The Winner's Crime

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

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.

“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.”

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.”

To be honest, Arin didn’t understand his own trust. He wasn’t even sure if this stubborn impulse came out of real hope or was the habit of a beggar, fallen asleep with his hand held out for small coins.

Or perhaps that wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.

love you, she’d say. She almost heard the words. She almost saw her hand reach out. She craved it.

Now she knew that to give something up was to have it taken away.

Reality isn’t very poetic, I know.” She shrugged. “Neither is the sort of arrogance that encourages someone to think that so much revolves around him.”

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