The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(118)

And thank him.

“There.” Roshar flourished a hand at the platter. “Arin the tiger’s meal. Since I’ve been ordered to take from Arin what belongs to Arin, I shall.” Roshar returned to his seat, platter in hand, and commenced cutting the meat. He took a bite. “Mmm. This is excellent. So well done. Now, as for what belongs to Arin the human, I relinquish any claim to it. Nothing of his was ever mine to take, nor will ever be. What belongs to him, I defend his right to keep, out of my love for him, and his for me.” He looked directly at the queen as he ate. “This is delicious. Exactly the way I like it.”

The queen forced a smile.

“Oh, and would someone bring another slice of loin? Raw, please. My tiger is hungry.”





Chapter 43

“I don’t want you to go.” waves rocked against the pier. The sun was too bright. Weathered boards creaked beneath Arin’s feet.

“Only because you enjoy a good bully. Someone to make you behave as you ought.”

“No, Roshar.”

“You know well enough what to do now. You’ll be fine.”

“That’s not why.”

“Why you’ll miss me? I admit that the impending absence of my keen wit would make anyone sad.”

“Not exactly.”

“Now I’m getting sad, just thinking about how it would feel to be parted from my sweet self. Lucky me: I will always have my own company.”

“What you said at the banquet was true.”

“Every thing I say is true.”

“That I love you.”

Roshar’s face went still. “I said that?”

“You know that you did.”

“That was more for the drama of the moment.”

“Liar.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Roshar said slowly. “I really am. Arin.” His voice roughened. “You’ll see me again.”

“Soon,” Arin told him, and embraced him. Then they broke away and maybe some would have thought that the sun was a little cruel, for how its brightness allowed no subterfuge in their expressions, and every thing that could be seen was shown. But Arin thought that it was a kindness. He wanted to be a mirror, to reflect what Roshar was to him.

A launch waited in the water below. Arin wished him fair tides. He watched until the launch reached Roshar’s ship, then watched as the ship, with the rest of the entire Dacran fleet, left his city’s bay.

He glimpsed Sarsine as he walked through the city. She had a laden basket—it dragged at her arm, making its weight known even from far away. Her faintly harried expression softened at the sight of him.

Arin took the basket from her. “Coming or going?”

“I’ve an errand here, and won’t be home until late.”

“Shall I guess what brings you to town?”

“You can try.”

He peeked in the basket. Bread, still warm from the oven. A bottle of liquor. Long, flat pieces of wood. Rolls of gauze. “A picnic . . . with a wounded soldier? Sarsine,” he teased, “is it true love? What’s the wood for? Wait, don’t tell me. I’m not sure I want to know.”

She swatted him. “The cartwright’s oldest daughter has a broken arm.”

It dropped ice to the bottom of his stomach. He thought of the ruined bodies he’d seen, including the ones he himself had ruined. He realized that he had somehow expected that he’d never have to think again about the way people damage other people.

The night of the invasion. Kestrel’s back. His own. Roshar’s scarred face. His own. The way a body on the battlefield could look as if it had never been human, and that was exactly what Arin had wanted to do to Kestrel’s father, who was in this city, his city, in a prison made to be comfortable, when no comfort could return the man’s arm, and no walls could imprison Arin’s knowledge of what he had done and wanted to do and couldn’t regret.

Yet he did regret.

He could not.

He did.

“Arin, are you all right?”

“How?” he managed. “How did her arm break?”

“She fell off a ladder.”

He must have visibly relaxed, because his cousin raised her brows and looked ready to scold.

“I imagined something worse,” he tried to explain.

She appeared to understand his relief that pain, if it had to come, came this time without malice. Just an accident. Done by no one. The luck, sometimes, of life. A bad slip that ends with bread, and someone to bind you.



It was a long walk home. But a plea sure to regain, unexpectedly, the memory of walking home as a child, secure in the knowledge that he would find every thing he loved there, whole and unbroken, his certainty so absolute that he hadn’t even been aware of it.

The city gave way to cypress trees. His feet were dusty. The sun made every scent stronger: his hot skin, the roasted path, a breath of lavender blown from somewhere he couldn’t see.

The god of death was silent. Not gone. Inhabiting Arin, but comfortably, in a kind of kinship. Arin kept company with death, but death was not all that lived inside him.

A girl in his heart. In his home.

Waiting for him.

There were old stone steps cut into the final hill. His pace quickened.

The house rose into view, sequined with open windows. A war horse was cropping the meadow.