night of the Herrani rebellion.

"I have something for you." Jess opened her trunk and lifted out a velvet bundle. "An engagement present." Jess unwrapped the bundle. "I made this for you." The velvet held a necklace of flowers strung on a black ribbon, the petals large, blown open, fashioned from sanded shards of amber glass and thin curls of horn. The colors were muted, but the flowers' size and spread made them almost feral.

Jess tied the ribbon around Kestrel's neck. The flowers clicked against one another, sliding low to rest against the dress's bodice.

"It's beautiful," Kestrel said.

Jess adjusted the necklace. "I understand why you're nervous."

The crackle of flowers went silent. Kestrel became aware that she was holding her breath.

"I shouldn't say this." Jess's eyes met Kestrel's. They were hard, unblinking. "I hate that you're marrying into the emperor's family. I hate that you're going to walk straight from this room to your engagement ball. With the prince. You should be my sister. You should be Ronan's wife."

Kestrel hadn't seen Ronan since the night of the Firstwinter Rebellion. She'd written letters, then burned them. She'd sent an invitation to the court. It was ignored. He was in the city now, Jess had said. He'd fallen in with a wild crowd. Then Jess had gone tight- lipped and wouldn't say any more—and Kestrel, who had loved Ronan as much as she could, and missed him, didn't dare ask.

Slowly, Kestrel said to Jess, "I've told you before. The emperor made the offer of marriage to his son. I couldn't refuse."

"Could you not? Everyone knows the story of how you brought the wrath of the imperial army to Herran. You could have asked the emperor for anything."

Kestrel was silent.

"It's because you do not want to refuse," Jess said. "You never do anything you don't want to do."

"It's a political marriage. For the good of the empire."

"What makes you think that you are the best thing for it?"

Kestrel had never seen such resentment in Jess's eyes. Quietly Kestrel said, "Ronan wants nothing to do with me now anyway."

"True." Jess seemed to regret her hard words, then to regret her regret. Her voice stayed stony. "I am glad that he won't be here to night. How could the emperor invite Herrani to the ball?"

"Just one. One Herrani."

"It's disgusting."

"They're not slaves anymore, Jess. They're independent members of the empire."

"So we reward murder with freedom? Those rebels killed Valorians. They killed our friends. I hate the emperor for his edict."

Dangerous words. "Jess—"

"He doesn't know. He didn't see the slaves' savagery. I did. You did. That so- called governor kept you as some kind of toy—"

"I don't want to talk about that."

Jess scowled at the floor. Her voice came low: "You never do."

Kestrel stood next to Verex outside the closed ballroom doors, listening to the swell of the emperor's voice. Kestrel couldn't distinguish the words, but heard the sure rhythm. The emperor was a skilled public speaker.

Verex's head was lowered, hands stuffed in his pockets. He was dressed in formal military style: all black, with gold piping that echoed the glittering horizontal line drawn above Kestrel's brows. His belted, jeweled dagger matched hers. The emperor had finally given Kestrel the dagger he'd promised, and it was indeed fine— set with diamonds and exquisitely sharp. It was too heavy. It dragged at her hip.

She wished the emperor would stop talking. Her stomach dipped and rose with the sound of his voice. Her nails curled into her palms.

Verex scuffed his boot.

She ignored him. She touched a glass petal on her necklace. It felt frail.

The emperor's voice stopped. The doors flung open. It was like a hallucination: the crowd in a splash of colors, the heat, the applause, the fanfare.

Then the crash of sound faded, because the emperor was speaking again, and then he must have stopped speaking, because Kestrel heard the breathless silence that came just before Verex kissed her.

His lips were dry. Polite.

She had known it was coming, it was all planned, and she had done her best to be as far away from herself as possible when it happened. But her mind couldn't stay asleep forever. It told her to stay put, don't shrivel away, this is not so bad, the kiss is a thing, an empty thing, a scrap of blank paper. Yet Kestrel was awake, and she knew the taste of her own lies.

"I'm sorry," Verex said quietly when he pulled away. And then they were dancing before everybody.

The kiss had numbed her. Verex's words didn't register at first. When they did, they seemed like her own words, like she'd been saying them to her old self, the one who had given up Arin. I'm sorry, she told herself. Forgive me, she'd said. Kestrel had thought she'd known what her choices had cost her, but when the prince had kissed her she sharply understood that she was going to pay for this for the rest of her life.

"Kestrel?"

"Sorry," Kestrel repeated as they spun across the ballroom floor. The prince's feet had no natural talent, but he was grimly capable, the way someone might be if his dancing master came to lessons armed with a switch.

"I've been unforgivable," Verex said. "Is that why you look so miserable?"

Kestrel studied the piping on his jacket.

Verex said, "Maybe there's one final reason you are determined to marry me."

The violinists' bows sank down across the strings.

"My father is holding something over you," Verex said.

Kestrel glanced up, then away again. Verex drew their clasped hands to his chest. The crowd murmured and sighed.

He shrugged. "It's how my father is. But what does he—?"

"Verex, am I so bad a choice for a wife?"

He smiled a little. The dance was ending. "Not so bad."

"Let's agree, then, to make the best of things," Kestrel said.

Verex bowed, and before Kestrel could decide whether this was his yes or simply meant to mark the dance's end, he passed her hand to a senator's. Then there was another dance, and another senator, and she was whirled into the exchequer's arms.

After that, faces and titles no longer held much meaning.

Finally, she stepped deliberately wrong so that someone trod on her toes. She soothed her partner's horrified apologies, but begged for a rest and made certain she limped a little as she went to sit in the corner of gamers.

Kestrel chose a gilt chair set apart from the others, but it wouldn't be long before someone pulled a chair near, and she would have to talk and smile even though the muscles in her cheeks felt as if someone had pinched them.

She needn't have worried. All eyes were focused on the crown prince, who sat across a Borderlands table, facing a highly ranked lieutenant of the city guard.

The game was careening toward a humiliating end for the prince. The lieutenant had already captured many of Verex's key game pieces, lining up the green figures in a row. Verex's general was isolated from his troops and flanked by the lieutenant's. The marble pieces tapped out their paths, knocked each other down.

Verex's eyes lifted to meet hers across the room. He set a tentative finger on his green infantry.

It was just a game. What did it matter if Verex made the wrong move, and lost?

Yet Kestrel thought of Arin, who hadn't answered the emperor's summons, and wondered what he would lose because of it.

She thought of the possibility of peace with Verex.

She held the prince's gaze and shook her head— the slightest of gestures, a mere tip of her chin.

He lifted his hand from the infantry and settled it on the cavalry.

Kestrel used two fingertips to brush invisible lint from her dress, flicking her hand forward, away from her body. Verex moved the cavalry two paces forward.

So it went, the smugness draining from the lieutenant's face as Verex's army made significant advances and crucial kills. Verex looked to his father, who had appeared on the edges of the crowd. When the prince's asking eyes turned again to Kestrel and she saw how hope made them luminous, she couldn't look away. She offered her silent suggestions. He took them.

The green general toppled the red one.

The crowd roared for their prince. The emperor folded his arms and rocked on the balls of his feet, his expression amused, pinned to his son's.

But not disapproving.

Kestrel heard Verex decline to play another game. Now that the spectacle was over, the crowd's attention would soon turn to her. There was a Borderlands game at another nearby table between a senator's daughter and Risha, the eastern princess who had been kidnapped as a small child and raised in the imperial palace as a pampered hostage. Kestrel had expected that Risha would be a good Borderlands player, but from everything Kestrel had seen, the princess possessed (or cultivated) a decided mediocrity at the game. There was no excitement to be had at that table. A bit farther over was a match between the Herrani minister—Tensen, she remembered his name— and a very minor Valorian baron who had probably condescended to play with Tensen only for the plea sure of beating him before a crowd. Many were watching, widening mirthful eyes when Tensen forgot how a gaming piece moved, or seemed to doze off between his turns. That farce might hold people's interest, but not for long.

And then they would come for her.

Kestrel's throat closed when she thought of faking joy at her engagement. Yet she would have to do it. She would have to dance all night long and into the gray hours of morning, until the last reveler had left the ballroom and her shoes were worn out and her heart was in shreds.

Kestrel stood. The emperor wasn't watching her, at least not for now. His eyes were on his son. She threaded through the crowd, telling each person who stopped her that she had promised a dance to someone else. The ballroom was thick with people. Faces clustered around her like children's puppets on sticks.

Somehow she dodged them, and slipped down a hallway where the air was cooler. No one lingered here. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. This area was used only in fine weather when the balconies lining the hallway were open to the palace gardens below. Each balcony was now curtained off from the hallway, and Kestrel knew that the glass shutters attached to each balustrade had been drawn and fastened for the winter. Despite every attempt to ward off the cold, it seeped beneath the velvet curtains. It lapped over Kestrel's slippered feet.

With a quick glance behind to make certain that no one was near and no one saw her, she dove through a curtain and pulled it shut behind her.

The balcony was a box, its glass walls like black ice: sheer slices of the night outside. Light from the hallway lined the seam of the curtain and glowed at its hem, but Kestrel could barely see her own hands.

She touched a glass pane. These windows would be open on the night of her wedding. The trees below would be in bloom, the air fragrant with cere blossoms. She would choke on it. Kestrel knew she would hate the scent of cere flowers all her life, as she ruled the empire, as she bore her husband's children. As she aged and the ghosts of her choices haunted her.

There was a sudden sound. The slide of wooden curtain rings on the rod. Light brightened behind Kestrel.

Someone was coming through the velvet.

He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel's balcony— close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against the frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows.

He was here. He had come.

Arin.

Find out more about Marie and her books at marierutkoski.com.