The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(23)

Arin’s legs were slick with mud when he reached the shores of the lake where he’d left Ilyan and the horses. Arin saw what was left of the camp. His knees nearly buckled. He swore.

Kestrel woke. He set her gently down. Then he crouched, burying his face in his hands.

Ilyan’s half-eaten corpse had been dragged from the tent. The horses were gone.

Wolves. Arin remembered hearing them howl the night before. His palms slid from his face. He tried not to think about the terror and pain of Ilyan’s death, and how this, too, was his fault. He tried not to think about how long it would take without horses to cover the tundra and the mountains that led into Herran. Kestrel’s condition . . .

He glanced at her. The poverty of her frame. The wariness with which she regarded him, the way she was doing so even now.

“They might have survived,” he said, meaning the horses. He was speaking quickly. “They’d have run. They’d stay together.”

She looked like she might ask something, then her face hardened in suspicion and Arin was certain that the only reason she had come with him was because he was a better option than a prison cell.

He turned. There was no high ground from which to see. The tundra night was light enough to see Kestrel’s face, but too murky to spot three horses wandering—how far away?

Much too far.

If they were there at all.

“Javelin!” he called. The horses were good, but only one of them was intelligent enough to come when called—if Javelin could. Arin didn’t know. He’d never heard of a horse doing that, not from out of sight, not without the bribe of a treat.

Arin thought they were far enough from the camp, and he’d left most of the guards unconscious—maybe dead. He hadn’t taken any care with how deeply he’d driven the ring’s stinger. Still, he and Kestrel might have been followed. Shouting wasn’t smart.

Arin looked at her. She was fighting sleep.

He called again. “Javelin!”

He made himself hoarse. He walked as far away from Kestrel as he dared, shouting for the horse. Finally, he came back to her and knelt in the mud where she sat. “Call him,” Arin said. “He’ll come if you call.”

“Who will come?”

He realized that nothing he’d said provided any context to understand who and what Javelin was if someone didn’t already know. He realized that he’d been hoping that she hadn’t meant it, in the prison, when she’d asked who Arin was and looked at him like he was a dangerous stranger. Part of him had believed that she was pretending not to know him in order to wound him, because he deserved it, and it was clear how much she should hate him now.

“Kestrel,” he said softly, and could tell from her expression that she accepted her name but didn’t trust it. “Javelin is your horse. You love him. He loves you. If you call, he will come for you. We need him. Please try.”

She did. Nothing happened, and the look she gave him—as if he was tricking her, making some mockery she couldn’t fathom—made his throat close. “Please,” he said. “Again.”

She hesitated, then did as he asked, though eyeing him the entire time the way you would a predatory creature.

When Arin heard the thud of hooves in mud, he sagged in relief.

Javelin led the other two. One of the mares was limping.

Arin would set a sacrifice to the god of the lost. He swore that he would. Then he looked again at Kestrel, who rose unsteadily to her feet, and he knew he would have to sacrifice to all of his gods.

Kestrel went to her horse. Arin couldn’t see her face, which rested against the animal’s neck. He didn’t see her moment of recognition. But he saw her chest heave. Javelin lipped her hair. She leaned against the horse as she had not leaned against Arin—fully, tenderly. Trusting.





Chapter 9

He unnerved her.

She was grateful to him and didn’t argue when he said that they should ride Javelin together and lead the two mares. She saw his worried look. How it assessed her. She knew as well as he did that she was likely to fall asleep in the saddle. Javelin was sturdy enough to bear them both, at least for a while. The plan made sense. But she resented it.

It was the way she felt, tucked up against the stranger’s chest, cradled by either arm. It was the way her body seemed to know him.

Her head swayed. She let herself rest against him.

It wasn’t right that her body should know this person when her mind didn’t. Hazily, she realized that he could tell her any lie he wanted.

Her memory was a mouth with the teeth torn out. She kept reaching in, probing the holes, pulling back. It hurt.

Yes, any lie.

He had saved her, but she didn’t know what he wanted from her—or what he might say to get it.

His heart beat against her spine. It lulled her even as she knew that it shouldn’t. She slept.

In the morning, she got a better look at him. Her mind was clearer, she thought, than it had been in some time. He was building a fire. He slowed, though, when he caught the way her gaze inspected him. He went still.

He was dirty all over. She had the fleeting thought that she’d seen him both dirty and clean before. Her gaze traced the long scar, quite visible now that the sulfur had rubbed away. A sort of half recognition shimmered inside her. But the scar wasn’t what made him memorable.