Page 130 of The Winner's Kiss
Kestrel cleaned her Valorian armor, strapped on a traditional-looking dagger she had taken from the arms supply wagon, and wordlessly handed Arin the one he’d made for her.
“I don’t love my role in this particular mission,” he said. “It’s mostly watching you saunter into danger.”
“You forget.”
“That? That’s nothing.”
“You could get hurt.”
He blinked. “No.”
“You don’t ever fear for yourself?”
“Not for something like this.”
“Then what?”
He studied his hands. “Sometimes . . . I think of who I was. As a boy. I talk to him.”
Slowly, she said, “Like you do to your god?”
“It’s different. Or maybe I think about him like my god thinks about me. I’ve made promises to the child. I worry I won’t be able to keep them.”
“What have you promised?”
“Revenge.”
“You’ll have it.”
Arin nodded, but more in simple acknowledgment than actual confidence.
She looked at him through the smoky night. Just light enough to see his expression, and dark enough that his body smudged into the shadows. Soon, night would truly fall. Waves folded and unfolded against the shore.
“We should wait for the moon to rise,” she said, “before we go down to the camp.”
“And what,” he murmured, “will we do while we wait?”
She brought his fingers to her lips so that he could feel her smile.
His hand traveled the length of her braid and toyed with the leather string that bound it. He untied the knot. The sound of it coming undone was as soft as a breath. He unraveled her hair, and brought her close.
When the moon was high, Kestrel and Arin gathered what they needed and made their way down to the beach, keeping close to the ragged bushes, blending in with their darkness. They waited, crouched near the edge of camp, where they could see the supply wagons, their domed canvas covers as pale as mushrooms in the moonlight.
Finally, a sentry on his rounds walked close to their hiding spot. In one swift movement, Arin surged up, clamped a hand over the sentry’s mouth, and dragged him down to the sand.
“Not a sound,” Arin hissed at the sentry, the point of his dagger pricking the hollow behind the man’s ear. Arin forced the sentry’s face to turn up to the moon. Eyes wide. Skin strained and white. “Tell us which wagon holds the black powder.”
The sentry shook his head.
“Do you remember,” Arin whispered, “the punishment for runaway slaves? No? Let me remind you.” He lightly drew his dagger over the man’s ear, down the tip of his nose. “Which wagon?”
The Valorian shook his head again, but this time his gaze jerked in the direction of one of the larger wagons.
Arin glanced at Kestrel. Enough? his eyes asked. Yes, she mouthed, but—“Don’t,” she whispered, ill at the sight of the sentry pressed down in the sand, his eyes as dark as her childhood friend’s, as that of any Valorian child. They were gleaming, glassy with the kind of fear a child eventually learns how to hide. But death will do that. It makes you unlearn all you know. “Don’t,” she told Arin again.
He hesitated, then slammed the pommel of his dagger against the man’s head, knocking him unconscious.
“Be swift,” Arin told her.
