The Second Death of Locke — Chapter no 30

thirty

T WAS DECIDED THAT Scaelas and Cleoc would provide enough soldiers toI keep the Isle and hold it until they could force a surrender from Epras and Luthos—or until Grey could find some other way to assert her dominance over the nation’s power.

Judging by the growing number of Eprain’s ships circling, waiting for a sign of weakness, Grey understood that the latter option was the desirable one.

While Scaelas and Cleoc went to speak to their advisers, Grey left the planning in the war rooms to her commanders and went to check on how preparations were progressing. Kier sent a pulse of reassurance through the tether as she left the room; she ignored it.

One of Cleoc’s attendants waited for her in a side room. She curtsied when Grey entered. “Your majesty,” she said. “Please accept this gift, from my nation.”

Grey crossed to the heavy wooden trunk and opened it. Inside, she found a number of rich, dark fabrics in shades of black and gray and navy with a few flashes of ivory silk. She sat back on her heels—it was the wardrobe that Sela had commissioned. On top, she found a letter, sealed with a modified Stratan crest pressed into the wax.

“Thank you,” she said to the attendant, forcing herself through speechlessness. “I am immensely grateful to you, your nation and your lady.” And its daughter, she thought.

After the attendant left, she opened the letter.

My fearsome Lady Locke, I am not allowed to join you on your Isle, and I am not as brave as you—you, for certain, would’ve found yourself a place on one of those ships, forbidden or not. I hope you do not think badly of me for my weakness.

Grey scoffed. If she had to worry about Sela on top of everything else, she might actually combust. She frowned, annoyed at herself for a moment, for finally understanding Torrin’s healthy fear for her own safety.

I know this gift is small, and possibly insignificant. I cannot give you my sword or the promise of a nation I haven’t yet inherited. I can barely help you. But you are the strongest person I know, and the strongest well. You will be okay. You have to be okay.

Thank you for your ruthlessness, Grey. It is its own kind of

safety.

Yours, W. N.

PS You can’t die, because I’ve already started planning Locke’s resurrection party, and the plans I have are in no way appropriate for a funeral.

She laughed, pushing away tears that threatened to overflow. She rifled through the fabrics, and was halfway through when she felt the press of cold metal. She frowned, pushing aside the top layer of clothes to reveal a set of cleverly made armor. It was dark silver, glimmering in the stormy light through the windows, overlaid with patterns of birds and ivy. It was, she realized with some awe, a twin to the armor Kitalma wore in the icons.

She clutched the metal, feeling the cold bite of it under her fingers.

Ruthlessness was, she agreed, its own kind of safety.

That evening, while Kier and Dainridge and Reggin continued their planning, Grey took a candle and made her way through the dark halls to

the administrative wing of the fortress. Cleoc and Scaelas and their various clerks and advisers had taken up most of the rooms, but, probably at Scaelas’s instruction, Grey’s mother’s office was left free for her.

She hesitated at the door. It was warded—perhaps that was the true reason. Perhaps she was assigning kindnesses to Torrin that didn’t belong.

The door opened easily beneath her touch, only creaking a little. She carried a leather satchel of documents over her shoulder, passed from the other sovereigns for her review. She set the documents on the carved wood desk and took the room in: the walls were covered with bookshelves, bearing old treatises and folklore alike. It was small, but far more nicely appointed than any commander’s office she’d been in before. She could not say if it rivaled the luxury of Torrin’s private office; she had never been there.

She lit the fire in the grate, then sat behind the desk. There was a stack of letters in the middle, seals broken, all bearing correspondence that was now worthless. She ran her fingers over the parchment to the other side, where her mother had been halfway through writing a response to Maerin’s harbormaster. She read it over, but it was irrelevant: preparing for renovations to the port that had never happened.

She sighed and pulled out the documents from the satchel. Grey read the proposed articles of the treaty with Scaela and Cleoc Strata until her eyes were heavy with strain, until the door opened and Kier slipped through, his coat as dark and shadowed as the night itself.

He perched on the edge of the desk. “It’s late,” he said, his gaze careful.

“Tomorrow is our last day of peace before it all goes to shit, and you need to rest. You should come to bed.”

Grey glanced at the timepiece on his wrist. “It’s not that late,” she said.

Not even midnight. “And you can’t order me around anymore.”

That got a smile out of him. “Oh, I can try.”

She sat back, folding her hands over her lap. Her fingers were cold—she was not yet skilled at keeping fires going in the hearth. Kier must’ve noted the whiteness of her knuckles—he took her hands in his and rubbed the warmth back into them.

“Is it odd?” she asked. “That no one thinks you have power over me anymore? That they no longer see me as just your well?”

Kier snorted. “I never saw you as just my well.”

“Maybe not, but no one else asked my opinion.”

He thought for a moment, bringing one of her hands to his lips, then the other. “It never mattered, what they thought,” he said after a moment. “I always saw you as my equal. Every decision I made, it was with your counsel.”

Grey looked away. Kier misinterpreted her guilt—he took her chin in his hand, turned her face back to him. “Nothing has changed, Grey. Not for me.”

She regarded him, studied his features. She nodded, and he nodded back.

“You should sleep when you can,” he said.

“I will, after I finish this. Half an hour more.”

He sighed, but leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I’m timing you, Locke.”

An hour later, the door opened again. Grey didn’t glance up. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she murmured.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we can enjoy that kind of relationship anymore.”

She looked up, the pen falling from her hand, dripping ink across the note on tributes she was halfway through making. Leonie stood in the doorway, leaning on a cane. Grey frowned—she doubted the Isle’s stormy weather was good for Leonie’s bones.

“Please, sit,” she said, nodding to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. Leonie crossed the carpet, leaving the door cracked behind her.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It’s odd, hearing you talk like a noble.” Leonie smiled, easing herself into the chair. She wore a gray coat over her black skirt, and the sight of it brought a lump to Grey’s throat. “And it’s to whom. It’s the same answer as always, since neither of you is capable of looking after yourselves without the other getting involved. The commander sent me.”

“Ah.”

Leonie shifted her arm, and Grey realized she carried a basket. She drew out a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Think it’s still good?”

Grey snorted. There was no point explaining the time dilation, the unchanging nature of the Isle, the bodies. “I suspect we’re going to find out.”

Leonie’s grin widened. She uncorked the bottle with a thin knife from her belt, then poured two glasses. “Not too much,” Grey cautioned. “I need a clear head, and Kier thinks I should go to bed.”

“I don’t believe we need to heed his every word. After all, he also said Eron would beat Ola in a fight, and that’s certainly false.”

“What kind of fight?” Grey asked, accepting the glass Leonie handed her, and the subsequent clink of their glasses as they toasted. She took a sip: the wine was rich and dark, probably plum. Probably a gift from Nestria sixteen seasons ago.

“Oh, you know. No magic, sparring, the usual.” Leonie sighed, sitting back. Grey watched the tension leaving her shoulders, and wondered if she herself would ever be able to relax again.

“You didn’t have to follow me here.”

Leonie looked over her shoulder, watching the crackling fire. It was a novelty to the Scaelans, Grey supposed; even with its familiarity, it was a novelty to her, too. Magefire did not crackle like real flames; it did not smell like clean pine and woodsmoke.

“I told you I would be here if you had need of me.”

Grey closed her eyes. “I do not want to bring people close to me if it’s only sentencing them to death.”

“Do you really believe that’s what this is?” Leonie said, taking another sip of her wine. Grey wanted to throw caution to the winds, drain the entire glass to the dregs and let her hair loose as she stood on the highest tower of her own Isle. “Do you have so little faith that we may live?”

She swallowed hard, taking a mouthful of wine with it. “They expect something great of me,” she said.

“Of course they do. You raised the Isle with blood and intention alone.”

Not alone.

“What?”

Grey looked up. She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud. But Leonie was watching her with care, and caution—and gods, she just wanted someone else to know about her decision. Not to help; but just to hold it, so she did not have to carry the weight of it alone.

“If I tell you something,” she said, running her fingertip along the rim of the glass, “can I trust your confidence?”

Leonie snorted. “I knew you were Locke for the better part of a year,

and I said nothing then.”

Grey scrutinized her. Leonie only refilled her glass. “You did?”

“With the way you manipulated power? With how you healed your captain? Of course I knew, Grey. I’m no fool.”

“Kier is dead.”

Leonie’s hand slipped; she nearly dropped the bottle, but recovered quickly. She set it down, out of the range of the papers, as Grey took a long sip of her wine. “Grey—I just saw him. He sent me. I told you.”

Grey shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.”

Leonie raised a brow and leaned in closer, her elbows on the desk.

“When we raised Locke,” Grey said miserably, the ache of it returning to her chest at even the slightest thought of it—she wondered if she would always have it, right there within reach, when she recalled the absence of his heartbeat. “Kier… was not alive when we arrived on the Isle. I checked his pulse. I tried to bring him back. For a while, Leonie.”

Leonie nodded slowly, looking away. She knew Grey’s training: if Grey had declared Kier beyond saving, if she had given up on him coming back, then he was surely dead.

“My mother appeared to me, and my father and brother, and the goddess Kitalma. They told me that to resurrect the Isle, a sacrifice was needed.”

“And that sacrifice was Kier,” Leonie said. “But…”

Grey nodded, barely able to speak past the tightness in her chest. “But.”

“He’s walking now.”

“I was offered a trade. By the goddess.”

“Grey…”

She shook her head. She could not say it for a moment of quiet breathing, and then she forced the words out: “I have time, yet. But I can either keep my power… or Kier can keep his freedom.”

Leonie sucked a breath through her teeth. “And if you lose your power, will all power fade?”

“No,” Grey said, considering. “The goddess said Kier will still be able to draw from the Isle, and my own heir will continue the line. So it is just…

me.”

“And if Kier gives his freedom?”

“If I give it,” Grey corrected, feeling the distinction was important.

“Then Kier can never again leave the Isle. He will live the rest of his days

here, and then he will die here.”

“He can never go home.”

“No,” Grey said.

Leonie nodded thoughtfully. She ran the tip of her finger over the wrinkled edge of the bottle’s label. “And have you decided?”

Grey rubbed her eyes. That was the question, wasn’t it? Every time she opened her mouth to tell Kier, every time the words tangled on her tongue —because she had decided, and the decision made her ache.

“He’s already given everything up for me,” she said, the words thick in her throat. “I cannot take more from him.”

Leonie’s hand stopped moving. “So you would give it up? You would give away everything?”

“It’s no more than he already sacrificed,” Grey said, the knot finally breaking. She took a ragged breath and wiped away her tears with her sleeve.

That was when she saw him, in the shadows of the doorway. He had one hand on the door still, frozen, halfway through pushing it open.

“Leonie,” Kier said. His voice was quiet, but the intensity of it made Grey’s blood run cold. She reached for the tether—but in that very moment, Kier snapped it. “If I may, I need to speak with the High Lady.”

Cold dread spread through her at the tone of his voice. She knew, with utter certainty, that she had made a grave mistake in not telling him—and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, no defense she could use, no high ground she could take.

Leonie paled, turning to look at Kier. She twisted to look back at Grey, but Grey only shook her head. The damage was already done.

“Of course,” Leonie said. She left Grey one more lingering glance, took her bottle and the glasses and went out. Kier shut the door behind her.

He raised his eyes to Grey, finally. Only then did she see the full extent of his anger, written in the paleness of his face, the sharpness of his gaze, the ticking muscle of his jaw. She’d seen that expression before—but she’d never seen it directed at her.

He was still dressed, despite his earlier beckoning for her to come to bed —he had probably been working, too, at the desk in their room. Preparing for the battle to come. She regarded him, taking in the lines of his face in the firelight; she could not read him.

“What was I to do?” she asked, when she could not bear the silence anymore. She didn’t know how long he’d been there, how much he’d heard, but he’d certainly caught the worst of it.

“You should’ve told me,” he said, his voice shaking with fury.

Blood and betrayal. That’s the legacy of Locke.

She rose to her feet like a thundercloud. “You cannot be mad at me for saving your life.”

“You didn’t save my life!” Kier shouted. “I died, Grey. Don’t you think I deserved to know that?”

“I was going to tell you,” she said, fighting to keep her own voice level, “once I decided what to do.”

“And you don’t think I should get a say?” He whirled, finding an inkpot on one of the bookshelves. He threw it; she winced when it hit the stone wall above the fireplace and shattered in a spray of black drops and glass.

“Fuck!”

“You have no reason to be furious about this,” Grey said, her nails digging into the wood of the desk. “And if you insist on it, you can go home and be mad in your mothers’ house. When this battle is over, you are free to leave, if you wish.”

He whirled on her, face blank for the barest second as he processed, then his fury intensified. His hands were clenched into fists at his side. “You.

Will. Not. Give. Up. Your. Power.”

She stared at him, jaw throbbing from how tightly she was clenching it.

When it was clear he was not going to say anything else until she did, she said, “I will not take your freedom, Kiernan.”

“Give me that choice,” he hissed.

“I give you all the choices!” Grey shouted back. She wanted to throw an inkpot herself, but she did not.

He shook his head, the vein in his temple throbbing. He went over to the fireplace and picked up the biggest piece of ink-stained glass from the mantel before he threw it in the fire. “I have never made a choice without consulting you,” he said, his voice pitched so low she barely heard it. Grey watched the fight run out of him as he gripped the mantel like it was the only thing that would keep him upright through this betrayal.

She swallowed, forcing the pain down. “I love you. Every choice I have made, that I am making, is because I love you.”

His hand tightened on the mantel, knuckles going white. “Why must you always sacrifice yourself, and call that love?”

She drew a sharp breath. It was a fatal blow, and they both knew it.

Kier did not look at her. He did not say anything as he turned away and went out, shutting the door behind him, leaving her standing in the wake of his destruction.

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Grape –

Look after him. Please. I know he would die for you, but I think it’s in all of our best interests if you don’t let him. He has given up everything for you (and I support him in this decision), but I beg of you: don’t let him give up his life.

Letter from Lieutenant Lotrain Seward to Grey Flynn, 7 years PD

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