Page 41 of The Second Death of Locke

That was enough to get a smile out of him.

He slipped down onto the floor on the other side of the bucket, kneeling so his knees framed the wood.

“Just rest your chin,” he murmured, positioning her head where he wanted it.

Grey relished the ache in her back, the dampness of her knees from the growing puddle, the cold of the water and the warmth of Kier’s hands: all of it meant that she had survived, against the odds.

Kier massaged the soap into her scalp, his fingers deft and sure. She stifled a moan, turning her head and biting her lip.

“You know,” he said, taking the cup and pouring a stream of cold, clean water over her hair, “I imagined telling you my feelings a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. And yet I never imagined the evening ending with your head in a bucket.”

She winced. “Sorry.”

“Grey, if I don’t spend the rest of my life washing gore out of your hair, then it’s not a life worth living.”

She laughed despite herself, then closed her eyes, focusing on his hands on her scalp, rinsing out the soap.

“Hold still a second,” he said, and she heard rustling. He wrung out most of the water, then wrapped something around her head, lifting the mass of her hair. When a sleeve fell loose over her shoulder, she realized that he’d wrapped her hair in a shirt.

“Won’t we need this?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’ve lost more clothing to you on this mission than during the entire war effort,” he said, resigned, and she noted with some glee that he hadn’t realized just how many of his shirts she’d stolen.

“Kier,” she said before he could move away, even though there was a bucket of filthy water between them and she did need to clean the rest of her body before leaning further into any sweeping declarations. “Did you mean it?”

He stopped ruffling her hair in the shirt and looked down at her. “Which part?”

Grey chewed her lip. This whole afternoon felt like a fever dream, and to her credit, she wasn’t entirely dismissing the idea that it had been one. “That you want to spend forever washing viscera out of my hair.”

He laughed, warm and safe and familiar, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I can think of no better way to spend our retirement.”

“But… our retirement.” She looked away, suddenly shy. “You know what it means.”

He smiled, but it was a sad sort of thing, weighted with understanding. “We have time to figure out what the future holds. Now come on, my lady. You foolish, courageous girl. Have a look at my letter.”

Grey released a breath. If he didn’t want to talk about Locke now, and what she had to do, then she was fine to put it off.

She read his letter. She read it over and over, top to bottom, until the words bleared together, making corrections with his pen. Finally, she said, “Give me a new sheet. My handwriting is better,” and he complied in an instant.

Halfway through, working on the phrasing of a line, she said, “Brit and Ola suspect the truth.”

He looked up from his own letter—when she’d taken over the diplomacy, he’d started one to his mothers. “I think Eron does as well. He said something about it when we were switching watch.”

Grey winced. “Apparently I… made the fact obvious.”

“I tried to stifle it,” Kier said. “Your screaming, I mean. I carried you when it got too bad, when Pigeon would go no further with you making such a racket on his back.” He sighed, putting his pen aside. “I’m sorry. I should’ve thought of a better explanation than none at all.”

“It’s not your fault,” Grey said, her brain caught on I carried you . How far? How long? “Useless horse.”

“Mm.”

“What do we do?” She couldn’t avoid the not knowing, no matter how much she wanted to.

“It’s your call,” he said. She shot him a brief, withering glance. “No, really—Grey, it’s your life, your identity. This is not my mission, and even if it was, I would defer to you.”

Grey sighed, looking down at her letter.

It had not come easily to her until she thought of her mother and grandmother, the lofty way they’d read her stories when she was a girl, and then it had seemed effortless.

“I think I need to stop running,” she said carefully.

“But I don’t want to make that decision with an army at my back. ”

Kier nodded, considering. “Then we finish the plan as we’ve established it. We try for peace between Scaela and Cleoc Strata. Then you and me—and the others, if you desire it; if they too desire it—will go and try to figure out how to resurrect the Isle.”

She sat back, watching the light of the flickering candle. Her heart stirred with the anxiety of it, and something like hope. “Okay,” she said.

“Do you know how to do it? How to bring it back?”

Grey chewed on her lip. “Not exactly,” she hedged.

He raised an eyebrow.

“It can’t be as easy as me just… going into the sea.

Bleeding. Giving some sort of offering. Because we grew up on the coast, and gods know you and Lot and I put one another through more than enough bodily harm.

I’ve bled into the sea a thousand times, and I’ve never raised the Isle with that alone. ”

“Not that I can recall,” Kier agreed. “There must be some other way to do it.”

“I suppose there must be.”

Under the table, his knee nudged hers. “Does this mean I get citizenship?”

She crumpled one of the discarded pieces of paper and lobbed it at his head. “Only if you’re very, very good in bed.”

His eyes darkened, grin twisting with something that woke the tether up inside of her.

They always flirted… but never with the potential of following through.

“My lady,” he said. He reached across the table for her hand, leaning to raise it to his lips.

“I look forward to the opportunity to prove myself.”

She kicked him under the table. He only laughed, leaving his hand twined in hers as they went back to their letters.