Page 153 of The Winner's Kiss
He hated seeing the general. He hated seeing even Verex (whom he halfway liked) limping around the camp, teeming with worry—for Risha, but also for Kestrel, which made Arin feel absurdly possessive, as if Verex were trying to rob him by feeling in any way similar to Arin. Arin became insufferable, he knew it, but he was constantly having to wrestle down the knowledge that if something had happened to Kestrel his heart would turn to salt.
He didn’t know what to do with his hands as he looked down at the sleeping general. Arin thrust them into his pockets before they went for the throat. He reminded himself why he had come.
He ripped open the man’s jacket. Arin reached for the inside breast pocket, located exactly where the man had tried to touch his chest as he had lain bleeding on the road.
Arin’s fingers met paper. He pulled it out, its texture suede-soft from having been handled so much. It had been unfolded and folded many times.
It was sheet music. At first, Arin didn’t understand what he looked at. Kestrel’s handwriting. Herrani script. Musical notation in crisp black. His own name leaped off the page.
Dear Arin.
Then he recognized the music as the sonata Kestrel had been studying when he’d entered her music room at the imperial palace in late spring. It had been the last time he’d seen her before the tundra. He had thought it would be the last time he would ever see her.
Arin hastened from the tent. He couldn’t read the letter here.
But he didn’t know if he could read it anywhere, if any place would be private enough, because being alone meant he’d still be with himself, and he hated to remember how he’d left Kestrel that day, and what had befallen her after.
He was desperate to read it.
He couldn’t bear to read it.
He resented that her father had kept it.
He wondered what it meant that her father had kept it.
Arin was only vaguely aware of having stumbled through the noisy camp and into the woods. The thought of reading the letter felt like a violation, like he’d be reading a letter meant for someone else.
Yet it had been addressed to him.
Dear Arin.
Arin read.
“Are you all right?”
Arin glanced up at Roshar, then returned his attention to the horse. He ran a hand down the inside of its front left leg and picked up the hoof, cupping its front. With his free hand, he cleaned the hoof with a pick, brushed it off, and used a knife to probe the outer edges of the hoof, looking for the source of the problem. Steam rose from a nearby bucket of hot, salted water. It was near noon.
“Arin.”
“Just thinking.” Kestrel’s written words still radiated through him, making him feel larger inside than he had been before, as if he’d swallowed the sun and it somehow fit, and blazed and ached and left him dazzled: half-blind but still seeing things more clearly than before.
“Well, stop it,” Roshar said. “You’ve been looking either dour or dreamy and neither really suits the victorious leader of his free people.”
Arin snorted. The horse, feeling his knife touch a sore spot, tried to pull her hoof away. He held it fast, supporting it from below with his knee.
“You could at least make a rousing speech,” Roshar said.
“Can’t. I’m riding to Sythiah.”
Roshar made a strangled sound.
“Not on this horse,” Arin said. “She’s lame.”
“What are you doing?”
“She was limping. It hurt to look at her. An abscess, I think. She must have stepped on something sharp.”
“Arin, you’re not a damn farrier. Someone else can do this.”
