The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(71)

“Am I the only one who’s supposed to worry?” she asked. “As I did when you went to sea. As I will tomorrow. Every day after that. You can worry for me like I worry for you.”

He looked at his hands. They trembled.

“Trust me,” she repeated.

He felt the misery of his fear, the desperate certainty that he would lose her again. He trusted that certainty. He trusted his fear. It ruled him like a god.

“Arin.”

He met her eyes. They were strange and familiar—rich, in his mind, with every thing he knew about her, and with the mystery of her thoughts, which he’d never know for sure. He saw—the knowledge cracked open his shell of fear—that death wasn’t the only way to lose her. He would lose her if he couldn’t do this. He didn’t trust her. He did not. Yet he understood that there are some things you feel and others that you choose to feel, and that the choice doesn’t make the feeling less valid.

“Do you?” she asked.

He made his choice. “Yes.”

She stepped into his arms. He held the rope of her braid gently. He was drowning. He was far below the surface. He’d forgotten how to breathe.

Then his lungs opened and his mind grew quiet and clear. “Come back to me,” he murmured.

“I will.”





Chapter 25

She rode hard. Crouching low over the saddle, Kestrel pressed the horse to a gallop, drove it straight down the main road from Errilith to the south. The map was in her mind. She saw again the shaky mark made on a forest two leagues from the general’s camp. Roshar had brought the map to her with the scout’s token.

And now: the clatter of hooves. A cream of sweat on the horse’s neck. Wan moonlight. Hard to see pits and cracks in the road. If the horse stumbled at this pace, it’d shatter a bone. Toss its rider. Kestrel would break her neck on the paving stones.

She dug her heels in. She had mere hours before the sky blued and lightened. There’d be no chance then to pretend to be the scout.

Black trees jolted and wavered on either side of the road. Her throat was dry. Sweat salted her lips.

She remembered Arin’s hand slipping down the length of her braid, letting go. The way he’d looked at her.

The trees gave way abruptly to grass and seemed to topple back, crash noiselessly behind her as she sped forward. The horse’s stride lengthened along the meadow. It felt like she rode over a black sea.

A smudge of trees in the distance. West.

Off the road now. Slower. Cantering over the meadow toward the western forest. She let the horse walk, felt its sides bellow and heave against her legs.

Low branches to duck under. Watch the knees. The trees grew close together; no path here. Straining to see through different shades of shadow, Kestrel picked a way through the woods until it didn’t make sense anymore to ride.

It was when she tethered the horse (there was no sound of fresh water, and that was cruel, she hated to leave the horse like that, neck drooping, coat furred with sweat) that Kestrel first felt it. A slow fear, heavy, like sadness . . . which made her realize that her fear was a kind of sadness, because she couldn’t be better than her fear. She had believed that she could be better when she’d stood before Arin and demanded that he trust her. When she felt, finally, the truth of his trust, warm and solid in his long limbs.

But this was how it ended: her, alone, stepping through the woods, afraid.

She paused, tipped her head back, and glanced up at the sharp stars.

See how brave they are, whispered the memory of her father’s voice. She’d been very young when he’d said this. Bright and still. Those stars are the kind of soldiers who stand and fight.

A rush of anger.

Even the stars.

Don’t just stand there, she told herself. Run.

She jogged through the trees. Her breath rasped. She abandoned what she’d been feeling and thought only of the mark on the map and reaching it while it was still dark.

It was the owl’s hour. One last loop of the night, a final hunt before dawn crept in.

Kestrel slowed. Her legs were jelly. She drank from the canteen strapped over one shoulder and across her chest. Swished and spat. Her bad knee throbbed a little, but she realized—distantly, curiously—that her body had grown strong. The days of riding had hardened her legs. It felt good to run.

But her strength also reminded her of her weakness, of how easily her body had given out on the tundra. The unlocking of the prison gate. Relief, joy. Then the chase. Legs collapsing, mud, rope. The dress ripped open along her spine.

Kestrel capped the canteen, screwed it.

She ran again.

The sky was dark blue when she saw a flicker of orange in the trees. An oil lamp.

Her heart hit her ribs. She slowed her run, moving toward the clearing. The lamplight swung. She’d been heard.

“Hail,” she tried to call as she threaded through the last copse of trees, her sides heaving. She had no breath. She coughed and tried again. “Hail Emperor Lycian, General of Wolves, father of a hundred thousand children.” It was his military title as well as his political one. Though the emperor hadn’t fought in a war since the conquest of Herran, he retained his rank as first general, the only person to whom her father must answer.

“Alis?” called the voice behind the uplifted lamp.

“Stay back. Sir.”