Marie Rutkoski

There was another silence, long enough for Kestrel to think that that was all he would say, but he spoke again. “Look how you’ve grown. I remember the day you were born. I could hold you with one hand. You were the world’s best thing. The most precious.”

Aren’t I now, to you? she wanted to say. Instead, she whispered, “Tell me how I was.”

“You had a warrior’s heart, even then.”

“I was just a baby.”

“No, you did. Your cry was so fierce. You held my finger so tightly.”

“All babies cry. All babies hold on tight.”

He let go of her hand to lift his, and brush his knuckles across her cheek. “Not like you.”

“Arin.” Roshar was still horrified. “That’s our land.”

“Sometimes you think you want something,” Arin told him, “when what you need is to let it go.”

Kestrel said no. She said that she could no longer look at this dog, this warm and perfect gift, without seeing it hurt. It was different to give something up than to see it taken away. The difference, Kestrel said, was choice. A limited freedom, but better than none. Or so she had thought when Arin had given her two keys to his guarded house. She had thought the same when she’d offered him his country, nailed and bound and screwed tight with certain conditions. Better than nothing. She’d thought this before, and thought it again, but she didn’t believe it anymore. Now she knew that to give something up was to have it taken away.

Of all the lessons you could have learned as empress, the most important would have been this: loyalty is the best love.”

It would be a blessing to forget.

After all, what was there to remember?

Someone she never could have had. Friends dead or gone. A father who did not love her.

The cup tipped. Water ran over her tongue, cool and delicious. She forgot the pain, forgot where she was, forgot who she’d been, forgot that she had ever been afraid of forgetting

Foolish. If she felt dingy and small, it was her own fault for comparing herself where no comparisons could be made. She’d seen a mirror.

Kestrel missed her, remembered and missed her at the same time, which made her wonder if memory is always a kind of missing.

“An eastern liquor. Roshar gave it to me. He said that if you drink enough of it, the dregs start to taste like sugar. I suspect a prank.”

“But you’ve no head for drink.”

He looked as startled as she felt. “Of all the things, you remember that.”

To hide from her would break him. Simple things, so apparent, so not anything other than what they showed themselves to be.

And they love you. They think you’re some holy gift from your gods. Very nice work, I must say.”

“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Even better. Makes it seem more authentic. Convenient, you understand, when sending people to their death