Page 14 of The Second Death of Locke

The healer pressed on, ignoring her. “You nearly let him drain you, Grey. And the worst thing is, it’s clear you’re not just obsessed with him. He’s as devoted to you.”

Grey chewed the inside of her cheek. “He would die for me,” she said. He would desert for her, at least, which was a death sentence in itself.

“Undoubtedly,” Leonie said in a voice that made it very clear she didn’t see that as a positive trait. “But… Grey, you know the way of wells.”

She did. It was a dizzying sort of thing, to have this much power—enchanting, even. And that was the worry with Kier: she did not know if he adored her or the power she provided.

“I still have years on my contract until retirement,” she said, as if that was anywhere close to the true problem. “I can’t… go anywhere. This is my life, whether I like it or not.”

“Maybe,” Leonie said, finishing her sorting and putting the tray on one of the carts. “But you are a good healer. You could write to one of the continental cities to find work there, or seek respite at a university further afield. You don’t have to stay if they buy your contract.”

Grey sighed. She’d thought of it before, desperately, on nights when Kier was injured. Thought about leaving, working until she was wealthy enough to buy out his contract, too.

“They’d never let a well leave,” she said, and it was the simple truth. With magic waning, conscripted wells were not a resource Scaelas could squander.

“They might,” Leonie said.

Grey shook her head. Not after the stunt she’d pulled—not after Attis and Concord realized that she had real worth. “I appreciate your worry,” she said. “But this is what I’ve chosen.”

“It seems,” Leonie said carefully, “to be what the captain chose.”

Grey closed her eyes. It was impossible to explain without revealing too much.

But the truth was, Kier never would’ve chosen this without her.

It wasn’t about him chasing titles or needing her as his Hand.

Above all, as long as they were enlisted, as long as they were two faces in a sea of nondescript armor, even if he gained rank—as long as they were unextraordinary—she would never be discovered.

She would never have to go back. Even with Kier’s promotions, she was the girl in the shadows, standing behind him.

It was a delicate dance, trying to rise high enough to make it safely out of the worst battles but to hold back so that no one would question her power.

So that no one would suspect that the captain’s Hand was the long-lost daughter of Locke.

But he’d promised her they’d never go back.

Grey got up and grabbed Leonie’s sleeve before she could return to the infirmary, to work. Leonie’s face was a mask of surprise when Grey cupped her cheek and pressed her mouth tenderly to hers.

“Thank you,” she murmured, “for caring.”

When she pulled back, Leonie was holding back a smile, her lip between her teeth. “Get out of my infirmary and fix your own problems,” she said, but she also swatted Grey’s ass on the way out, so all was forgiven.

Kier was a different matter.

Grey found him working in the office tent they shared with two other typic captains, bare except for three rickety tables and four chairs, dully lit with the fire in the brazier.

She tethered to him of her own accord and felt the threads of his answering magic.

There was a buried line of pain in him, echoed in her own body—for the moment, she couldn’t tell if it was physical, emotional or both.

She could read so much of him through the tether of her power—and it still left so much unsaid between them.

He looked up when she hesitated in the doorway, clearing her throat.

He pressed his lips together. She saw a hint of apology in his eyes and nodded her head behind her, back toward their tent.

They couldn’t talk openly here. Kier rose, saying a quiet word of farewell to the others, swinging on his cloak.

Back in their tent, he shrugged off his cloak and lit the fire without touching her. “I thought you’d stay with Leonie tonight,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

He gave her a long, level look.

“How do you even know about that?”

“Gossip spreads,” he said mildly, shucking his shirt. She didn’t look at the newly healing scar on his stomach or the fine dark trail of hair traveling down from his navel, though all of these things were burned into her memory whether she wanted them to be or not.

“I’m not sweet on Leonie,” she sighed, pulling off her boots and dropping to her bedroll fully clothed. She fought out of her cloak and spread her arms wide, letting the warmth of the fire creep through her.

He perched on the bottom of her pallet, taking her ankles and dragging her feet onto his lap. “It wouldn’t matter to me,” he said, “if you were.”

She threw an arm over her face to hide her wince. It was, quite possibly, the worst thing he could’ve said. She wanted him to care. She could’ve fallen on her knees right then and there and begged him to care.

Kier had explained his version of attraction to her when they were teenagers: how it was less about the gender and more about the person themselves; that his taste did not lie one way or another but with whoever enchanted him at the time.

Grey didn’t have a preference for one gender over any others, either—but she wished, above all, that there was something about her that ensnared him .

It was a desire that was left unrequited.

“I’m sorry,” Kier said. “About earlier.”

Grey sighed. She felt the apology coming, maybe even guilt through the tether.

“Flynn.”

“What.”

“We should talk about what happened. During the battle.”

“I should’ve let you die,” Grey lamented.

“You probably should’ve,” Kier agreed, but he grabbed her hand and hoisted her up into a sitting position, then arranged her bodily to sit with her legs crossed, knee to knee. “You used too much of yourself on me. You should’ve snapped the tether earlier. Far earlier.”

“When you have power,” Grey said, “you can tell me how to do it.”

“Grey,” he said, so soft on her name that it broke her heart. He picked up one of her hands, brushed his lips against her knuckles. “You cannot put yourself at risk for my sake. I cannot live without you. Okay?”

“And I won’t live without you,” she said, like it was simple. “But I will try to be safer, for both of our sakes.”

His eyes were very serious, dark shadows never fully gone from underneath.

She remembered again how it had felt to see him for the first time in that sunny office, superimposing the remembered boy over the man he’d become.

Sometimes she looked at him and it was like nothing would ever change about him; not his scars, not even the silver of his hair.

“Concord pulled me aside today,” Kier said. “Threatened in earnest to send me to retraining.”

Grey snorted. She could imagine it: Mare, she suspected, was a force to be reckoned with. “I was not kind to her when she brought the matter up with me.”

One eyebrow arched. “When?”

Grey waved a hand. “While I was stitching you up. After I—very kindly, might I add—did not let you die.”

He moved slowly to cup her face in his hands.

It was easy to read this as something it wasn’t, and she kept her own hands balled into fists in her lap even as she leaned into the warmth of him despite herself—mages usually ran hot, and Kier was no exception.

“You,” he said, “are a credit to your profession.”

“Fuck off,” she said. But she let him press a kiss to her forehead and did not allow herself to think what would happen if she asked for more of him.