Page 15 of The Second Death of Locke

seven

T HAT NIGHT, GREY WAITED until Kier’s breathing was heavy and even.

She sat up, watching his face for any signs of consciousness.

He was a light sleeper, but perhaps he was immune to noises as long as they were hers.

And he did not wake now—he slept on his side, facing her, one knee tucked to his chest.

She didn’t bother with a light. The moon was round and full overhead when she pushed out of the tent, fully dressed.

The camp was quiet on this side: their tent was one of many small ones for officers and the masses of auxiliary staff who traveled with the companies, with a line of fire pits between them and the large tents reserved for the rest. Grey picked her way around the fire, nodding to a sentinel who stood guard near the kitchens.

She hesitated for the barest of moments outside the infirmary, thinking of Leonie, before she hurried on her way.

They kept prisoners in the middle of camp, in a tent guarded by day and night.

The two typics standing guard in front of the door eyed Grey as she approached, moving through the dark camp like a ghost. One bowed his head when she came close and the other, probably barely older than Grey had been when she first joined Kier in battle, hurried to follow.

“Can I help you, Hand Captain Flynn?” the older one asked. Grey didn’t recognize him—he wasn’t from her company. It was for the best. Kier was well liked among those in his command: it wasn’t hard to imagine them exerting unnecessary cruelty on the prisoner.

“I have orders,” she lied, “to assess the girl’s health.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “In the middle of the night?”

She pulled gauze and a jar of salve out of her pocket, displaying both for the guards.

She’d stolen them from the infirmary earlier—they wouldn’t be missed, and she’d use them eventually so they weren’t wasted.

“If you don’t believe me, you can wake the master yourself,” she said.

“And I guarantee she will not be pleased.”

The soldiers exchanged a look, the younger chewing on his lip. Finally, the older sighed. “You get five minutes,” he said.

“I’ll take two minutes and your discretion.” Grey slipped him a small flask of liquor as she passed by. He glanced at her, lips pressed together, but he didn’t protest or hand her bribe back.

The tent was lit by a flickering orange magelight, casting long shadows in the dim.

The girl sat alone in the center, hands and feet bound, but she was not gagged.

She looked up as Grey entered, her eyes scanning over her in a way that made her feel frankly scrutinized.

Grey wondered again at her age—she looked younger now than she had in the carriage, in the heat of battle; she was a teenager, but Grey couldn’t say how old.

She wasn’t even fully certain why she’d come. The idea had popped into her head earlier, intrusive as a migraine, as she’d gone from bed to bed in the infirmary. But part of her wanted—no, needed to see her. The girl who claimed to be Grey herself. The girl who’d tried to kill Kier.

Maybe it was a sick sense of curiosity—perhaps if she got close enough, she’d be able to feel the truth of this girl. She could not be Maryse of Locke, so she had to be someone else. All Grey could wonder was who .

Silence stretched between them. Grey tried to maintain her cool composure, tried to look like a captain herself instead of an exhausted girl who’d never fully come into her own. The prisoner didn’t even look that much younger than her, and Grey felt every one of her twenty-four years as a decade.

The girl’s eyes didn’t stay on Grey’s face—they flicked to the knife at her belt, the hilt of her sword at her hip, the glint of the golden pin over her left breast that signified her rank.

“You’re the well,” she said finally. “I can smell the power on you.”

Grey’s lips curled into a grim, vicious smile. Wells could not smell the dormant power of others. Even Locke herself could not do that. The girl was trying to intimidate her.

In an instant, her dagger was under the prisoner’s throat, her hand in her hair. She would not kill her—even knowing what she knew, she wasn’t willing to risk that —but she needed her to have a healthy amount of fear.

The girl looked up at her, breathing hard through her teeth, eyes wild with fear. This is why , Grey thought, you don’t play games you can’t win .

“Then you know,” she said. “You know what I’m capable of. What he’s capable of through me. And I swear to you—if you try to harm the captain again, if you raise one finger against him, I will kill you. I don’t care who you are. To me, you are nothing.”

You’re threatening a child, Hand , Kier would’ve scolded. But Kier wasn’t here.

The girl whimpered. Grey released her and stepped back, blending once more with the shadows.

Before the prisoner could collect herself, she turned on her heel and went out.

Her palms were slick with sweat; her teeth chattered with pent-up power.

She wished she had Kier to tether to, but it all fizzled out of her, unused and wasted, unsatisfying.

Back in her tent, she stripped down to her shorts and vest and threw her clothes over her bedroll.

It would only be a matter of hours before she was in them again.

She kneed Kier over and crawled into his bedroll, barely big enough for him, let alone both of them.

Kier made a low noise in his throat at her cold hands pressed to his skin, eyes flicking open wearily.

“You can’t die on me,” Grey whispered, tucking her face firmly against his neck. His arms encircled her out of muscle memory.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured into her hair, still half-asleep.

She lay awake for a long time like that, his fingertips stroking the long line of her spine, her fingers digging into his shirt. Their legs tangled together until she was no longer certain whose limbs were whose.

“Promise me,” she whispered. “Make me an oath.”

“I don’t think that’s the kind of—”

“I promise on your name, Kiernan Trevaine Seward, sworn Locke. As I am your Hand and your power.”

He pulled back just enough to see her face. “Are you okay?”

“ Swear to me.”

He grabbed her hand from his chest, knotted their fingers together.

“I promise on your true name and your taken, Gremaryse Pellatisa Carnelion Masidic Locke, sworn Seward, Grey Flynn, that I will not die on you.” He pronounced every syllable carefully, breathed directly into her ear.

She shivered—they hadn’t sworn an oath since their binding, and it was the first time she’d heard his name in proximity to hers. “Happy?”

Grey dropped her head to his shoulder, seeking comfort, and nodded. It was easy, in the dark, to let herself be convinced.