Page 37 of The Second Death of Locke

Before these monthly feasts began, Locke had so rarely hosted great dinners like this, so rarely called all the inhabitants of the Isle together for a feast—but now, seven months in, they too danced as if they were weary of the adventure.

Maryse wondered, kicking a wooden beam under the table, how long the treachery could endure.

Beside her, her brother slouched in his chair, one knee brought up to support his elbow. Their father kept darting reproving glances over at him, which Sev studiously ignored.

This was the seventh month—but it was the first time the visitor was a repeat suitor, specifically requested by Severin for a second visit.

It wasn’t a wedding, but it wasn’t an insignificant event, either.

Maryse kept glancing over at Severin. He was only fifteen, but he would probably have to marry at eighteen, which wasn’t really that far away—but at least he would be marrying someone he knew.

Someone he chose. If she had to marry someone she’d never met before, like Aunt Wren had to, she supposed she would be terrified.

She supposed she’d want three years of awful monthly parties to prevent something so heinous.

Maybe, she thought, if Severin made his choice now and focused on courting instead of meeting, the parties could stop, or at least slow down.

If anyone was left in Maerin that night, they would’ve noticed the shimmering of shields bending around ships, and the soldiers that unloaded from them after the lady was unhanded and taken up to the temple.

They would’ve noticed as the forces moved swiftly through Maerin, then the little houses between Maerin and Osar, making tidy work of anyone who had stayed behind from the night’s festivities.

They would have noticed the cloying scent in the air—some drug only just discovered on the mainland, one that broke the tether between a mage and a well.

One that rendered the warning system of magic between the guards and their High Lady unusable.

They would’ve noticed as the first of the houses began to burn.

In the great hall, the revelers came to a stop as the doors opened, and the citizens of the Isle melted away toward the walls, clearing a wide aisle between the doors and the head table.

Next to Maryse, Severin stopped his fidgeting. He did not look any less bored, but that in itself was a mask.

The knights came in four columns, their surcoats bearing the crest of Eprain: a boar, speared through, over a field of arrows.

When they reached the head table, they split apart to reveal the girl.

Last time, she had come with her father, Eprain’s commander and Epras’s younger brother; this time, she stood alone.

She was dressed in pale pink silk, her blonde hair braided and pulled away from her face.

She seemed to Maryse to be dripping in gems, from the heavy sapphires at her throat and ears to the pearl and diamond netting that covered her hair, as if she’d been dipped in the sea and had brought the shining remnants of the deepest blue with her.

Maryse wondered if any of her gems were poison, too.

The girl dropped to her knees before the table, her head bowed. “Your majesty,” she said to Locke, a show of deference. Then, softer, “My lord.”

Locke stood. “Lady Polenna,” she replied, addressing the girl first before she nodded at the knights. “How lovely it is to see you again.”

It was a lie. The last time, after Lady Polenna left, Maryse and her mother went on a spirited ride through the forest to practice Maryse’s tethers under pressure, and at a distance.

I don’t like her , Maryse had admitted to her mother as they tore through the forest. I think she’s dull .

Locke had frowned, looking over at her daughter, and Maryse prepared for disapproval—but her mother’s eyes sparkled, and she had only shaken her head. I can’t say I disagree , she said finally. But a dull wife is better than a dangerous one .

There was no sign of that now. As usual, Locke greeted outsiders with a cool, lofty disinterest—maybe even superiority—that Maryse herself never managed, no matter how often she practiced the look and tone in the mirror.

“His Lord Epras apologizes for his absence, your majesty,” one of the knights said.

“I am dismayed to hear he could not accompany his niece,” Locke said. Maryse watched her mother’s hand on her wine goblet. The silver seal ring tapped against the metal as she lifted it to her lips.

Something was wrong. Unlike Maryse, Locke never fidgeted.

“As is he, I assure you.”

Locke inclined her head.

Maryse shifted in her finery. She did not like the look in her mother’s eyes—there was an anger there, simmering just below the surface.

It was like when Maryse did something she wasn’t supposed to in front of strangers and Locke had to keep her temper and not scold her until they were alone.

Maryse was very happy, in that moment, that the look was not directed at her.

“You’ve brought quite the force,” Locke said. “Especially for a second meeting.”

The knight said nothing.

The girl, ignored until now, made her way toward the table and bowed her head to Severin. Severin inclined his as well, not as low as formalities would deem appropriate, but enough to acknowledge. Maryse saw her brother’s hand by his side, clenched into a fist.

“Did you get my last letter?” the girl asked, her voice low and sweet.

“I did,” Severin said. Maryse did not really understand what they were talking about.

She’d seen her brother blushing as he read parchment in the keep’s library, but he always folded the papers and pushed her away when she came close.

None of your business , he said when she asked what he was reading.

He spent long hours in his room after the letters started arriving, his fingers stained more and more frequently with ink.

He was so nervous that his voice trembled. Maryse looked at him with something like wonder as Severin reached out to touch the girl’s face, his own expression softening. Locke herself did not look at the couple; neither did Isaak. Both stared straight ahead as if daring their court to comment.

“How was the voyage?” Severin asked quietly.

The girl opened her mouth to answer—just as bells started outside. The tolling, Maryse knew, was the sound of alarm for when all other enchantments of warning failed.

Outside the hall, there was a shout. Maryse, paying attention again, felt a great wrenching inside her stomach as the drugs outside began to wear off, as she sensed the desolation unfolding across the Isle without their notice.

A ripple went through the crowd. Maryse heard someone shout, then Locke was on her feet. “Guards!” she shouted.

Maryse tore her eyes from Severin—there were people falling all around the room, mages crumbling, wells standing shocked. She saw one of the girl’s soldiers turn, plunging a sword into someone’s stomach.

Severin moved so quickly that Maryse missed it. One moment he was standing still with the girl at his arm; the next, his dagger was through her heart, and she was falling to her knees before him, shock clear on his face.

Maryse stood watching, jaw dropped. For all her lessons, all her poisoned pearls and boots full of knives, Severin had been learning his own rites of protection over the Isle and his sister.

Severin had learned not to hesitate.

“Take her,” Locke said urgently, moving around Severin to Isaak as he rose.

Severin grabbed Maryse, his hands still slick with blood.

It took Maryse a moment to realize she was sobbing, great racking cries tearing from her throat.

Sev shushed her as he fled through the kitchens with her in his arms, then down a back passage into the cellar.

There was another stairwell down that way that led to the sea—but when he wrenched the door open, they were greeted with a wall of flame.

He slammed the door, coughing from the smoke.

He hesitated, and they both heard the boots on the floor above them.

“I thought you loved her,” Maryse cried, unable to make sense of it all. Upstairs, someone shouted—one of the cooks.

“I love you more,” Severin said fiercely. He set her down in the dirt and paced, pulling at his hair. “I just—Retarik’s bones, this wasn’t supposed to happen. What do we do? What do we do ?”

Maryse flinched when Sev swore on the name of the gods.

She sat, her knees pulled to her chest. Upstairs, she could feel the push and pull of magic; she could sense the wells being extinguished like flames.

She could not make herself reach for her pearls, nor her knives—not when she wasn’t alone here, not when Severin had escaped too, not when it was actually happening.

“Is Locke living?” Severin asked, dropping to his knees in front of her.

She reached out—she was not good at it, unpracticed still, but she pressed. She tried to sense her mother in the battle above. There was a great flame in the middle of it, but it was waning.

“Yes,” she said. But not for long , something whispered in her mind. Severin must’ve read the look on her face.

He gripped both of her hands. “I cannot protect you from this,” he said. He held her face, pressed her close to kiss her forehead. “Don’t be afraid, Maryse.”

“I’m not.”

He took a breath, the panic on his face clearing, resolving into a peaceful calm she did not understand. It scared her, then, how much he looked like their father. “I need you to do something.”

She looked up at him, terrified. There were boots on the stairs, then fists slamming the doors. Severin looked up, over her shoulder, and sucked a breath through his teeth. “We don’t have much time.”

Agony tore through her. Maryse gasped, gripping her stomach as some great power extinguished.

She screamed, trying to keep the pain at bay, but it was no use.

She fell forward onto her hands. Severin caught her and held her close.

He shook against her, and when she looked up, her brother was crying.

“Locke has fallen,” he said, reading the expression on her face.

He closed his eyes for one brief moment.

Maryse could not stop the sobs that racked her body, the wailing noise coming from somewhere deep in her chest. There was a crackling sound behind them, and she sobbed harder as the door behind Severin smoked, then burned.

He shook his head. “Stay quiet.”

She stayed quiet. He repositioned them so they sat on the floor, facing each other. She tried to wipe her nose, but he caught her hand and held it. He took her free hand with his. A closed circuit.

There was pounding overhead, pounding behind her, crackling flames behind him.

“You are Locke now,” Severin said, very quietly. “Do you understand?”

She shook her head.

“I need you to do it, Maryse.” He did not explain, and he did not need to. He wanted her to do the thing she had been expressly told she mustn’t do unless the Isle itself was at stake. He wanted her to do the thing that hurt more than anything else, the thing that felt the very best of all.

“I can’t.”

“You must .”

“I—”

“Maryse, if they find you, if they take you, they’ll get all the power of Locke.

They will find a way to control it.” He spoke quickly, so quickly that his words were tangled, but she understood them all the same.

It was the same thing her mother had always told her, had always warned her might come to pass.

“We can run. Together.”

“We can’t ,” Severin said, and now the tears flowed freely down his cheeks.

“If they take you, if you refuse to let them control you, they will make you bear an heir as soon as you’re able.

One who will hand over all the power, who they can control—and then they’ll kill you anyway.

I can’t save you. You have to save your power, Maryse—you have to save yourself. ”

She knew. She knew all of it, and what would happen to her if she didn’t use her own power. She could barely breathe, choking on tears.

“After it’s done, you have to run. You will live, Maryse, if you forget us.”

“No.”

“Do you promise,” Severin whispered, “to let us go?”

“ No ,” she whimpered. She did not hug him; she did not break the circuit. He squeezed both of her hands, and it hurt.

“You have to,” he said.

As she sobbed, the door behind Severin exploded in a shower of sparks. They both ducked, but the hot embers showered down on Sev’s body. Above her, he screamed in pain even as he shielded her. She felt the tether take, the most familiar sensation in the world.

“ Now, Locke!” he shouted.

Maryse relented. She reached out, felt the swell of the island below her, felt the swell of the power as she stripped it from every other well on the Isle. It all rushed into her in one great torrent, so much power for such a small body, too much power. She pushed it at Severin even as he screamed.

Eyes shut, his hands gripped in hers, they detonated Locke and everything with it.