The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(90)

Terror snaked through her, slipping and winding.

The Valorians hadn’t yet broken through the front lines. Artillery couldn’t be used, for fear of hitting one’s own. There were a few brief moments before an enemy reached her.

And maybe ahead, somewhere, was what she realized she feared most of all. Arin’s emptied eyes. His blood spilling, spent.

She kneed Javelin forward and rode up through the ranks.

He was nearly thrown from his horse. A Valorian slammed into him. Arin caught a blow to his armored chest, sucked in a sharp breath. Felt the bruise, maybe a fracture. No blood, he thought. For the smallest of moments it was hard to focus, hard even to know what his hands were doing or what he saw and whom he fought. He asked his god a formless question. If he could have put it into words, he would have asked if the god’s mercy was to have let him live for so long. Twenty years is better than nine. Or was the god’s mercy to die this way, and not a different, worse way? Or simply to come home, to the haven of the gods. Mother, father, sister. A wash of loneliness, of longing, of yes. Yes, maybe that was it, maybe that was what the god had meant. Mercy. A promise: that the final moment before this world became the next one would be as sweet as love.

But he could not think this, or understand it. He simply felt it, this question that was many questions condensed into an iron bead, the head of a pin, a tiny hard point of dread and hope and relief.

His horse. His damned horse. The animal kept straining its will against Arin’s. This horse was going to get him killed. Arin tried to feel worried.

His sword opened someone’s belly. He wasn’t sure how. His blade shouldn’t have gotten past Valorian armor. But entrails probed out of a gash. A slow, wet unfolding.

Arin ended it.

To come home, mused his god, who had been able to take the iron bead of Arin’s heart and make it a feather, and could separate each barb from the other, all along down the quill. The god ran a finger down the unnaturally fanned vane. Is that what you think I meant by mercy? Is that what you want?

Well, Arin.

Well.

Kestrel didn’t understand why no one attacked her. Then she did, and felt stupid and grateful. Her armor. Her Valorian looks. Roshar’s forces knew her, knew her horse. But to the Valorians, she seemed to be one of their own. Oddly positioned, if they thought about it, but no one thought. They gurgled from cut throats. They drove swords so far into bodies that their fists vanished inside someone else’s flesh.

She moved Javelin among them—Valorian, Dacran, Herrani. Little ghost. Yes. She didn’t exist. Even when someone’s blood sprayed her cheek, it didn’t feel real. No one touched her.

Until she saw Roshar hack a sword from someone’s grip, smash his shield into the Valorian’s nose, and slice in at the neck. The prince kneed his horse out of the path of the body’s fall. He wheeled his horse and saw Kestrel. “Where’s Arin?” he shouted.

Kestrel’s voice didn’t work. “I don’t know,” she finally said, the whisper hoarse. Roshar wouldn’t have been able to hear even if he weren’t several feet away.

But a nearby Valorian heard. He’d seen the look between her and the prince, had heard them speak the Dacran tongue. A cavalry officer. He shouldered his horse into hers. Reached. Grabbed her throat.

“A scout?” His dark eyes were narrow, his teeth bared. “In the vanguard? Name your regiment.”

She gasped.

“Traitor.” He knocked the sword from her limp hand.

“Kestrel!” Roshar.

Too far away.

She strained to breathe. She didn’t break his gaze. Whispering something she knew he couldn’t hear, she watched the Valorian lean forward, loosen his grip just slightly. Kestrel reached for her dagger and drove it into his armpit.

He grunted, let go. She jerked her dagger free and pierced his throat.

His weight sagged against her. He was gasping in her ear, the sound sticky and wet, blood gushing onto her as she tried to keep her seat, tried to push the armored officer away. But his horse balked. The Valorian gripped her, his brown eyes staring, vengeful, fading. With the last of his strength, he dragged her down with him. He pulled her from her horse.

Arin’s horse was bad, but it’d be much worse to be without one. He cut a space around him. The frontier between army and army was dissolving. Kestrel must be several ranks behind him. The Valorians would soon reach her. Stay close, he’d said. His anxiety rose, making him vicious. Some part of him stared at what his hands and body did, but the larger part of him grew yet larger, and took satisfaction. There was plea sure and murder along with worry at his plea sure. Running through all of it: a sheer stream of fear. Stay close.

He turned his horse back.

And if he couldn’t find her?

Farther back. Still farther.

The Valorians had already eaten their way into the rank where she and Javelin had been.

His lungs squeezed shut. Where? he demanded.

The general? his god coyly answered. Allow me to point you the way . . .

Arin’s nerves screamed.

Open your eyes, death said.

Look, my love, and see.

Arin did. He saw, not far away, Javelin standing amid the boil of war. His rider was gone.

Kestrel’s cheek was in the sand. Her mouth was full of it. She coughed and spat, her back and shoulders sinking into the beach, and pushed at the dead body heaped onto her. She tried to lever it off. Her arms gave out. She saw the misting sky. Her horse, close. She pushed again at the officer. His armor made him heavier. She was soaked with his blood. She felt it still pumping, heard the chaos around her. Panic stitched down her spine.