The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(64)

He studied her. This, too, should be impossible: the way a kind of wonder tinged his expression. Surprised. A little amused.

Arin reached across the narrow space between them. With a dusty finger, he briefly touched her nose. “You freckle in the sun,” he said, and smiled.

She felt suddenly light and sheer, as if this moment were encased in golden glass.

Maybe love was easy, she thought.

Maybe her past wasn’t as vital as her present, she thought.

But then she heard her father say that she’d broken his heart, and she could no longer believe that either thought was true.

Arin was against riding through the village. Kestrel heard him argue with the prince. Scouts had run ahead and learned that the general’s army had seized, uncontested, an estate just south of Errilith. The Valorians would move north soon, and fall on Errilith’s farmlands. They’d butcher the sheep. Seize grain. Add another link in the supply chain running from Ithrya Island. Fortify themselves for a farther push north toward the city.

“We need to position ourselves in the hills outside the estate,” Arin said. “Now.”

“What,” Roshar said, “would you leave the village undefended?”

“Of course not. Garrison a contingent. You don’t need to parade the whole army down its streets.”

“The whole army? Not so. You forget: three-quarters of our forces lie at Lerralen. We brave few are all that stand between these villagers and bloody dominion.” Roshar sounded merry.

“This is not a play,” Arin said through his teeth.

Kestrel didn’t understand Arin’s discomfort until the prince said, “Let them get a look at you.”

Even then, Kestrel didn’t fully understand until she saw it happen.

Although the Herrani and easterners usually marched in discrete brigades, Roshar gave orders for them to mingle. On the road outside the village, he took a personal artistic interest in arranging the visual appearance of, as he put it, “friendship in the face of adversity”—a phrase that made Arin cringe.

Roshar bullied Arin into the front of the ranks alongside him. The prince caught Kestrel’s eyes. She saw the gleam of strategy in his and responded to it. She held Javelin slightly back. They entered the village, Roshar and Arin riding abreast.

Villagers lined the main road, packed thickly, small children lifted onto grown shoulders. When the villagers saw Arin, their eyes widened with excitement. There was a murmur. People surged forward. They tried to touch him.

Arin’s horse didn’t like it, and it huffed and stamped. Arin hissed fiercely at Roshar in the eastern tongue; it sounded like a curse.

“If you’re so worried they’ll be trampled,” Roshar drawled loudly in Herrani, “get down off your horse and greet your people.”

Arin glanced over his shoulder at Kestrel: a wordless plea. Then he dismounted and she lost sight of him in the sea of people.

She drew Javelin up alongside Roshar. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t you think our boy deserves some love?”

“I think you’re using him to make yourself and your people look good by association.”

The prince smiled, spreading his hands helplessly.

Kestrel dismounted and made her way through the villagers. She used her elbows. A few sharp words, too, which drew surprised looks that quickly hardened into shock. She saw them see her Valorian features.

Suspicion and hatred unfolded on their faces. They hadn’t noticed her when she’d ridden with the army. Their eyes had been on Arin. But they noticed her now.

“Please let me through,” she said.

The press of bodies grew more solid. This wasn’t the city, where every one knew about her. All the villagers knew was their own past engraved in her eyes, her hair, the shape of her face. Murder and oppression, mixed right into the color of her skin.

“You,” someone said, hard and flat.

Wary, she backed away. People surrounded her.

Someone from behind seized her hand. She yanked it free, pulse high and stuttering. She tried to turn, then heard, “Kestrel.”

Arin shouldered someone aside and reached for her hand again, gripping it firmly this time. She felt a rush of relief—and foolishness, for thinking to help Arin and becoming the person who needed help. But the crowd’s anger wasn’t going away. If anything, it intensified.

“What is she doing here?” Kestrel couldn’t tell who’d said it.

“She’s my friend,” Arin answered. “Give her room.”

They did.

It was strange to look at Arin through her own eyes and also through theirs, to see the real and imagined person, and to know that what they imagined him to be was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. There was a solid command in his voice, his frame. There was the aura of Arin’s singularity, the way he seemed like no one else, like he was a little more than human. But there was also his anxiety, traveling through their interlaced fingers, and the hunted quality to his expression. His mouth wasn’t right. She didn’t think they saw that.

“Stay with me?” he murmured in her ear.

“Yes.”

With her beside him, he walked among the villagers. They kept touching him. Each time, she felt the slight tremor of his reaction, quickly stilled. He tried to be at ease, yet mostly failed. She wasn’t sure if the villagers noticed. They smiled, asked questions, voices riding high. Arin didn’t let go of her hand.