Page 27 of The Second Death of Locke

twelve

G REY WAS TWENTY THE first and only time Kier used too much of her.

They were in the east, fighting both Eprain and Luthar in equal measure.

The Eprainish were a particularly nasty lot: they trained mages for as much internal damage as possible, so walking into the battlefield was an open invitation for one’s organs to be eviscerated.

Kier was heavily in demand because of his aptitude, a feral dog on a leash that their captain insisted on pushing harder and harder.

They commanded a squad of twelve others, six mages and six Hands, constantly changing as they couldn’t keep them from getting injured.

She’d never seen Kier angrier than in those days, spending long hours on the field holding their ground, then ages in middle-command meetings as captains and masters who hadn’t set foot on the battlefield in years yelled about strategy.

It was in that time that they stopped caring about tears, and at night she did not comment if his eyes were damp when they sparred after day after day of death surrounding them.

“How many can you take? Quickly?” the captain, a rugged and scarred man with a propensity for drink, asked them at the end of every meeting.

“With magic or force?”

“Magic. Don’t fuck with me, Seward.”

“Four,” Kier said, voice sturdy, always. “Five at a push.”

“Not good enough,” the captain growled, even though the answer never changed. “If you can’t take eight, you shouldn’t be a lieutenant.”

They practiced, when they had time: Kier drew from her until the pain of emptiness brought tears to her eyes, until the power could come from her in great ropey lengths.

They made it through battles where Kier destroyed six hearts at a time, then seven.

She felt each one of them like a quiet supernova within her, wrenching her insides apart.

It happened after he’d used too much of her, after he’d destroyed too many hearts and nearly torn apart her own.

They’d been on a bluff, their backs against the wall, too many of the enemy—outnumbered, half their mages dead—and she’d felt the ice in her stomach as cool and depthless as the sea below the cliffs of the Isle.

She turned—trying to cover him, trying to keep him safe, trying to get out alive. But when she turned back, he was not there. If he wasn’t still tethered to her, she would’ve been certain he was dead.

There was another mage, one of the Eprainish, his face half blood.

He hadn’t even hesitated when he saw the black trim around the Scaelan seal she wore on her chest. He lowered his sword and grabbed her throat, slamming her back into the cliffside.

He lifted her, her feet scrabbling for purchase as she dropped her sword, as her hands went to his as if she could peel him off her neck.

“Fucking bitch ,” he snarled, and that was when she felt it—a tether pushed at her.

She tried to bat it away, but she couldn’t breathe, and she lost the tether with Kier entirely.

When she went to reconnect with him, blind with panic that this was it, he was dead, it was all too slippery and she couldn’t focus. She found a tether and grasped it.

The mage’s smile grew in front of her. But then something flickered in his eyes: recognition.

Understanding. He started to pull from her, power that she didn’t want to relinquish, and the pain was so great that she nearly lost consciousness.

He slammed her against the cliff again, and Grey felt everything inside of her giving up, shutting down.

Severin , she thought desperately. Severin, I’m dying .

Maryse , someone said, very far away.

She fought. She grappled for the knife in her belt and tried to stab at the man’s arm, but she was too weak, and everything was going shadowy and uncertain.

Then she was covered in blood, warm and metallic, and the mage’s face changed.

She only just realized that his throat had been cut; she was covered in his blood.

His hands went slack on her, and she fell, sliding down the wall, crumpled at the bottom. The unwanted tether snapped.

Kier kicked the body aside. He dropped to his knees in front of her, his hand cupping her head. Everything hurt. It hurt so much she couldn’t think past it.

“Grey?” he asked, shaky and terrified.

She gripped his surcoat, the blood leaving a mark on the coarse fabric. “Take it,” she murmured, tethering to him and pushing as much power at him as she could. The surge rushed through her so hard she choked as she gritted through her teeth, “Take it all. Get us home.”

And he had.

Grey didn’t know what happened nor how Kier got her back to camp after, but she slept for three days straight, interrupted often as healers monitored her concussion, and spent two more in the infirmary under careful watch.

He came to her on the evening of the second day, his eyes dark with grief and something else she didn’t recognize. It took Grey a moment to realize that he was ashamed. “I’ve applied for reassignment,” he said.

“Where are we going?” Grey asked, barely able to speak through the tightness in her throat. She’d glanced in the mirror, once, and nearly wept at the bruising. She hated the way he looked at her, as if he expected her to recoil, to fear him—as if he himself had bruised her.

“We’re not,” he said, deflated. “I’ve asked for retraining. And for a new Hand.”

Grey sat up so fast her head spun, so fast she knocked her forehead against his chin and hissed at the sudden burst of pain. “Hand Lieutenant!” one of the healers nearby shouted. “Watch yourself.”

Grey waved him off. “What have I done wrong?” she asked Kier, unable to keep the devastation out of her voice. “Send me for retraining, or… I don’t know, Kier, you have to—”

“It’s not you,” he said, taking a quick glance around, his hands fluttering above her shoulders like he wasn’t sure how to touch her but couldn’t keep himself from trying.

“Dear heart, Hand…” He winced, as if her station brought back all the things she’d sacrificed for him, and looked away.

“Grey,” he said unsteadily. “It’s not you. I can’t keep doing this.”

She shook her head, gripping his hands to stop his fluttering. “No. Don’t. You’re not—”

“I’ve requested medical dismissal on your behalf. Go home, Grey. Don’t come back.”

“Kier—”

“I’ll send my wages. Stay with our mothers, and when I can leave my contract, I’ll come.”

She didn’t care who saw. She gripped the back of his head, vise-like, and drew his forehead to hers, nose to nose. Her hair was lank and greasy, falling in her face, but he just pushed it back like always. He was always so careful with her.

“You would be so much safer,” Kier said, “away from me.”

“Don’t ask that of me.”

His hands were at her waist, gripping the coarse fabric of her shirt.

“He stole your power, Grey. I can’t even think of that kind of violation without getting…

” She heard the anger rising in his voice.

He took a deep breath and continued, “He knew who you were, what you were, when he tethered. I will not risk you again. The things I wish I could say to you…” He caught himself again.

“Losing you, living without you would be a fate worse than death.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t think of it, of the invasion of that other tether.

It made her sick to remember it. “I don’t…

I can’t. It’s just, with the tether as it is, it’s so slippery sometimes.

It’s hard to manage. Hard to grasp. Because there’s you, and then sometimes the power goes elsewhere in offshoots, and I can’t hold it in battle—but Kier, if it was just you , if I could guarantee that… ”

He’d gone very, very still under her hands. “You want to bind to me.”

She chewed on her lip. They’d spoken about it before, on other assignments that hadn’t felt so life-or-death—to bind oneself to a single mage, to limit power like that, was so dangerous…

but it changed the quality of magic entirely.

She could give him so much more, and he’d be able to take with abandon.

There were other rumors, about the power of a bond: they’d be able to communicate without words, pushing feelings along the tether.

It wouldn’t feel like a fraying rope between them, but like a strong tie, a knot.

But.

If they were bound, she wouldn’t be able to use her power on another mage—those tethers would be closed to her unless Kier died.

And he would never be able to use another well.

His tether would only work for her, would only seek her.

It didn’t matter if she died—he would only ever be able to use her.

If she died before him, in battle or in age, he would never be able to do magic again.

He leaned back, cupping her face.

“You can’t want that.”

“It would be a protection,” Grey said quietly. “For me.”

Kier studied her face. They both knew what she could not say, not in public: to bind to her was to bind to Locke.

“You’d really do it.”

Her voice was fierce, insistent as she laced her fingers through his. “There’s nothing I want more. Only you, Kier. No reassignments. No retraining. Bind to me, take what I have. Let me be your Hand in earnest.”

“And what about you?” he murmured.

She squeezed his hand. “Never ask me to leave you,” she said, voice cracking. “Use my power well. Protect me. It has always been this; it has always been us. Let it be us until the wars end or we find our deaths—whatever comes first.”

When she was out of the infirmary, alone in their little lean-to—it was the first assignment they weren’t in one of the long communal tents, and she was absurdly grateful for the privacy—they sat together on the floor, cross-legged, knee to knee.

It was a binding of blood and power, true name to true name, and when he took the name of Locke into his heart, she swelled with such great power that the magelight between them glowed pure, warm gold.