Page 124 of The Winner's Kiss
“Arin.”
“I know. I shouldn’t sleep. But I’m so tired.”
She threatened him. He didn’t hear the whole of it.
“Lie with me,” he murmured. It bothered him to think of her kneeling on the ground.
“Promise not to sleep.”
“I promise.”
But he didn’t mean it. He knew what would happen. She slipped in beside him. Every thing became too soft, too dark, too velvet. He sank into sleep. He sighed, and let go.
Chapter 34
When she woke, he was gone.
Kestrel’s heart crashed against her ribs and didn’t let up, not even when she pushed her way out of the tent and found Arin making tea under the hollowed blue of a near-dawn sky. He stoked the little fire.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“I found a box of tea in the tent.” Arin saw her expression. “Roshar won’t mind.”
“I mind.”
His gaze traveled between her and the pot of boiling water. “What’s wrong?”
“You shouldn’t have slept.”
“I’m better for it.”
Maybe. But it hurt her to see his face, the inky bruise that spread over his brow and cheek and into the corner of his eye. The broken skin where he’d been struck at his temple. He wore a dirty tunic, perhaps because he didn’t want to soil a clean one; dried blood flaked the skin of his bare arms. An awful bubble expanded inside her chest. “I shouldn’t have slept.”
“You needed to. The battle. The ride. It can’t have been easy.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Arin turned the closed tea box in his hands. The dry leaves whispered. “Thank you for saving me.”
“I thought you were dead. That you would die.”
He considered the box. “I know how hard it is to watch someone die.”
“Not ‘someone.’ You, Arin.”
He nodded, but winced, set the box aside, and didn’t seem to truly hear her.
She sank to sit by the fire, her crooked arm resting on a bent knee drawn to her chest. She pressed her mouth and chin against her inner arm. “You’re still in pain.”
“Not so much anymore, which is why you must talk to me.”
“Arin, I am.”
“About the war.”
She looked at him.
He said, “We can’t retreat to the city.”
