Page 38 of The Second Death of Locke

sixteen

H ER CHEST FELT LIKE it was splintering to pieces. Something warm was pressing on it, hard enough to break her. Her eyes were already open when she focused on the bleary shape above her. It was his hands on her heart, forcing it to beat.

“I have you,” he said. “I’m not letting go.”

He didn’t have to. Grey closed her eyes and slipped back under.

“Grey.”

She was back in herself, back near her own body, though she had no memory of leaving or returning.

Her name was soft, insistent, in a voice she wasn’t fully certain of—she was conscious that her head hurt, an endless beating pain behind her eyes.

She hissed at the pressure of it, the wet heat of her mouth, the taste of metal.

She did not think she could move—every limb was cemented, paralyzed, as if someone had draped a great lead-lined blanket over her and tied her to the ground.

Hands on her forehead, brushing her hair away—something cool. “Grey,” they said again, then more distantly, “Captain. She’s stirring.”

“Our fucking luck to lose the healer,” someone else said. Brit.

“Go be unhelpful somewhere else,” Kier snapped.

Movement. More shuffling. Something warm and dry was on her cheek, then a door closed elsewhere. All other voices ceased—all other noises cut off. She stretched her hands and felt fabric underneath them; nice soft fabric, not the bedrolls they’d been using for the last two weeks.

The emptiness stretched out inside of her like a raw wound, like something had been cleft from within her, leaving her a bloody shell in its wake. She moved her hand to her stomach as if to prove it was still there—a hand caught hers and something tried to spark to life in that emptiness.

The migraine flared. She hissed against it. His lips brushed her forehead, and she sank back into nothing.

She came awake like a small vessel cresting over a wave. She sucked in a breath, asleep and screaming one moment and awake and screaming the next, her throat cracking and bleeding again, and the dark was so full and awful and complete—

Noises sounded in the other room, but in this one, she sat straight up into nothing. The fire ceased—Grey stopped screaming. She opened her eyes.

She didn’t know where she was—an enclosed space, dirt floor, thatch roof. She was in a small room, alone, even though he’d promised she wouldn’t be.

A shape darkened the doorway. She knew it as she knew her own heart. Kier stepped into the room clutching a magelight to his chest—not his, not without her; this one was pale green—and kneeled down before her.

“Are you here?” he asked, and she didn’t understand. She reached for his face, ran her hand across the new beard and felt a deep, throbbing ache in her middle. The tether was limp and empty inside of her.

“I can’t feel my power,” she said, unable to contain the edge of panic.

He shifted his weight to sit cross-legged next to her, drawing her out of the blankets and into his lap. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I feel it. There’s just—there’s so little left. You need time. We used… a lot.”

She buried her face in his chest, searching for memories, even as the dread rose like bile inside of her. “What did I do?”

Kier paused. “I don’t know if—”

“Tell me.”

Pause. “We killed them.”

“How many?”

Pause. “Forty-three. All of them. Mages… and wells.”

The breath left her in a whoosh—she remembered the catastrophic ache in her gut, the implosion of forty-three hearts at once, the massive death that drained her to the bone.

“I didn’t know,” Kier said carefully, “you could do that.”

“Mm.” She let her eyes slide closed, let that unspoken grief unfurl through the tether. He gripped her harder. “Don’t get used to it.”

“I won’t.”

He was quiet for a moment and she listened to his heart, the beating of it, forcing herself not to think about forty-three lives lost in the blink of an eye, forcing herself not to think of the thousands who went down with her lost nation. So much destruction, so much pain , all because of her.

“Grey.” There was hesitation in his voice, and she wanted to weep. This was why she’d hidden herself for so long. She couldn’t bear it, now he knew the truth of her. “They never named the heir to the Isle, before it vanished. Because you weren’t of age.”

She felt the fear in her chest—but this was Kier, and he already knew. “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”

“Was Attis right, then? Did it pass to you when Severin died?”

Grey couldn’t meet his eye. In her young life, her mother had one rule: do not reveal who is to inherit.

Do not reveal who is a mage and who is a well.

Do not reveal what power you do or do not hold.

Even now, even though this was Kier, and she trusted him with her very soul, she did not know how to speak the words.

She remembered being eight years old, Lot and Kier both looking at her as they hatched a plan. She remembered the lie, like poison in her mouth.

But because it was Kier, she didn’t need to lie.

“No,” she said.

“Severin was a mage, wasn’t he?”

Grey squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes,” she said.

“He was never the heir to Locke. It was always you.”

You lied to me , he did not say.

She didn’t answer. There was no need to. The heir to Locke was always a well, and if the firstborn was a mage, or typic, then another child would take the Isle.

“Can I put you down? I want to see your face.”

She didn’t want him to see her, but she needed to see his expressions. She needed to know how he looked, now that he knew she had kept this from him: this, the biggest secret of all. “Yes.”

Kier shifted, laying her on her back. She missed the warmth immediately—she couldn’t imagine sitting up on her own, let alone seeking him. Her spine felt oddly unarticulated.

He moved to press his hand to her cheek, stroking softly. “Is that what happened?” he asked, so quietly it broke her heart.

She looked away, tears coming to her eyes despite herself. He didn’t need to clarify. Is that how you killed them all? he didn’t ask. Is that how you destroyed Locke?

“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking. She closed her eyes, wishing away the truth. “They thought… they thought that if they controlled Severin, they could control power. And they tried to take him. But it was never my brother. They needed to control me .”

Kier took a breath. Held it. Then he nodded, and kissed her forehead.

It took her a second to feel something odd, a pulse of light crawling up the tether—it was like warmth inside of her, nestling in that empty cavern where her power usually resided.

She felt it, warm and glowing, a new sort of power, and her bones didn’t feel quite like they were not where they were meant to be anymore. She opened her eyes.

“What was that?” she asked.

Kier gazed at her evenly. She felt the wall against her arm; she pulled herself up so she could lean against it.

“Where are we?” she asked instead, rubbing at her eyes. She wasn’t wearing her shirt anymore, but rather a large blanket wrapped around her, and her vest underneath.

“Sorry,” he said, noting her gaze. “You bled or vomited on everything else, so Ola gave up trying to keep you dressed. We’re in another shepherd’s hut, further down the valley. It seemed… safer.”

Grey nodded, taking in the small room. There was a bed frame against one wall, stripped metal, no mattress. This one had a real wooden door, too, but it was shut.

“Do they know what I am?”

Kier winced. “They suspect as much,” he said.

There was no point worrying about that, so Grey forced herself to move past it, even as she felt her secrets unraveling beneath her. “How long have I been asleep?” she asked.

“Two days. Nearly. You didn’t even stir when we moved you. Scared the life out of Brit—they would’ve thought you were dead if you didn’t make so much noise.” He winced. “Not exactly the safest way to travel.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… go.”

Kier moved to her legs, stretching them out in front of her. His hands found her calf, massaging the place she was always sore. “We’re alive because of you.”

“That’s not true. You did the magic.”

He shook his head, slow and reverent. “That’s not… Grey, surely you must know how impossible your power is.”

“Clearly not,” she said, leaning her head back against the wall.

“You know what I am. What that means. What that makes me.” She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for three more days, possibly forever.

Kier’s hand stilled, as if he could feel the self-hatred leaking through every pore. Yes, they lived—but for what ?

“Grey.”

She opened her eyes. He sat very still in that way she could never manage—she always had to be moving.

Even now, her fingers were caught in the blanket she wore, tangling in the edge.

He swallowed hard, and she watched the movement of his throat.

He was half the boy she knew, the boy she grew up with, modified with at least a quarter scar tissue and a new broken nose and beard, and yet…

and yet he was the same. The same but different, and she could only feel an aching sadness inside of her when she thought about him growing older.

She wanted to know the changes in him by heart.

“You nearly died,” he said.

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it. Even now, with every movement, she felt like she was one slip-up from the grave.

“And I…”

Grey swallowed back the lump in her throat. This was where it would come: this was where he would tell her that she had corrupted herself with that power. “Yes?”

“I can’t imagine… not having you.”

She smirked, the corner of her lip tugging up. A seed of bitterness sprouted in her stomach—she wondered if he couldn’t imagine not having her, or not having her power. “Retirement is coming soon, Captain,” she said. “You’re not sick of me yet?”

“That is absolutely not what I mean.”