Page 123 of The Winner's Kiss
The question upset her. “That’s what you want to know?”
“It’s important.”
“More important than how you nearly died?”
“But I didn’t.”
Her voice was clipped. “My father has too much black powder. Too many soldiers. Too much experience.”
“But how exactly did he win?”
“A full frontal attack was enough, once he eliminated the guns. I didn’t see every thing that happened.”
Guilt pulsed with the doubled heartbeat in his head. “Because you rode away with me.”
Her eyes welled.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Talk of something else. What you like.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her voice hushed, she said, “Do you remember the mosaic?”
“Yes.”
“How every thing fit. As if each tile wanted to be next to each other.”
“Yes.” But he was confused, he wasn’t sure what the mosaic meant to her, or why she thought of it now. She talked about it as if trying to explain that left was really right, or that it was both left and right . . . which made him realize that he knew that left and right were important, but he couldn’t grasp their meaning or difference. He closed his eyes.
“Arin, don’t.”
“Only for a little.”
“No.” She gripped his hand.
“Shh.”
“Stories,” she blurted. “The mosaic told stories, didn’t it?”
“Yes, old ones.”
“I’ll tell them to you.”
His eyes cracked open. He didn’t remember closing them. “You know those tales?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t. This became clear as she began to tell them. She knew bits and pieces, cobbled together in ways that would have made him smile if smiling didn’t hurt. “You,” he breathed, “are such a faker.”
“Don’t interrupt.”
Mostly pure invention. She remembered the images—it pleased him, how vividly she knew the temple floor’s details. Which god curled around which, or how the snake’s tongue forked into three. But the stories she told had little to do with his religion. Sometimes they didn’t even make sense.
“Do this again,” he said, “when I have strength to laugh.”
“As bad as that?”
“Mmm. Maybe not. For a Valorian.”
But eventually every thing grew slow, unthreaded. He thought of raw cotton pulled apart, fibers trailing. Maybe Kestrel had talked for hours. He didn’t know. When had she rested her cheek against his heart again? His chest rose and fell.
