Page 36 of The Second Death of Locke

interlude

O N THE ISLE OF Locke, night had only just fallen when the ship arrived at the harbor.

In the old days—which really weren’t that long ago at all—the child of the Isle who wasn’t selected to inherit married based on letters and furtive meetings and discussions of the exchange of power and renewals.

Such was the fate of Lady Wren, sent to Nestria to marry the week after her eighteenth birthday; such was the fate of Locke’s aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles.

Choice, their mothers and fathers always taught them, was an illusion.

Though those on the mainland or in the villages could court and engage in dalliances and marry for want, that was not the role of the Isle, nor the role of its family.

No one was foolish enough to speak of love. Especially when whoever married Severin would not know if they were marrying the heir to the Isle and its power, or only their sibling.

“Choice,” Isaak Locke said to his son, as he swiped imaginary lint off Sev’s shoulders, “is your right.”

They stood in an upper room in the fortress, in the suite the family occupied for themselves.

The candlelight burned warm against the frigid gloom—it was nearly spring, but that hardly mattered on the Isle, and wouldn’t matter at all until summer came sweeping through Osar and Maerin and the Ghostwood and the Barrens for approximately three weeks before it went racing away again.

Isaak had already dressed his firstborn son in one of his own doublets, picked through with shimmering golden thread in the shape of pears and cherries.

From the corner where she sat, Maryse said, “This is boring.”

Severin shot her a glare. They did not often fight more than the usual bickering between children—after all, with seven years between the two of them, there was not usually much to fight about .

“ Gremaryse ,” Isaak sighed. “Didn’t your mother want to speak to you?”

“She already did,” Maryse said, curling back into the cushion she rested in on the floor.

It was supposed to be for Markit, Severin’s large hound, but Markit had been sent to the stables for the evening.

She did not take well to visitors, which was usually fine, because the Isle received few of them—until recently.

“And?” Isaak asked. He glanced at his daughter, and Maryse was certain he saw how her braids had already started unfurling, and how curling into Markit’s bed meant she was now covered in dog hair, her new dress wrinkled.

“She told me to behave,” she said primly.

Severin and his father exchanged a glance. Maryse sank deeper into her cushion and closed her eyes, lulled into peace by the scent of firewood and the low murmur of her father’s voice.

“You don’t have to make any decisions,” Isaak said, turning his attention back to Severin.

“That’s not what this is about, not yet.

I just want you to see if you take to her, if she is someone you would like to speak to again.

” He went back to straightening Severin’s clothes, then took a chain from the collection of jewels he’d brought, securing it across his son’s chest. Maryse was pretty sure it had been a gift from Torrin to her father—the little stone pins at either side shone light blue. Scaelan colors.

“Is this because of Aunt Wren?” Severin asked. “Because Uncle Pol is a cur and a brute and a tyrant.”

Isaak cleared his throat. He aimed a look at Maryse, who was watching the two of them through her eyelashes, feigning sleep—she had the feeling she wasn’t meant to be here for this little speech, so she just snuggled deeper into Markit’s bed, letting a contented smile creep across her lips.

“You did not choose to be born into this,” Isaak said. “You didn’t choose to be born Locke, nor to be a mage, nor to become a piece on the board. So the least I can give you is your freedom, even if your mother resents me for it.”

“She might say she does,” Severin said, stepping away from his father. “But she doesn’t. She married you for love, after all.”

“She married me for duty,” Isaak corrected. “We just happened to be lucky that duty and love were not mutually exclusive.”

The plot was Isaak’s idea, after all. Maryse had lurked in the halls as her parents fought in hushed tones (which was unusual for them) about the future of their children.

Isaak was Scaelan and had married into the Isle; thus, Locke’s customs probably still struck him as cold and unfeeling.

After nearly a week of those hushed fights, and another week further of Maryse watching the stony silences between Isaak, Locke, and Severin at family meals, they reached an agreement.

As a child of the Isle not born to inherit, Severin had to marry a noble from one of Idistra’s other nations to protect the alliances between the nations, and to increase power. But Isaak was unhappy with the idea of arranging a marriage, no matter how much his wife reminded him of the customs.

In return, he asked for a compromise: from Severin’s fifteenth birthday until the day he chose to marry, they would host one eligible noble for one week of every month.

That allowed Severin to get to know each of them before he was old enough to marry, and write to the eligible girls to build a relationship over time.

He would not be forced into a loveless marriage, as Maryse’s beloved aunt was in her youth.

He would still marry for power, still follow the rites of the Isle—but he would make his own choice.

When their grandmother heard of the arrangement, she was furious for weeks. The only thing that drew her out of her room when the first visiting noble from Nestria arrived was nosiness—which Maryse understood, because little else kept her from misbehaving.

Now, on the eve of the third visit, Maryse felt the whole business was growing rather dull.

After all, how many girls were there in Idistra who would want to marry someone like Severin ?

Maryse loved her brother, but she could not understand someone else willing to love him unless they were forced to.

“Maryse,” Isaak said softly. She felt his hand on her cheek and opened her eyes.

Her father stood above her, smelling of pine and the Isle’s cold, like he always did (unless Uncle Torrin came to visit, in which case he smelled like wine, and sometimes Torrin’s favorite dark liquor).

His hair was nearly all gray now, his eyes lined but still joyful.

When she thought of her father, she thought of him laughing.

She glanced over his shoulder, at Severin studying his own reflection as he chose an earring.

“Yes?”

He gripped her hands, pulling her up to sitting as he squatted in front of her.

Maryse turned her fingers to wrap around his hands, as always tracing his rings with her fingertips: one that showed his marriage to Locke; one that bore the crest of the Isle and his own signature as lord consort; and one that made her grandmother roll her eyes: a token from Scaelas as a show of gratitude.

“What else did your mother tell you?” he asked, his voice a bit more tense, a bit more urgent.

Maryse looked down at their linked hands, at the freckles that speckled her father’s skin below the cuffs of his shirt. “She reminded me of what to do,” she said quietly, “when we have visitors.”

“Recite it for us,” Severin said from across the room.

He had turned around to lean on the dresser, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at his boots.

Sometimes, when he stood like that, when she looked up at him, he was still a boy; but sometimes she registered that she was still a child, and he was very much not.

She chewed on her lip. She wished for a day when they could do this, go through these motions, without reminding her of the worst of it.

“If they draw arms,” she said, her voice high-pitched and nervous, “I am to run to the cellar—not the nice cellar, but the root cellar below—and bar the door. There I am to await my guard. I am to wait, no matter what happens, for someone to come for me.”

“And?” Severin prompted, eyebrow raised.

“Whoever comes must know the recitation of the Isle’s holy verses,” Maryse said. “And I can’t keep picking the twenty-seventh verse, just because I like it, as that makes it too easy,” she added.

“Very good,” Isaak said. He tugged on her hair. “Your ribbons?”

She turned her head, swallowing hard. Her mother had done her hair herself. Isaak ran his fingers over the ribbons and the pearls threaded through them, which really were not pearls at all. They were poison.

“And your boots?” he asked.

She got up, using her father for balance as she turned and lifted her heels, showing him one boot heel, then the other. He tapped them, checking the knives.

“And Maryse,” Severin said. “If one of them tries to kidnap you?”

She hated this question most of all. “They are not to succeed,” she said quietly.

“Very good,” Isaak said, kissing her knuckles. He stood, knees creaking, keeping Maryse’s hand in one of his. “And Severin? If you’re with her? If you are able to save her?”

A muscle in Severin’s jaw tensed. “I know what to do.”

It wasn’t the third month they came for her, or the fourth, or even the fifth. It was the seventh month, weeks before the feast to celebrate Maryse’s ninth birthday, when Isaak’s desire to give his son a choice became the Isle’s undoing.

In Retarik’s temple in Osar, now a great hall, Severin and Maryse sat at the high table, awaiting their company.

Maryse hated the cold, massive hall, and she was growing so tired of these monthly reception feasts, and Severin had stolen the last of her honey cakes.

She sat pouting, arms crossed, as the courtiers in front of her danced.

She did her best to avoid Locke’s gaze; her mother was surely sending her a stern look to act in a way more befitting her station. To act like the heir to the Isle.