The Second Death of Locke — Chapter no 34

thirty-four

REY.”“G Her name again, this time on Kier’s lips. She felt the pain first, the blaring agony of it; then the wet heat of her blood. Something seemed to be shifting inside of her, something that shouldn’t have been moving in the first place.

She heard the clatter of his helm dropping to stone, then his sword.

“Grey,” he said again, the warmth of his palms on her face. She forced herself to open her eyes, to look at him.

“Did we win?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“You disappeared—you just vanished—the wells from Eprain, Luthar, some of our own…”

“Kiernan,” Grey said, struggling to get through this. He was already wrapping his arms around her, readying to carry her back to Leonie, to safety, to a world of pain she could only imagine. “Did it work?”

He pressed his lips together. “It worked,” he said. “Whatever you did, it worked. They’re retreating as we speak, and we’re rounding up prisoners on the beach.” He glanced down at her—she felt him moving below her, walking as fast as he could to get her back to the fortress without disrupting her wounds too much. She let her head lean, the leather of his pauldron soft, though a bit blood-soaked.

“It worked,” she sighed, letting her eyes slip shut.

“And if it worked at the cost of your life,” he said through his teeth, “I will not forgive you. I thought you said you weren’t going to sacrifice—”

“I’ll live,” Grey mumbled against his shoulder, “just to spite you.

There’s nothing I love more than proving you wrong.”

He laughed, but there was an edge of panic to it. “Then live, Locke,” he pleaded. He said more, but no matter how much Grey desperately wanted to hear it, it wasn’t enough. She slipped, and this time, nothing caught her when she fell into the darkness.

She woke in her own bed.

She sat up and immediately regretted it, gasping at the starburst of pain that erupted from her middle. Hands were on her shoulders in an instant, pushing her down. “Stay down, Locke,” Leonie said above her.

As usual, Grey didn’t listen. She winced as she propped herself on her elbows. She wore a loose shirt, and underneath, she could see the bandages that wrapped her middle. Every part of her ached.

Leonie was alone in the room with her, sorting medication on a table someone must’ve dragged in from Grey’s private sitting room. She ran her fingers over one of the pestles and asked, “Are you in pain?”

“Manageable,” Grey lied. “Water?”

Leonie was there in an instant with a glass, one hand behind Grey’s back to help her up, the other holding the glass so she could drink. Grey sipped greedily, spilling half of it down her shirt and barely caring. When she was finished, Leonie brought her another glass and set it on the nightstand, before sinking into the chair by Grey’s bedside. “The commander is going to be furious he wasn’t here when you woke,” she said, brushing the hair away from Grey’s forehead. Grey could see the end of her own braid draped over her chest; she was unsurprised to see bits of gore and mud in the brown strands.

“Where is he?” she asked hoarsely. Leonie leaned forward to adjust her pillows, helping her sit more comfortably.

“Dainridge sent for him. It couldn’t wait.”

Grey nodded, the press of too many questions on her tongue. She remembered herself floating, untethered from her body—she felt the sum of all those souls. “I took the power away,” she said slowly. “Didn’t I?”

Leonie hesitated.

“If you don’t answer, I’ll ask Kier, and I’m certain he will.”

“Then yes. You took the power away. From all of Eprain and Luthar, it looks like.”

Grey nodded, chewing her lip.

“And they still don’t have it back.”

She pressed a hand to her middle, where the stomach ache throbbed.

“Right.”

“Can you…?”

She shot Leonie a look. “Yes,” she said, feeling the weight, and the phantom tethers leading to the owners of the power she now held. “But this is something that I only want to do once, and as such, I would like it to be

an effective threat.”

Leonie nodded slowly. “That is…”

“Ruthless,” Grey said.

“But sensible.”

“Perhaps.” She glanced at Leonie, remembering the stress radiating off her in battle. “But… we won.”

“Yes,” Leonie said. She set down the tincture she was mixing—probably something awful she was going to force Grey to drink sooner rather than later. “The Isle was defended. And because of the total loss of power and magic with it, there have been appeals for peace. For treaties.”

Grey couldn’t begin to think of peace or treaties. She couldn’t think of anything past the next few seconds. She let her eyes slip shut for only a moment, but she couldn’t be sure it was actually a moment when she opened them again. “And the damage?”

“We lost two thousand of our ten thousand. Eprain and Luthar lost four and a half, but they sent more, and Cleoc’s navy did major damage in the bay.”

So many lives lost, all because of her. She could not focus on that—if she did, she would lose it, and she could not afford to do that right now.

“And… Scaelas? Our allies? My friends?”

“I hear Cleoc and her attendants had a lovely afternoon,” Leonie said wryly. “Eron is fine—he’s with Kier. Scaelas is injured, but he will live. He has threatened to stay with you until he is healed, though, and teach you how to act like a noble.”

Grey winced. He must’ve heard that she’d joined the battle—but he was still not her father. “A fine threat indeed,” she said.

“Brit is fine. Ola is…” Leonie hesitated, and Grey saw the flicker of uncertainty—her stomach seized at the thought. In an awful moment, she

remembered that grasp of pain, when she was out of herself, but then… “She’ll live, if I have anything to say about it,” Leonie said finally, seeing Grey’s look. “She will lose the arm.”

“Ah.” But she was alive. She was alive, and she would live. As soon as she was able to stand, Grey would find her, even if she had to fight Kier and Leonie both to do it. “And our commanders?”

“Dainridge sustained minor injuries. Commander Reggin perished

protecting the harbor.”

Grey closed her eyes. “And his Hand?”

“Living, last I knew.”

“And Seward is fine,” Kier said, coming in, nodding to Leonie with some coldness—he still had not quite forgotten that she knew of his death, Grey realized. “Though he is annoyed, as he gave direct orders to be sent for immediately if Locke woke in his absence.”

Leonie rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up, Kier. I was going to send for you as soon as I answered Locke’s questions.”

He sighed, but his shoulders relaxed. He perched on the side of Grey’s bed, resting a hand on her knee over the covers. “I see that you have viscera in your hair again.”

Grey managed a smile. “You’re the one who wanted a lifetime of washing blood from my person.”

Leonie got up, gathering her things. “You two have the weirdest

relationship.”

Neither denied it.

When her bag was packed, she said, “Seward, I expect you to keep her in bed—not like that, you deviant. Cleoc and Scaelas will want to see her, but Scaelas is also forbidden from moving, so Cleoc will have to manage going between their sickbeds one at a time. And I swear to you, Grey, I do not care if you are my High Lady—I will not hesitate to maim you if you pull out your stitches.”

Grey raised an eyebrow. She was more used to Kier being on the receiving end of Leonie’s threats. “Right you are,” she said.

As soon as Leonie left, Grey sighed. She pressed a hand to her stomach,

assessing. “How bad was it?”

Kier winced. “Bad.”

“Run through?”

“Edge of death, Flynn.” He kept his voice light, but he still gripped her knee with a fear that she understood. She was usually the one feeling that fear for his life.

“Mm.” She swung her legs over the bed, gasping at the rush of pain.

Kier was there in an instant, his hands fluttering, searching for somewhere to push her back down that would not hurt. “What are you doing?”

“The Isle won’t run itself,” Grey said, wincing in pain.

He settled for her shoulder, grasping it and pushing her carefully down to the pillows. She sucked in a breath at the pain, and he pulled back immediately, as if burned. “I’ll call Leonie back,” he threatened.

“Kier…”

“I’ll get you Cleoc and Ikaaron,” Kier said, stepping back, “so you can at least feel useful. But so help me, gods, I will put Eron in charge of feeding you until you are better if you try to leave this room.”

Grey narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t try me, Locke,” he said on his way out.

The combined efforts of Kier and Leonie only managed to keep her in bed for two days before Grey rose in the middle of the night, slipped away as Kier slept and crept downstairs and into her office. Scaelas’s guards saw her as she passed, but they only sighed and shook their heads—their own High Lord had performed a similar maneuver in the hour before, and he hadn’t even had to sneak past a commander in his bed.

She’d only been behind her desk for half an hour before a soft knock sounded on her door. She looked up as the High Lord slipped inside, limping heavily, favoring his right side.

“You too?” she asked, brow raised.

He nodded, taking the chair across the desk. “That medic of yours is…” he trailed off, searching for a word that fit before he settled on “persistent.”

“She’s your medic,” Grey said, turning her attention back to one of Cleoc’s treaty amendments. “Leonie is Scaelan.”

Torrin sighed. “Ah, I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

Grey’s eyes flicked to his. “I can’t steal all your best soldiers.”

“You should have people here you trust, Maryse,” he said softly.

She set the amendments aside, chewing on her lip. “We should get

Cleoc,” she said darkly. “Since they won’t let us meet otherwise.”

Scaelas quirked a brow. “I can send for her, if you want.”

“I don’t know what I want.” She sat back in her chair, trying not to wince as her stitches tugged. “I don’t know how to reward anyone. How to thank anyone. How to make up for the lives lost, or the power I’ve taken.”

She rubbed her brow, wishing she could find the answers on the backs of

her eyelids.

“Ah. Epras and Luthos grow restless.”

“They’ve asked for treaties. For peace. For alliances.”

“Then you are in a privileged position. You have the power to end all conflict in Idistra, if you so choose.”

Grey couldn’t fathom that kind of responsibility. But there was a question that came before that of peace. “Do you think I should give them their power back?”

Torrin hesitated. “You should not ask me that, Maryse. I am not your ally on paper yet; I have the interests of my own nation to keep in mind.

And my own nation has been at war with both of them for a long, long

time.”

“What would Cleoc say?”

He scoffed. “The same, probably; but I suspect she would put half of them to death, just to even the score.”

Grey didn’t want to put anyone to death. “Then I will ask you as my godfather,” she said, peeking at him sideways.

He sat in silence for a moment. The candles on her desk flickered dimly; she wished she’d lit the fire on the way in, but she hadn’t wanted to alert too many people to the fact she was awake and working.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you have proven your point. That your power has been sufficiently flexed.”

She nodded. It was what she had thought too, lying awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t want to be feared,” she said. “Just… respected.”

Torrin sighed. “Bring us peace, Locke, and you might find yourself beloved.”

She managed a smile. “If you want me to do that,” she said, “I fear we must wake Cleoc.”

They had a treaty by dawn. Peace terms were delivered to Eprain and Luthar by evening, and to Nestria the following day; within a week, all six nations had reached an uneasy agreement. Two weeks after the restoration of Locke, the wells of Eprain and Luthar woke to find their power restored and strengthened, as if nothing had changed at all.

The pyres burned for days on the coasts of Idistra as the dead were returned home. Despite the growing chill of winter, when she couldn’t sleep, Grey spent a few hours of the night on the roof of the fortress, watching the smoke, letting the horror settle and wane. Most times, she was not alone in her grief. She was joined by Ola, who tried to understand the new shape of her body; by Brit or Eron, who were happy to talk or let her be silent as her moods changed; and sometimes by Kier, who was content to just stand by her side.

On Locke, a new life was beginning. It was agreed that anyone who’d defended the Isle would be welcomed with open arms, if they chose to stay: nearly two thousand soldiers and their families relocated there. The High Lady of Locke held a reception in one of the old market halls near the port every morning, greeting her new countrymen as one of their clerks recorded the newcomers in the census.

In the weeks that followed, she fell into a new routine. In the mornings, she woke with the dawn and sat with Ola in her room until she was well enough to fight; then, they met in one of the private courtyards at the back of the fortress. They sparred, Ola straining with the effort as she learned to fight with her left hand instead of her right. After Grey had bathed, she went to the harbor; then, in the early afternoon, she met with her ambassadors and continued to establish her council. Some days she had tutors in to try to fill the gaps in the knowledge she otherwise would’ve had as High Lady.

She spent the rest of the day in appointments, or going between her office and the one next to hers, where her commander worked. If her advisers were wary of the fact that Locke’s commander knew every bit of business that came across their lady’s desk, they had the sense not to protest it to her.

She was in her office, signing off on supply requests, when Cleoc and her attendants came to the door. Grey stood immediately, no longer wincing; her stitches had been pulled out a few days before, and Leonie had given her a clean bill of health.

“I think it’s time for me to take leave of you, Locke,” Cleoc said,

inclining her head.

Grey stayed standing; after all this time, she did not know what to say. “I can’t even think how to thank you,” she said finally.

The edges of Cleoc’s severe mouth turned up in a smile. “You owe me nothing,” she said.

Grey moved around the desk to grasp the woman’s hand. She was surprised when Cleoc pulled her into a tight, fierce hug.

“I will never forget,” she said, “what you did for my girl.”

Grey closed her eyes, letting herself lean into the embrace. The business with Sela felt like a lifetime ago.

When Cleoc pulled away, she pressed something into Grey’s hand. Grey looked down to find the small obsidian moon from their first meeting in Scaela resting in the middle of her palm. “I thought it was lost,” she said.

“Be safe, Locke,” Cleoc said, leaning in to kiss her quickly on the forehead. “I will be waiting for your letters.”

As the first month of peace drew to a close, there were plans for a great feast on the Isle to celebrate its successful resurrection. Grey found it a welcome distraction; she was trying very hard not to watch every change of the moon as the days leading up to her next meeting with Kitalma slipped by.

Ola told her excitedly of the preparations happening in Osar, led by an overambitious ex-captain from Cleoc’s army; the same evening, Brit and Eron separately complained to Grey about how Ola was annoyingly and unexpectedly in love with an overambitious ex-captain from Cleoc’s army.

Later, in bed, Kier asked if she’d heard of the preparations. It was a rare night in which they’d both gone to their rooms before the early hours of the morning (only for Kier to slip into hers very shortly after); with her responsibilities as Locke and his efforts to stabilize their new home, they

barely had time alone.

“They were mentioned to me,” she said.

“And your thoughts?”

She kissed his chest, then bit gently at his ribs. He had only recently stopped treating her as if she was made of glass, and now he kept his dark eyes on her as she slipped lower. “If there’s a party, not a single person on

this Isle will need us. We could make our own plans.”

“They’ll notice if you’re not there,” he murmured, eyes slipping shut as she kissed his hip. “It’s your resurrection.”

“I don’t care,” Grey said, before demonstrating exactly what they could be doing instead.

Grey sat in the chair in her office and watched the sea below her window.

Her desk was piled with correspondence. At least two messages bore Imarta’s careful handwriting—she was due to arrive from Scaela when the Isle was safer, for the feast that Kier insisted Grey couldn’t skip.

The door to her office opened. She turned, expecting one of her new cooks with questions about dinner, or Eron with a note about supplies needed for the armory, or Leonie asking for more medical provisions. But it was Kier, dressed simply, smelling of rain. He’d just come in from the cold —he was negotiating the delicate process of rebuilding the shield and setting up a static warning system that couldn’t be disrupted by breakbloom.

He found it easiest to do this alone, in the ruins of the abbey to Kitalma on the edge of the Ghostwood. Grey did not examine the complicated feelings she had every day when he went there.

One more day, and then she would need to go to the wood herself and declare her choice to the goddess. One more day before Kier was no longer a free man.

He, too, had his nose buried in correspondence, and more stacked on the table he’d dragged next to her desk the week before. Though his own office was next door, he’d spent so long hunched over her shoulder or sitting on her floor as they discussed what to do, she’d just given him a space in here permanently.

It was better this way, when they could be in the same room.

“Ma wrote,” he murmured, perching on the arm of her chair. She kissed the bend of his elbow, more out of habit than anything else, though the desperate appeal of regular physical affection was not lost on her. “There was a well born, in Scaela.”

“We can’t verify it,” Grey said, leaning forward to read over his arm.

“It’s difficult to detect aptitude in a baby.”

“Difficult,” Kier agreed, “but not impossible.”

“And it’s only rumor until we hear it from Scaelas.”

“Who should probably return to his own nation,” Kier said darkly. He folded his letter and tossed it onto Grey’s desk. “What are you reading?”

She sighed, waving the paper in his direction. “Requests from our new Nestrian ambassador, ahead of their arrival. It’s tedious business. Hurts my head.”

“They don’t think enough of the state of your head,” Kier agreed, bending low and somewhat awkwardly to kiss the top of the aforementioned oft-neglected subject.

“Sela wrote too. She wants to hold a unity ball in Cleoc,” Grey said.

“Ah.” The sound came from low in Kier’s throat. She felt the immediate stiffness in every line of his body. “In Cleoc?”

“Yes. But the letter came from Sela and not her mother, so.” She sat back in her chair, twisting the signet ring on her finger. “A large party, full of nobility who were our enemies only weeks ago… it sounds like an invitation for an assassination attempt. I’ve written back that we are, possibly, not quite stable enough for that yet.”

“Diplomatic to the last,” Kier said, his breath ruffling her hair.

She tugged his arm and pulled him down with her. With a bit of reconfiguring, he’d slipped under her and lifted her into his lap. His arms wrapped around her, safe and strong as always. She watched the movement of the sea through the window over his shoulder, the crash of the waves against the cliffs below, the rising of the tide.

“We’ve received further petitions for citizenship,” he murmured against her collarbone. “It would be worth figuring out how to go about that.”

“It would be,” Grey said. Though she wanted to close off the Isle, to keep those already here, those she loved, close to her, she knew the error in that: Locke’s isolation had led to so much fear and betrayal before. She could not allow it to happen again.

A knock sounded on the door. Grey made to move, but Kier’s arms did not release her. It was inappropriate, perhaps, for the Lady of Locke to be found in the arms of the nation’s commander, but the follow-up thought to that was that anyone who’d gotten past the guards at her door (which she protested, but both Kier and Scaelas vehemently agreed she should keep them; Kier and Torrin rarely agreed, but when it came to matters of her safety, they were a force to be reckoned with) was already quite aware of

their relationship.

“Yes?” she called, shifting to be slightly less entwined.

It was Leonie, bustling in with a list of provisions needed, Brit on her heels. “It’s not an easy task, rebuilding a hospital,” she said, all business, even as her eyebrow raised and her lips quirked at the sight of them.

Brit threw themself in the chair in front of the fireplace. At Grey’s look, they waved a hand. “Ola’s with her captain again,” they said darkly.

Now Grey did push up to take the list from Leonie. She skimmed over it, chewing on her thumbnail as she focused. “I’ll pass it to Ikaaron. See if Scaela can help.”

“And in return? You’re going to be drowning in favors by the year’s end,” Kier said. His eyes were shut, his arms spread on the arms of the chair, like he was waiting for the moment she sat again so he could wrap them around her.

“I don’t think sixteen years of reparations have been paid back to us just yet,” Grey said mildly. She put the list on her desk and started to copy it down.

“Also,” Leonie said, “I have cleared Scaelas for travel. He can leave as soon as he wishes.”

Grey ignored Kier’s sigh of relief. “Is he going, then?”

“Soon. Tomorrow, probably.”

Grey straightened slowly, her thoughts a jumble. Though Torrin’s presence made Kier antsy—she knew, though he didn’t admit it to her, that even though it was their fault that Torrin had given up his search for his goddaughter, Kier resented him for it simply because it had hurt her feelings —she would be sad to lose his guidance.

“You can go with him if you want,” she said.

Brit and Leonie only blinked at her. Finally, Brit said, “What?”

Grey paced, struck with new conviction. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. Eron and Ola, too. You’re Scaelan—I don’t want to force you to be here.”

“We’re all here because we want to be here,” Leonie said firmly.

“Speak for yourself,” Kier said, but he was ignored. Grey shot him a dark glare.

“What even are we?” Brit mused. “Lockians? Lockstrian? Keys?”

“Brit,” Leonie murmured, rubbing her temple.

They waved a hand. “And you can ask them, but Ol and Er will tell you the exact same thing. We’re staying, Grey. If it means Scaelas has to sell you our contracts, then so be it. But we’re staying.”

She hesitated, still uncertain. She wondered when, if ever, the worst of the uncertainty would fade.

“But you should pay me,” Brit said. “Just saying.”

Grey sighed, and made a note to herself to review her own treasury, and to have a discussion about salaries with her commander.

In the evening, she and Scaelas dined alone. He imparted as much wisdom as he could to her, but in the end, he just kissed both of her hands and said, “Obsidian born and iron made, Maryse. Gods, they would have been proud of you.”

It took her a long time to swallow the lump of sorrow in her throat.

After dinner, she dressed in a nondescript outfit of black trousers, a blue tunic and a heavy cloak, slipped past her guard and set off for one of the newly reopened pubs in Osar. There was a woman waiting for her in a shadowy back corner, sipping ale, with a frosty second glass waiting at the empty seat. She’d arrived earlier on the ship that came to take Scaelas away and had sent word through Eron.

“Master Attis,” Grey said, slipping into the other side of the booth. “I’m glad you could get away.”

Attis studied her. The space under her eyes was dark and shadowed, as with grief. She opened her mouth to speak, swallowed and looked away. “I just want to know,” she said, “that she wasn’t alone.”

Grey shook her head. “She was not.”

Attis’s eyes slipped shut. She took a long breath, held it, then another.

She was trying very hard, Grey could tell, not to cry.

“Will you tell me how it happened?” she asked.

Grey nodded. Though there had been so much horror, so much terror, it was the least she could do to put Mare to rest.

She was too lost in memories to go to bed, so she went to her tower, where the winter wind whipped her hair. She did not look out to sea, but to the harbor, where the ship was being prepared to take Torrin back. She was

turning to scan the sea when she noticed a small, dimly golden magelight glowing on one of the cliffs. She squinted down at it.

There was a path that went all the way down the cliffs; when she was a girl, Grey was told it was to receive shipwrecks or retrieve bodies. She and Sev had used it for crabbing. There was a deep ledge halfway down, shielded from view from all but those on this very tower. It was about the size of Grey’s courtyard. Sometimes, when she was younger, she and her father used to sit there to watch the storms roll away from the Isle, protected from the weather with the cliff at their backs.

There, one could sit very quietly, unseen, and look out at the shores of Scaela in the distance, without judgment.

It took her twenty minutes to get down, but Kier was still there when she reached the ledge. He sat with his knees tucked to his chest, his arms around them. She hesitated when she saw that his cheeks were wet.

“You can join me,” he said gruffly—of course he’d known that she was there.

She stepped carefully and lowered herself to the ground next to him. His magelight glowed dim and golden; his magelights were always golden now.

She did not ask. After an immeasurable moment, the sea crashing on the cliffs below, Kier said, “I was just thinking that I would never see Lot’s grave again, or the tree behind our house, or the village square, or that awful yellow kitchen.”

Grey stayed still as a stone, the grief like a vise on her heart.

“I will never go to Lindan, to see what their magic is like, or Nisielle, or even Nestria,” he said slowly, “or anywhere at all.”

“No,” she said slowly, swallowing down her own tears. He was silent for a long moment. The wind whipped his too-long hair.

“You’re not going to try to run?” Grey asked.

He snorted. “I’m dead the second I leave the Isle, Grey, and your gods won’t give my life back twice.”

She chewed her lip. They had not spoken much of the decision since that night, before the battle; any time she brought it up, Kier just sighed and told her again that they were choosing the only viable option. It was not a small thing, to give up his freedom—and though they both knew why the choice had to be made, it hurt her deeply. “What if you get tired of me?” she asked.

“I won’t,” he said, his voice softening.

“But what if you do?”

He sighed, long-suffering. “Then I’ll die, I guess. Or you can go away

and leave the Isle to me.”

“You’ll never have space away from me.”

She saw the flicker of the curve of his smile, disrupted by his scar. “A burden, to be sure, but I will bear it.”

“I’m serious.”

“As am I, Grey.” He shifted, folding around her, bringing her to sit between his legs with her back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her; it was much warmer buried with him in his heavy cloak. “You’ve already fought death and your gods for me. I would do the same for you, though let us hope it doesn’t come to that.”

She was quiet for a long moment. It wasn’t fair at all, what he was doing, what she was making him do. But perhaps love was a little bit of sacrifice, after all; and perhaps a bit of sacrifice could be allowed, as long

as they were together.

“Kier,” she said.

“Yes?”

She found herself suddenly without words. So she gripped the tether, pushing as many warm feelings of thanks and love and adoration at him as she could. She heard his sharp indrawn breath; then he was burying his face in her hair, his lips pressing to the crown of her head, then her temple, then her neck. I love you. At the end of it all, I love you, she thought at him with

every emotion she showed him.

“As do I,” he promised.

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You would like him, I think. He would sacrifice the world for her— I suppose we all would, in the end.

Journal entry from Vearn Torrin, High Lord of Scaela, addressed to Isaak Masidic Locke, in memoriam, after the resurrection of the Isle

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