Page 157 of The Winner's Kiss
“Ask.”
For a long time, he said nothing. “I can’t ask for something no one could give. I ask for mercy.”
Her vision blurred, and Kestrel knew that forgiveness and mercy would take years for them both, and that she needed every single minute of that time.
She said that she still loved him, because it was true. He owed her better answers than the ones he had given, and even if he never had them, it was her right to keep asking. She would never give him her dagger. “I tried so hard to live in your world,” she told him. “Now it’s your turn to live in mine.”
Chapter 42
Arin should have expected it, but somehow didn’t.
So many flowers. All the summer blooms must have been cut from the gardens, which would be naked for weeks. When the army came through the gate, a roar vibrated the stone walls, and Arin flinched in surprise, hands tightening on the reins, for the tiniest moment believing that the sound meant danger. Then he saw the glowing faces of people thronging the streets and thought, Ah, happy. Which made him happy, and as Kestrel smiled at him from her seat on Javelin, a pink petal clinging to her cheek, it occurred to him that he might have to grow comfortable with happiness, because it might not abandon him this time.
Then Kestrel’s head turned, and he saw her survey the Dacran-Herrani army unfurled behind them in Lahirrin’s main street, a tension in the line of her mouth. She said, “I’m not sure it’s wise to bring all the soldiers within the city walls.”
“This is every one’s victory. Every one must be honored.”
“I know.”
“But?”
“Our eastern allies outnumber us.”
He knew what she was getting at. “They always have.”
“If they want this country, it’d be easy for them to take it . . . especially from within the city walls.”
Arin glanced at Roshar, who’d ridden ahead to meet the queen. “I trust him.”
“Yes, I know.”
Arin paused his horse. Javelin stopped, too. Flowers flurried down around them. He said, “It would hurt me to suspect him.”
“That’s why I do it for you.”
A cloth dropped onto his head from above, from a window of one of the tall, narrow homes near the market. Startled, blind, Arin tugged it from his face, his horse shying beneath him.
It was an old Herrani flag, stitched with the royal crest.
Arin said, “But the royal line is gone.”
“They’re looking for something to call you,” Kestrel said, nudging Javelin forward.
“Not this. It’s not right.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll find the right words to describe you.”
“And you.”
“Oh, that’s easy.”
“It is?” It seemed impossible to name every thing she was to him.
Kestrel’s expression was serious, luminous. He loved to see her like this. “They’ll say that I’m yours,” she told him, “just as you are mine.”
When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. “For someone with a reputation for being so smart,” Sarsine said, “you act like you haven’t a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I’d worry when you dis appeared from the city with no word?”
“I didn’t exactly mean to leave.”
