Page 32 of The Second Death of Locke

So he had lied for her, and run away with her, and fought Imarta and both of his mothers on her behalf when they found out.

When word got back to him, Lot had only written her a gentle letter about the dangers of battle.

He had written Kier a much meaner, strongly worded letter about Grey’s safety, but he had ended it by telling his brother he was proud of him.

Grey had found that letter again recently, still tucked into Kier’s pack.

Now, Kier took a deep breath, and Grey anticipated his next question, because he could always read her, especially when she least desired it— Do you want to be Locke? all over again, the same question nearly a decade later—which was why she was surprised when he said, “Do you want to go to Lindan?”

“What?”

“It might be nice,” he mused, his thumb skimming over the meat between her thumb and forefinger. “Lindle magic is different. No wells, no mages. Some are just… magicians, like they learned it. Like math.”

Grey knew all this, and Kier knew she knew.

Like Idistra, Lindan functioned on an intrinsic system, meaning magical aptitude was a trait the Lindle were born with.

Unlike in Idistra, all had some access to Lindan’s magic, though wielding it well was a matter of practice.

“We probably wouldn’t have any magic at all,” Grey said carefully. “Not that far from Locke.”

“Mm. Maybe not.” He didn’t say, But you are Locke . He didn’t have to. “We could leave all of this behind.”

You can let the magic die, if you want to , he did not say. You do not have to save us and sacrifice your own freedom .

“Do you ever think,” Grey said, glancing at the others, but Eron had Sela stirring the pot as he chopped up bits of jerky to flavor the travesty that was dinner, and Brit was carefully braiding Ola’s hair next to the warmth of the magelight, which brought out the shimmers of red in her dark curls.

“Do you ever think we’d be better off if we stopped running? ”

“Stopped running from what?” Kier asked.

“Locke,” Grey said, the word barely more than an exhalation, and Kier stiffened—it seemed they were both surprising each other tonight.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.

“A terrible one, actually,” she agreed. But she paused, listening to the screaming of the wind—and sometimes they were so heavy on her heart, the family she’d lost, the place she’d never grown to fully know.

Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she was right there in the Ghostwood, and she’d open them and her stomach still hurt, but it ached with emptiness instead of power.

“You know what it would mean,” Kier said. “What could happen to you.”

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Kier knew as well as Grey did why her family had been killed: to control the power.

Whoever controlled Locke controlled all of the magic in Idistra.

It was a simple miscalculation that had led to their downfall: they did not know that Locke would rather die than be controlled, that they would take everything down with them rather than allow the heir to be taken.

“You think they’d kill me.”

“Or worse,” he said. “We can’t be certain of Scaelas’s intentions. It’s too much of a risk.”

“We don’t need Scaelas,” Grey said. “We don’t need anyone.”

“We need allies,” he said. “You and I do not an army make.”

“Where’s that ego I know and love?”

He smiled, but only just. “I will go wherever you want to,” he said, “but we shouldn’t rush into a hasty decision, or do something because we’re backed into a corner.” He squeezed her hand, two short pulses. “If you want to go, it should be a genuine choice. Not the result of a forced hand.”

“I know,” Grey said.

“That’s a decision that can’t be reversed.”

She snorted. “Like retirement?”

“We could always re-enlist.”

“Gods, no.”

They sat for a moment in silence before Kier said, “Once you open that box, there’s no going back. It would reveal the truth of you.”

Grey nudged his jaw with her head. “You know the truth of me.” It was easy, like this, to pretend that there was something else between them other than friendship and the tether of power.

He laughed. Kier raised her hand to his lips, and she felt the brush of his new beard. “I do,” he agreed, “though sometimes I wonder.”

“Are you two going to eat, or are you just going to keep necking in the corner?” Ola called.

Grey sighed, untangling from Kier’s side. “We’re not necking,” she grumbled, even though she blushed as she said it. She half crawled back across the rocks to the circle of warm light. Sela handed her a bowl with a tentative smile.

“Captain Flynn?” she asked, moving closer with her own bowl, and Grey immediately knew from the girl’s tone that she was in for something.

“Grey works, kid. What do you need?” she asked, already mentally cataloging the things she had to do before sleep. Kier was across the light with Ola, going over tomorrow’s route.

“Can you explain binding to me?”

That again. Grey forced herself to get down three spoonfuls in rapid succession, thinking it over. “Maybe when you’re older,” she said finally. She was rewarded with a pout that made Sela look even younger.

“I don’t believe it has anything to do with that ,” Sela said primly. “But you and the captain are bound. Why?”

Grey nodded. There was no point in edging around it: the fact was out there. “Why didn’t they train you as a well?” she asked. She knew the girl had power—she also knew how little she was able to use it.

Sela shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve tried, a few times, but I’m no good at it. So we decided to focus on my education instead. Diplomacy, magical history, geography. All that.”

Grey took this in. She remembered what Sela had said before, about barely being a well at all. Perhaps she was too weak for training—but she’d tethered to Brit in the battle, so there was something there.

Beyond that, she wished someone had been able to make such a decision for her.

There were so many gaps in her own knowledge, holes that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to fill: history and geography, mathematics, continental languages.

Her schooling had been so singularly dedicated to preparing her for a life at war, life as someone else’s tool, a life as a well and a healer, that she sometimes didn’t know who she would be if she’d genuinely had the choice.

“So why did you come back?”

Sela sighed through her teeth, poking her spoon around in her sludge, which she hadn’t finished.

For all her sweeping declarations about the passable mediocrity of Eron’s cooking, she didn’t seem keen to eat it now.

“I don’t know if I can explain it,” she said.

“Do you ever miss your home? Familiarity? The place you know better than any others?”

Grey shrugged. She’d been moving around since she was sixteen. And though she’d lived in Leota for years, though that had been her home for most of her childhood, it wasn’t Leota she thought of when she smelled the salty brine of the sea.

“I guess that answers your question,” she said slowly, choosing each word with deliberate care.

“About Kier and me. With power—with your mage. It’s like that, sometimes.

You find someone, and they feel like home, and everything is stronger.

I think that’s how it’s meant to be, for some of us.

Not moving from mage to mage with every reassignment.

I know Kier just as well as I know myself. ”

“Do you love him?” Sela asked with the shamelessness of a teenager.

“Of course I do,” Grey said. There was no point in clarifying the way she loved him, or the ways it was unreciprocated. “But… there’s more to love than that.”

“Ola said it’s a foolish thing for anyone to do,” Sela admitted.

For a second, Grey thought she was talking about love, and that she and Ola had been gossiping, but Sela clarified.

“Binding, I mean. She said that Kier is useless without you, and that if you die, he’ll never be able to do magic again. ”

“He’d be useless without me anyway,” Grey said, trying to make a joke, and finding it bitter in her mouth.

She shrugged. There was no way to break a bond, no way to undo it, and they’d known that four years ago when he whispered her true name and pressed his blood to her mouth.

“But we’re capable of a lot, bound as we are.

It has its benefits. It makes both of us stronger. ”

She looked at Sela’s full bowl, her upturned face. She wasn’t even pretending to eat anymore. Grey elbowed her gently in the ribs. “Eat something,” she said. “We’ve mountains to cross, kid.”

Sela sighed, but she did as she was told. A few moments later, when she’d finished shoveling the gruel in—speed was the only way to make the meal palatable—she said, “Can you train me?”

Grey had been expecting this. She watched the steady glow of the magelight, felt the warmth on her fingers. “I can try,” she said, “but I probably won’t be any good at it.”

“Trying is nice too.”

“And Brit needs to agree to help.”

“They probably will, if I ask nicely.”

Grey did not contest this. She sensed a shadow over her, then Kier came close. “We should probably get some rest,” he said. He’d clearly already told the others—Brit and Ola were already setting up their bedrolls. “Eron is taking the first watch.”

“Thanks,” Grey said. She watched him go back, setting out their sleep areas, leaving Sela’s closest to the warmth of the magelight. To Sela, she said, “Then we’ll try.”