Page 4 of The Second Death of Locke

So it was a stroke of luck that the kind couple next door to Imarta had two boys just a bit older than Grey and the capacity to love two more unmoored stragglers.

Grey barely remembered her first days in Imarta’s house besides a few snippets: Kier’s ma stirring a great pot on the stove as his mom tied the laces of Grey’s boots, checking them for a sturdy fit; how the older boy misheard her name the first time she said it and then exclusively called her Grape; sleeping tucked against Imarta, barely able to get through the night without screaming terrors; rifling through a pile of hand-me-down shirts as the younger of the boys peered at her from across the table.

She was glad she remembered meeting him.

She was glad she had half a memory of life without Kier, if only because it reinforced the understanding that she felt unmoored without him.

They’d known each other so long, grown into each other like roots of neighboring trees rather than neighboring children until Kier was so intrinsically tied with her understanding of magic that she sometimes had trouble separating the two.

Maybe that was fate. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, Kier was as close as she would ever come to true magic herself.

It was late evening when they were finally alone again, after a strategy discussion with their officers for the ambush and a round of sparring.

Sore and tired, Grey lay on her back on the scratchy rug that protected their tent floor from the mud. She’d shucked her cloak and most of her layers, leaving her in fitted sparring trousers and a compression vest. She stared straight up, watching the movement of the tent fabric in the wind.

Kier finished sharpening his blade and sat down next to her.

When his hands found her calves, massaging out the knots, the sound she made was borderline indecent.

His low chuckle answered. She clapped a hand over her mouth before anything else could escape and she’d have to shamefully and dishonorably remove herself from the situation, her position, and perhaps all of Scaela.

“Turn over,” Kier murmured.

Grey pressed her lips together, but did as she was told.

She slipped her straps over her shoulders and Kier helped her pull her vest down to her hips, exposing her back.

Grey shivered, folding her arms to pillow her head.

Kier moved over her, his hands shifting to her back.

The problem with being trained to protect him and his person at all times, at all costs, was that it was actually quite hard on her body.

At least, unlike most mages, Kier did his best to show her he appreciated it.

“I keep trying to work it out,” he said, his knuckles digging into the knots in her lower back. “You’re certain there’s nothing that can just make a well, right?”

“You know as much as I do,” Grey said.

“Lies, blasphemy, slander.”

She sighed. “No. There’s nothing that can make a well.” She chewed her lip, distracted by the gentleness of his touch as his fingers traced up her spine, digging in again when he reached the too-tight muscles of her shoulders.

He thought for a moment. “Then maybe it’s something from another system.” Though Idistran magic relied on both a well and a mage, other systems of magic in other places didn’t. “Maybe a rock?”

“A rock ?” Grey asked, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.

He smirked at her, and oh . She could often pretend that she and Kier were nothing more than the most devoted of friends, but sometimes the ache in her chest was difficult to ignore.

“Or an elixir,” he said.

“Kiernan Seward, if we are risking our lives for a rock or an elixir, I am leaving you and this entire blasted camp and deserting.”

He laughed, his hands moving down to clasp her waist, thumbs pressing on either side of her spine. She bit her lip to stop any inappropriate noises from escaping. “You wouldn’t leave me,” he said.

She closed her eyes, hiding her face behind her arm. No, she would not leave him. But perhaps, someday, it would be far easier for her heart if she did.

“It’s probably a mistake,” Kier said. For a half-second, she thought he was talking about what they were doing, and her heart dropped—though it was not uncommon for him to be so affectionate, or so kind to her body. “A fluke.”

“Perhaps,” Grey said.

He went back to his ministrations, the quiet swelling between them. Grey shifted, aiming for subtlety, because though this seemingly didn’t impact him, it did affect her in ways she would be mortified for him to discover.

Unless it was requited. In which case, this was quite a good moment for him to make that discovery, or a move, or cross a line that she herself wouldn’t without certainty—but the position they were in and the fact that he didn’t cross that line was answer enough for her.

“You had a nightmare last night,” Kier said, unprompted.

She rolled under him, narrow-eyed, moving her arm to cover her breasts as she did. Kier shifted up to give her space to move. If he was affected by the sight of her, shirtless beneath him, he did not let it show.

He leaned to adjust her hair so it wasn’t caught under her, then picked up the arm she wasn’t using to cover herself, massaging her right forearm. Annoyingly, after years and years of this, he always knew exactly where she was the sorest.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” she said.

“It’s fine,” Kier said, brushing it off like he brushed off any inconvenience she offered. “What was it about?”

Grey tipped her head back, staring at the canvas again. “I don’t remember.”

He poked her hard in the stomach.

“What? I don’t.”

“ Flynn ,” he sighed, brushing the hair out of her face.

She pushed his hand away and pulled her vest up. Now he did look down, for only a second, before he glanced away, swallowing.

“You remember everything,” he said softly.

I don’t want to remember this , she wanted to say, but it wasn’t worth it.

She stayed quiet until he moved, stretching out on his back next to her.

He hated doing it, she knew, because he always expected the damp to seep up through the rug (it never did) and he insisted that the pallets were more comfortable than the ground (they were not; she would sleep right here, on the floor, if he did not kick up such a fuss about it).

His arm pressed into hers; she laced their fingers together and felt the lazy attachment of the tether between them, her power flowing easily into him and falling dormant.

The room glowed warmer, the fire going a tinge brighter purple, as she pushed the power at him.

Kier , she wanted to say, why are we doing this? Why are we fighting?

But he would only say that they were fighting for Scaela because it was their home, and because everyone was fighting.

Scaela against Luthar for the ports and Cleoc Strata for the fertile land and Eprain for access to the eastern sea.

It was Scaela against the others, and the other nation states against one another, all the way down—the only place to get any peace on this doomed island was possibly in Nestria, because they fought only Cleoc Strata and were mostly free.

Scaela against them all because decades before, someone had killed Locke in a failed attempt to seize control of Idistra’s power, and their own High Lord Scaelas would never forget it.

Because there would soon be no power left at all, not unless the Isle’s heir returned to resurrect it, and someone had killed the rest of the family and no one knew who or how or if it was possible to bring the power back.

Grey felt all of it pressing on her chest, the hopelessness and her nightmare adding equal weight.

“Captain,” she said, voice catching in her throat.

“Hand,” he said, easing into their roles, waiting for her confession. He imparted so much tenderness into that one word that she had to swallow hard twice before she could even consider speaking.

She closed her eyes, focusing only on his hand in hers, the ebb and flow of power between them.

“Fire,” she said. “I dreamed of fire.”

“Past or present?”

“Past,” she said. “All over—I felt my hair singeing. I felt my clothes burning away.”

“And then?”

She shrugged, words failing to encompass it. There was no “and then.” She was on fire. She was awake, sitting up on her pallet with her fingers knotted in her blankets, soaked in sweat, panting into nothing. Barely a second passed between the two.

And they were screaming. That was the one thing she wouldn’t tell Kier: around her, they were all screaming.

“That’s all,” she said, punctuating with another squeeze to his hand.

He didn’t push. He knew better by now.

They lay like that for a while, listening to the sounds of the camp outside: boots in the mud and half-heard conversations and the wind through the tents.

Finally, Kier sighed. “We should sleep.” His fingers left hers as he eased himself up. She watched him, his shirt untucked from his trousers, revealing a dimpled sliver of skin on his back.

“We should,” she agreed.

Kier gripped her hand and tugged her up from the floor with him, pulling just enough power to adjust the fire to a comfortable temperature for sleeping.

She went to her trunk to rifle for clean sleep clothes.

Kier pulled off his boots and shucked his clothing, folding it on his own trunk.

He’d always been comfortable with his body in a way she was not with hers: even now, she turned to the wall to undress.

It didn’t matter. Whether she cared or not (and truthfully, cared was not the correct word), they’d seen every inch of one another.

She knew every scar on his body as well as her own, every expression his face could create.

There was no real modesty between them, nor could there be. Even when they pretended.

It made everything more difficult, the knowing. Most notably for her traitorous heart.

“Flynn?”

“Hmm?”

She turned to see him sliding into his bedroll, rolling onto his side to face her. After she shrugged into her sleep shirt, she slid into her own blankets and mirrored the posture. In training, their bedrolls had been so close that she could see every detail of his face when they lay like this.

“Last night,” he said uncertainly. “Your nightmare.”

“ Kiernan .”

“You shouted your brother’s name.”

Grey sucked a breath through her teeth. “What of it? You shout your brother’s name, too, when you’re sleeping.”

His face did not change. With two dead brothers between them, what else was there to say?

“You just… haven’t had a terror like that in a while. If something is happening… if something is changing …”

She rolled on her back angrily before he could see her face or say anything further. “Sleep,” she said. “You use so much of me when you’re tired.”

He was quiet after that, and she felt the sting of her words hanging in the air between them. He never used too much of her, no matter what she said, and that was the truth—however much he needed was just as much as she was willing to give.