The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(115)

Kestrel longed to see her. She wondered if she ever would, and if they could mend the things wrong between them.

“I saw you go to the healers’ tent the other day,” Verex said.

“He won’t talk with me.”

“Try again.”



When Risha and Verex left, two days before the army would reach the city, Kestrel kept her smile as she kissed their cheeks. At first it was hard to be strong in that way, and not let the farewell overwhelm her. But then she noticed Roshar, who had avoided his little sister since her return as if afraid of her, lingering nearby. Risha approached him and whispered something Kestrel couldn’t hear. Roshar’s expression eased. He didn’t speak in reply; he simply clasped Risha’s hands and kissed them.

Kestrel thought that maybe she had been wrong, and Risha had been wrong, about forgiveness, that it was neither mud nor stone, but resembled more the drifting white spores. They came loose from the trees when they were ready. Soft to the touch, but made to be let go, so that they could find a place to plant and grow.

She went to the tent again.

This time, her father spoke before she could. “Give me your dagger.”

Hot tears rushed to her eyes. “Don’t you dare.”

“Unbind my hand. Give me your dagger.”

“No.”

“Just this one last thing.”

“You can’t ask me to help you kill yourself.”

He no longer looked at her.

“Why did you keep my letter?” she asked yet again.

“You know why.”

“What, regret?”

“That’s not the right word.”

“Then what?”

“There are no words.”

“Find some.”

“I can’t.”

“Now.”

He swallowed. “I want to. I didn’t know . . . how everything would become impossible. This is what happens when you destroy the thing most precious to you.”

“You chose to do it.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He didn’t say, but his eyes became clear hard shells, and she knew that it hadn’t been only his code of honor that had made him tell the emperor of her treason. Her father had wanted to hurt her, because she had hurt him.

He said, “It didn’t seem real when I was doing it. Like I wasn’t awake.”

“Do you know,” she whispered, “what they did to me in the mines?”

He closed his eyes.

She described it. He let her. Water slid from beneath his eyelids.

“Kestrel,” he said finally. “You know that there is only one solution. I can’t be a father to you.”

“But you are.”

“There’s no place for me here. Am I to be a prisoner for the rest of my life?”

This had been discussed—loudly. Roshar was in favor of a public execution. Arin had lost his temper in a way that Kestrel hadn’t seen in a long time, had shouted back that the general’s fate was Kestrel’s choice alone.

“I don’t know,” Kestrel told her father.

There was a silence.

She said, “How can you not even ask for forgiveness?”

“Impossible.”

“Ask.”

For a long time, he said nothing. “I can’t ask for something no one could give. I ask for mercy.”

Her vision blurred, and Kestrel knew that forgiveness and mercy would take years for them both, and that she needed every single minute of that time.

She said that she still loved him, because it was true. He owed her better answers than the ones he had given, and even if he never had them, it was her right to keep asking. She would never give him her dagger. “I tried so hard to live in your world,” she told him. “Now it’s your turn to live in mine.”





Chapter 42

Arin should have expected it, but somehow didn’t.

So many flowers. All the summer blooms must have been cut from the gardens, which would be naked for weeks. When the army came through the gate, a roar vibrated the stone walls, and Arin flinched in surprise, hands tightening on the reins, for the tiniest moment believing that the sound meant danger. Then he saw the glowing faces of people thronging the streets and thought, Ah, happy. Which made him happy, and as Kestrel smiled at him from her seat on Javelin, a pink petal clinging to her cheek, it occurred to him that he might have to grow comfortable with happiness, because it might not abandon him this time.

Then Kestrel’s head turned, and he saw her survey the Dacran-Herrani army unfurled behind them in Lahirrin’s main street, a tension in the line of her mouth. She said, “I’m not sure it’s wise to bring all the soldiers within the city walls.”

“This is every one’s victory. Every one must be honored.”

“I know.”

“But?”

“Our eastern allies outnumber us.”

He knew what she was getting at. “They always have.”

“If they want this country, it’d be easy for them to take it . . . especially from within the city walls.”

Arin glanced at Roshar, who’d ridden ahead to meet the queen. “I trust him.”

“Yes, I know.”