The Second Death of Locke — Chapter no 31

thirty-one

HAT NIGHT, GREY SLEPT alone.T She woke too early and returned to her office, working through treaties that would never be signed if she died. After, she fled to the infirmary, helping Leonie and her handful of healers prepare for the looming battle. Kier did not tether nor pull from her. If he found it an inconvenience, being without magic, he did not tell her.

She returned to the war rooms in the afternoon and took her seat between Cleoc and Scaelas. The maps on the tables were tidier, marked now with the bases for different regiments and the plans for attack, inked with notes. Kier stood at the other end of the table, leaning over them, with Reggin at one shoulder. Reggin’s Hand sat in the chair his mage had previously occupied. Grey found her eyes often slipping to him, doing her best to distract herself from Kier’s coldness with other thoughts, wondering at their relationship. Would her own father or uncle or brother drag her into war?

She felt Torrin’s anxiety radiating off him. Perhaps her own was as thick, as noticeable—perhaps everyone misread the tension between Locke and her commander as concern for the battle to come.

“If you think you’re ready,” Reggin was saying to Kier, “then you should trust that instinct.” At Kier’s nod, Reggin turned to the rest of the table. “We will focus our forces here, and here, as Commander Seward has suggested.” Grey followed the indications on the map.

“Locke?” Scaelas said. “What do you think?”

She thought her head was going to explode, and she did not have the brain for strategy. She knew, with perfect muscle memory, how to wield a

blade, how to fight, how to defend. She couldn’t keep looking at Kier and seeing the disappointment lurking beneath the surface. She glanced quickly at Scaelas, then used a line she’d heard from him more than once: “I will defer to the wisdom of my commanders.”

The corner of Scaelas’s mouth twitched up. Dainridge, Reggin and Seward were all in agreement: Kier would pull down the temporary shields and open the Isle to attack when their time was up, when Grey’s final rejection of marriage was received.

“The only question that remains,” Dainridge said, pacing behind the

table, “is that of Locke.”

Grey’s head snapped up. “In what way?”

“Where will you be during the battle, your majesty?”

She glanced at Cleoc. “I’ll be in the fortress, safe,” Cleoc said, perfunctory, her hands folded on the table. “I am no soldier.”

Scaelas cleared his throat. “And I will be with my forces. Fighting.”

Grey raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to tell her what to do—but he did not.

“Then Locke, too, will remain in the fortress,” someone said at the end of the table. One of Cleoc’s masters, Grey thought.

“I will not,” she snapped. “I will be fighting with—” She cut off, the thought interrupted before she could finish it: she’d been about to say, I will be fighting with my mage.

What had Cleoc said to her, on that day when they were trying to figure out the problem of Kier’s imprisonment? She could not be loyal to both her Isle and her mage.

Across the table, she met Kier’s eye. He was still angry—but there was surrender there. He would not offer counsel, not on her life; not when this decision mattered so much. He was watching her carefully, but he would not make nor unmake her decisions.

Perhaps, she thought grimly, it was payback for her making decisions without him.

“They’re after you, Locke,” Commander Reggin said very carefully, as if urging her to consider her words when her own commander remained silent. “If you are captured…”

“They are here,” Torrin said, not meeting her eye, “to take you prisoner.”

Grey pressed her lips together. She looked at Cleoc, who did not want a

rash, impulsive girl for an ally, who would not trust her if she acted out of hand; she looked at Scaelas, who would be fighting under his own banner, but who looked nauseous at the thought of her doing the same.

And then at Kier, who only waited. Who had already died for her once.

She ached for all the things she should’ve done differently, all the words she should’ve told him before they’d gotten this far.

If she died in battle, she could not save him.

“I will be in the fortress,” she said, tasting bile in her mouth, “helping as best I can.”

Kier let out a breath. She did not need to be tethered to him to sense his relief.

“But I refuse to be taken prisoner,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. She remembered the feeling in her stomach when her mother perished in battle. “If I am to remain here, then I want poison or a blade. In

case they take the Isle.”

Scaelas did not meet her eye.

But Kier did. When she glanced up, he was looking at her steadily. She had been such a fool, to try to make decisions like this without taking him into account. They always chose the cliff, the poison, the blade, to be the sacrifice—they always chose one another.

She remembered her mother braiding poison into her hair. Her father checking her boots for blades. Severin, not hesitating to kill the girl he thought he would marry. She thought of holding Kier’s hand as they jumped. She felt, with bile in her throat, of how she had taken the choice of sacrifice or salvation away from him. And again, she thought of how she couldn’t bear it—and how, if she took the choice away from him, he would be so much more likely to decide on his own sacrifice, without her.

“Then you shall have both, at your disposal,” Kier said.

When darkness finally fell, the eve before the battle to come, Kier was not in her room when she went upstairs to bed. The door to his own room, his actual room, was firmly closed. She had not been able to catch a moment with him before they were both pulled in different directions—and still, she was not sure what to say.

She left it. She bathed, sitting in the water with her knees pulled to her

chest until it went cold. Then she dressed in warm clothes and a cloak, and left her hair wet down her back, though her grandmother always told her that would be the death of her. She walked through the fortress like a ghost, then up and up and up.

Alone, on the roof of Locke’s tallest tower, she looked out at her Isle.

The stone of the crenelations was frigid under her hands. The torches in the harbor glowed with violet magelight, a warning to any ships that sailed too close. There were a few lights spread around the Isle as soldiers from each camp kept watch. Far offshore, the ships circled. She did not know how much longer they would keep their distance, treating her like prey.

There were boots on the stairs behind her. Grey stiffened, expecting Kier —but it was only Ola who came, wrapped in a blanket, her hair loose over her shoulders. She moved next to Grey and let her head fall on her shoulder.

“I imagine you’re not here of your own free will,” Grey said bitterly.

“Would you believe me if I said I was?”

Grey shot her a scathing look.

Ola sighed. “You’re a good one, Flynn. If you must know, the commander came into my room in a rage the other night and demanded that I make sure you actually went to sleep tonight.”

Damn him.

“You fought.”

It wasn’t a question, so Grey did not answer it. “Do you think we’ll survive tomorrow?” she asked instead, desperate to think of anything else.

“Who knows,” Ola said. “But there have been many days when I’ve asked that question, so it’s not much of a change.”

Grey snorted. “I have never felt so powerless in my life,” she said finally. “Everyone here seems determined to die for me. And I— I don’t know, Ol. There has to be something I can do, something that will save them.”

“You’ve been determined to die for everyone else, Grey,” Ola said

mildly.

“It’s different,” Grey insisted.

“Is it?”

She didn’t answer. The only noise was the waves crashing below as she considered this. “I might understand why Kier is angry,” she said finally.

“But that doesn’t explain why everyone else is willing to die.”

Ola chewed on her lip. “If it helps, it’s not about you at all. Locke was always the linchpin in the middle of a complex set of treaties. It benefits Scaelas and Cleoc to return to that.”

Grey put her elbows on the stone and rested her head in her hands. It did help, and she did know that, though it was easy to forget. It was almost a relief to know they were following her for her political significance rather than her personality. “And there’s been no word from Nestria. They hope to remain neutral, to fall in with the favor of whoever wins.”

“Lucky bastards,” Ola said simply, rubbing Grey’s back. “I envy them.

If only someone would do the work for us.”

They stood in silence for a while, listening to the wind, growing progressively more damp as the clouds spat down their drizzle. Grey watched the warships out at sea.

She flexed her fingers, checking in on her well, and the gentle pull of the power from the Isle. Now, days into her position as Locke, she understood it further. It was like a mapwork of light inside of her: she could feel the strongest tether, between her and Kier, shining golden and strong; there was another flow of power too, a doorway between her and the Isle.

But something had changed, since time started again. She felt pinpricks within her of all other wells. Before, when she’d reached for someone’s power on the battlefield, to rip it away, it had been there when she’d looked for it. Now, she didn’t even need to look. She could see the connections, like silvery threads of power, winding from Locke to those who carried its riches.

“I think they expect something impressive of me,” she said quietly.

Ola scoffed. “You’re Locke. You brought back an entire island. How much more impressive do you need to be?”

Grey sighed. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how. I barely have a grip on my own power—I’ve only been here for a few days. But I have to do something.”

“Like what?” Ola asked. “Blow up the Isle?”

Grey elbowed her arm. “I don’t know,” she said. “Bigger than that, even.

It seemed like when they presented their choices, there were only two: marry or fight. But what if there’s a third choice? One of my own making?

One that does not force so many to their deaths?”

“Any ideas? Happy to brainstorm.”

Grey laughed without humor. “I don’t think it’s that easy.” She stretched her hands, feeling the power of the Isle running through her. “Do you remember, in the valley, when we thought we were going to die?”

“How could I forget?” Ola said. “I would count it among the finest hours of our friendship.”

Grey shifted her weight, the thoughts crystalizing. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Back there, I… ripped the power away. It hurt, but I did it.”

“It didn’t just hurt, Grey. It nearly killed you.”

She inclined her head, allowing that. “But what if I could do it on a larger scale?”

Ola was quiet for a moment, considering that. “I think,” she said carefully, “you would be showing your hand, and demonstrating that you have a control of the power that… puts you more at risk.”

“I agree.”

“And if it nearly killed you last time to pull the power from a few dozen wells, I can’t imagine the catastrophic disaster to your own body to pull it from thousands. Can you even do that, at a distance? How would it work?”

“I don’t know.” Grey pressed her lips together. She had known for long enough that it was very possible she’d become a casualty of this war herself. “I’m not worried about dying,” she lied.

Ola rolled her eyes. “Well, it makes things a lot easier if you don’t die,” she said.

“It would save lives. If I could do it.”

“But what if you can’t, and you die too?”

Grey shrugged. There was no way around it, and Ola was right: it was possible she could pull that much power, but there was very little chance of her own survival if she did. Besides: “I think, if I did it. If I pulled the power. I think everyone would hate me. Or fear me, at the very least.” She chewed her lip, her eyes watering in the frigid wind. “I have no desire to flex my hand and control the nation.”

“Even if it saves lives?” Ola said, flipping her own argument back on

her.

Grey had nothing to say to that.

Ola snuggled in closer, stealing Grey’s warmth. “You know how I envy Nestria? Because they get to watch how everything plays out, before they decide?”

“Yes?” She didn’t know where Ola was going with this.

“Well, I absolutely, positively do not envy you.”

Kier had not warded his door.

It was too soon to make up, and his anger was probably still burning bright like a live coal, but they would be back at war very soon, so she did not have time to give him to cool down.

She thought again of choices yet unmade. There had to be a third option to save the Isle, one that did not guarantee the loss of her freedom or the death of everyone she loved.

But she already had three choices to save Kier’s life, or take it, and she did not think she would find a loophole, nor seek another. What she had to do was work within the choices she was given—what she had to do was speak to the only person who knew her at all.

He slept curled on his side, as always, dimly outlined by the embers of the fire dying in the grate. Grey shut his door behind her and took off her boots and crawled into his bed with her damp clothes still on. He woke up instantly, pulling her close out of muscle memory before he remembered his fury. He released her, blinking warily.

“I’m sorry,” Grey said, kneeling in the space next to him. “You’re right.

I should have asked you.”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The blankets fell to his hips, revealing his bare stomach, his back. “You should’ve,” he agreed.

She looked at him unhappily. In six years, they had not gone longer than hours without talking to one another, let alone days. “I don’t want to fight anymore,” she said quietly.

He regarded her, seeing past all her protections, as he always did, then nodded, seemingly coming to some decision. She was not yet forgiven, but he was no longer irate.

He hesitated, then took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Have you

slept?” he asked.

“No.”

“You should.”

“This is more important.” She drew a breath. “Kier, I would give everything in the world for you. Without a second thought.”

He leaned forward, moving his hand from hers to cup her cheek. “I know you would,” he said solemnly, “but you do not allow me to do the same.” His thumb skimmed her cheekbone. She turned her head to press a kiss to his palm.

“What is love, without freedom?” she murmured against his skin.

He leaned close to kiss her shoulder, then to whisper in her ear. “What is life, without you?”

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. She gripped Kier’s shoulders, strong and scarred, and pulled him against her. She kissed him hard, fitting her body to his. He was hesitant for the barest second before he rose up to meet her. She worshiped him with lips and teeth and tongue, breaking the kiss only long enough for him to pull her shirt over her head before his mouth was back against hers. She wrestled out of the rest of her damp clothes, fighting to get as close to him as possible.

She could barely think as he flipped them, pressing her back to the bed with his full weight. His hand slipped between her thighs, and she groaned as his teeth found her shoulder; she twisted her hands in his hair and pulled.

“Promise me,” he said as he positioned himself, the weight of his hips pressing hard against hers as he drew her knee up.

“Promise you what?” she gasped, digging her nails in, arching closer as he hesitated the barest distance from burying himself inside of her.

He leaned up onto one elbow so he could see her face. “Do not give up your power for me,” he murmured, and she felt every muscle in his body still as he waited for her answer.

She ghosted her thumb over the scar on his lip, up over the ridge of his crooked nose, then under his eye. “I will not give up my power,” she said, the words catching in her throat.

He kissed her, bearing her down into the bed, and there was nothing further left to say.

“Will you tell me how it happened?” he murmured against her skin. His head rested on her breast, her fingers carding through his hair. They both needed to sleep, but she couldn’t bear the idea of closing her eyes. “When I died?”

She swallowed hard, fighting against the instant lump in her throat, but

she owed him this. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

He ran a hand along her side, trailing over her waist, her hip, her thigh.

“I want to know whatever you will tell me. What you can tell me.”

She stared up at the ceiling, the shadows of this room as familiar to her as anywhere on this Isle was—which was to say, as familiar as her own heart, and just as painful.

“You deserve to know it all,” she said. So she told him—she told him about how the sea tore them apart, and how she called for her gods. She told him about waking on the shore, and trying to force his heart to beat, and breaking his body in the process. The only reason she finished her sentences was because he grasped her in his arms and whispered, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here into her hair, and she felt the steady thrum of his heart under her fingertips, and the healed bones beneath her hands, the echoes of her power still singing inside of his body. She told him about Kitalma and the Ghostwood. Her mother’s face. Her father’s warning. The shape of his body on the altar.

“Three choices,” Kier repeated once she was finished. “Three different sacrifices. My freedom. Your power. My life.”

“Yes,” Grey said. They were sitting up now, his back to the headboard, Grey cradled in his arms.

He sighed, pulling her closer. His lips grazed her temple as he said, “And I don’t suppose you would just… let me die. Return everything to normal.”

Icy dread pooled in her stomach, and she sent the full force of her grief down the tether. Kier drew a sharp breath, catching the brunt of it, his hands tightening on her arms. “Don’t you dare ask that of me,” she said. “Don’t go making a martyr of yourself. That is not a viable option.”

“We might still die tomorrow,” he reminded her.

“Then we’ll do it together,” Grey said fiercely. She levered up, turning around, moving a leg over his hip so she was facing him. She cupped his chin, forcing him to look at her. “I am not choosing an option that guarantees your death, Kier. I have already lost everyone. You cannot ask me to give you up, too. You said—” She broke off, the grief too thick. Kier wrapped her tighter in his arms, but he waited for her to finish.

Grey recovered. “You said that the only love I know is sacrifice.”

He winced. “It was not my finest moment.”

“No, maybe not. But perhaps you’re right. Everyone I’ve ever loved has died for me, or tried to. But Kiernan, I want to love you without fearing that you will die, too. I want to love you knowing that I’ll wake up in the morning and you’ll still be here. That you won’t go racing into the next battle to save me, facing the next obstacle without me, because you’re trying to protect me.

“We buried my parents. My last memory of this place was bringing it down, taking Severin’s hands in mine and detonating him to save myself.

That is the kind of sacrifice love has made for me—that love has made me bear. You saw what it was like down there—what happened. What I did.

You know that they died for me, that Sev did, that this whole Isle gave up its life so I could survive. I cannot lose you, too. And if that means I will lose my power—”

“No,” Kier said. “That is not a viable option, either.”

“Kier—”

“Listen to me.” He cupped his hands around her skull, cradling her head.

“You are Locke. The nation—the whole of Idistra—is too unstable to continue without you being in control. Totally in control. You are too valuable for that kind of sacrifice. I would never ask you to make it, and if you chose to do it on your own, you would never find the end of my fury.”

Grey turned her face away.

Softer, he continued, “Take my freedom, Grey. Everything I have is yours. Everything I am is yours. Take my freedom, and keep your power, and keep my life. If you are here, I want to live. Even if it requires haunting this godforsaken rock for the rest of my life, never being more than an hour’s walk from you at any time—because, honestly, that’s how we would

be anyway.”

“I can’t,” Grey said. “I can’t.”

“You can, and you will,” he insisted. “It’s yours, Gremaryse Locke, High Lady of the Isle and keeper of my heart, just as I am yours. Take it.

Take it all.”

She couldn’t speak. She leaned down, pressing her lips to his, surrendering even as she sent her worry down the tether. “Win me my Isle,” she said against his mouth, “and it is done.”

He pulled back for just a moment, studying her face. Kier, her Kier, with his uneven handsomeness, and the glimmer in his eye, and that serious line

sprouting up between his brows that deepened with every passing day. What a beautiful thing it was, to watch him grow older. To watch him live.

“Then it is done,” he agreed, pulling her back down.

“Commander?”

Kier shifted behind her, his skin pressed to hers. He sighed against her hair and she felt him move, drawing the quilt up to cover her where it must’ve slipped in the night.

She opened her eyes to find pale blue magelight filling the room, deepening the shadows. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out one of Kier’s new squires, already dressed. He was not looking at her, either out of propriety or because he found the hard lines of Kier’s body far more

interesting than hers.

“What is it?” Kier asked, sitting up.

“A boat has been spotted drawing near to the beach, sir. The ships are lowering more. They are shielding, so we cannot tell how many there are.

We think they mean to attack before first light.”

“Very well. Thank you, Nahir. Have you told anyone else?”

“You’re the first, sir. I went to wake Locke before you…” He trailed off, not willing to point out that Locke was here. Grey bit her lip to keep her expression blank.

“Please wake Reggin and Dainridge, if they’re not already up. Scaelas,

too; and Cleoc for good measure.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kier was out of bed before the squire was fully out of the room. Even though he slept in Grey’s room most nights, they’d had the foresight to keep some of his clothes here; he pulled power from Grey and lit the room with a magelight as he quickly dressed.

She sat up, letting the blankets fall. Groggily, she found a sachet of his contraceptive herbs in the table by his bedside and took a measure of them dry. If they survived this, she would have to see Leonie about a more

permanent measure.

“Are you going to the war room?”

“Yes,” he said, fastening his trousers. He poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on his dresser; she accepted it gratefully. “Then onwards

from there, I suspect.”

She nodded. She would be needed in the war room, too; then Kier would go, and she would stay, and she would feel every single second as an hour.

He came close as if reading her thoughts and dropped next to her on the bed. He cupped her chin in his hand. “I won’t fault you for leaving the fortress, for fighting, if that’s what you choose.”

“I haven’t decided,” she admitted. Then, “Are you afraid?”

“Petrified,” he said cheerfully. He rested his forehead against hers. Then, haltingly, he said, “Locke will not fall again, Grey. I swear it to you: there will be no second death.”

She brushed her knuckles over his cheek, feeling the drag of the stubble on his jaw. “I trust you,” she said.

He leaned in to kiss her tenderly. There would be no further time for goodbyes, in the war room, in front of the other sovereigns and their military leaders. “Please don’t die again,” she whispered when he broke free.

She felt his smile against her lips. “And miss my chance to make myself insufferable? I think not.”

He kissed her once more, and then he was gone.

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