Page 19 of The Second Death of Locke

The second time the soldiers came, weeks later, she was struck with such unbelievable terror she could hardly move. If they saw her, they would know. If they tethered to her, they would know .

She poured these fears into Kier, who summoned Lot down to their protected cove by the sea. Lot paced as Grey spoke, telling him of Severin’s death, of her own identity, of the destruction of Locke.

Except buried in all of that, she kept one final lie.

“Severin,” she said, finishing. “He was the heir to the Isle. He was a well, too. I was just… the extra. A backup.” She let Lot comfort her as she cried, ignoring the seed of guilt that grew in her stomach. She watched Kier’s face as he heard the lie, believed it, swallowed it down.

Finally, Lot asked, “Do you want to go to Scaelas?”

“No,” she said, voice cracking. “I don’t know if it’s safe.”

He nodded then, a decision made. He was twelve, nearly thirteen, and to Kier and Grey, he was the smartest person they’d ever known.

“Then here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Grape, go and get parchment. Good parchment. Kier, bring me Ma’s sealing wax.

I will write a letter to the High Lord saying I’m your brother, asking him to leave me alone.

That way, it looks like Severin survived, and they’ll stop looking for you.

Maybe they’ll take the letter to heart and stop searching entirely. ”

Grey blinked at him. “How can we be sure they’ll believe it?”

“Do you know your brother’s true name?”

True names are for Hands and husbands . But Severin was dead, so what did it even matter?

“Yes,” she said. Then, chewing her lip, “And diplomatic symbols. I know the one for my mother’s line. It will get the letter to Scaelas faster.”

“Then Scaelas will know it, too, and he’ll believe it.”

“Yes. I can show you how to make it,” Grey allowed. “And Sev’s signature.”

It was the only good option, and they couldn’t think of another.

So Grey fetched parchment and writing instruments, and Kier got the sealing wax.

Lot wrote the letter, because he was the oldest and his handwriting was the nicest, and Grey taught him Sev’s true name and signature, then drew the lines of Locke’s symbol under the forgery.

After, Lot decided it would be too close to send the letter from Leota, so the trio packed a single bag and slipped out of the Seward house after dark. They walked inland all night, ducking into ditches and behind bushes when they saw others on the road.

An hour after dawn, they reached a minuscule village.

Lot went alone to send the letter. When he returned, he took Grey’s hand and they made the long walk back.

On their return, they found Pia and Laurella and Imarta angrier than they ever had been before.

Imarta left the punishments to Pia and Lo, because she was barely more than a girl herself, and she knew little of raising children.

That night, they went to bed grim-faced and silent, holding their secret, mad at one another and themselves in the way of children caught misbehaving—but it was worth it. The plan worked, in some ways. After that day, no one went looking for Maryse again.

It failed in some ways, too—because they never stopped looking for Severin.

After a few hours, Ola moved up to the front of the group, trading places with Grey, so she and Kier could mutter and argue over the map.

They came to a place where the path ran parallel to the wood.

Kier turned, finding Grey’s eye, and she nodded.

Kier led them into the wood. The route through the underbrush was too narrow to walk three abreast, so Brit and Grey let Eron and the prisoner go ahead and followed behind.

Grey waited, tense—she was certain Brit would break the silence between them soon enough.

She was unsurprised when they finally cracked. “What will you do with your six months of leave?” they asked.

So Attis hadn’t told the others about Kier’s proposition, what he and Grey would get. Grey filed that away for later chewing.

“Sleep,” she said. She was still feeling irritable, but also a bit bad about how sharply she had spoken earlier. A conversation with Brit would not kill her—and perhaps it would help her uncover what lay under their humor.

Brit snorted. “That would be something. And then a new assignment… Can’t say I’m sad to go. That place was a shithole.”

Grey wrinkled her nose, stepping delicately over a tree root. The last thing she needed was to sprain her ankle on the first day. “I’m just glad to be out of the mud,” she admitted.

“Where were you before?”

“Karlot. Then Orakey before that. We were at Grislar on our first assignment.”

“Ah. Familiar territory.”

Grey shrugged. She’d never much liked Grislar—it was too close to Locke.

She’d grown up near the coast, always aware that Locke was there, but in Grislar she had to look at the place where it had once been.

They were higher on the cliffs, with the camp built backing the sea, so sometimes she’d wake up to the smell of phantom smoke in the air.

It was a sensation all of the wells claimed to have, looking uneasily over their shoulders as they discussed it over bowls of mealy porridge at breakfast.

The other wells, she realized soon enough, did not hear the screams that came along with the smoke.

That was the assignment when Kier had promised her, after night after night of nightmares, that they wouldn’t go back.

She glanced up, saw the back of his head. She didn’t resent him for it, for the fact that he couldn’t keep his promises. Perhaps she just had to stop asking him for things he couldn’t control.

“It’s also a shithole,” she said apologetically. “Or at least it was when we were there, and I doubt the situation has improved.”

Brit sighed, looking up through the trees. “My first was Lanavin.”

Grey quirked an eyebrow. “Oh?” She’d heard of it: no one wanted to go to Lanavin. In fact, it wasn’t un heard of for soldiers to be sent there strictly for punishment. She herself had been threatened with it more than once. “How was that?”

Brit simply looked at her. There was no use speaking of the blood when they were out of it.

“Here’s hoping Grislar has improved,” they said.

Grey snorted. “Doubtful.”

In a lower tone—though it didn’t matter, Grey thought, because Ola and Kier had moved from conversing over the map to arguing over the map, and Eron was now arm in arm with their prisoner, quietly asking her questions she didn’t answer about her schooling—Brit asked, “What do you know of Locke?”

She had to stop jumping every time someone mentioned it.

She had to get used to it. Not in public, but they’d want to talk about it within their retinue.

There was no way Ola and Brit and Eron would not have a single word to say about their mission.

Perhaps she didn’t trust them, but she had to figure out a way to dance around the topic all the same.

“Not much,” she lied. “I was a child when it happened.”

“But you and the captain—you’re from the seaside, aren’t you?”

“We are. Kier remembers better than me.”

“Who do you think did it?”

Grey raised her eyes skyward, looking at the dappled sunlight streaming through the trees.

Even after all these years, that was the question.

No one knew how , exactly, the island had vanished—but the overarching theory was that it hadn’t been unprovoked.

All that the few witnesses of its destruction reported was this: a ship was spotted by one of Scaela’s port guards, gliding across the bay toward Locke from an unknown origin.

Then, an hour later, it appeared that most of the Isle was on fire.

Just as Scaelas was sending his own ships to its aid, there was an explosion, and when the smoke cleared, the Isle was gone.

Evaporated or submerged, it didn’t matter—Locke vanished that day, and no trace of it had been seen since. No bodies. No debris. No survivors. Just a blank span of sea in the Bay of Locke, with nothing remaining of the Obsidian Isle and its thousand-year legacy of power.

Besides her.

“I hope,” she said, “we never know. It doesn’t matter anyways. Locke is gone.”

“ She might know,” Brit said quietly, their eyes cutting to Sela.

Grey shrugged. “Maybe.”

Brit must’ve read her discomfort, even if they did not know the reason. “The captain,” they said, switching directions. “You’re from the same town?”

This train of conversation was easier to swallow. “Nearly the same house.”

“What was he like as a boy?”

Grey considered this. She didn’t usually talk to mages other than Kier unless she had to, and she certainly hadn’t since Kier had been raised into command.

It wasn’t that she disliked them—but she saw him, how he felt when someone much older than him pushed back, the strain it took for him to claim some semblance of authority.

She’d felt it too, but with wells, power was more a sign of authority than age, and she’d always been quietly capable.

She was respected because she had power.

For all of Kier’s miraculous triumphs on the battlefield with that power, he’d had to fight for every bit of respect he’d garnered.

But this was different. For one thing, Brit wasn’t digging for ammunition to use against him, which Grey might have otherwise suspected—that they were looking for the subject of a joke, or a way to tease him.

They already respected Kier. And they couldn’t have been that much older than him either, so it wasn’t that.

Let go , Grey chided herself. Not everyone is trying to hurt you . But her gaze flicked to the prisoner, the girl , Sela, and she bit her tongue.

“The same, in some ways,” she said. Then, before she could stop herself, “He was always kind. Even to me. Even to his brother. Even when he didn’t have to be.”