Page 44 of The Second Death of Locke

eighteen

T HEY AGREED THEIR LEAVE would start the following day—first there was to be a dinner held in their honor, to thank them for delivering Cleoc’s heir.

At the inn they were led to, they found they had all been given separate rooms. Ola and Brit offered to stay with Sela, along with the two guards the commander had insisted accompany them.

Eron went to the room assigned to Grey. No one commented when Grey collected the clothes left for her from Eron’s room and moved them into Kier’s.

But Ola’s eyebrows said more than any of their mouths.

Once everyone was more or less where they were supposed to be, Kier closed the door behind them. They stared at one another for a moment, the silence desperately loud.

“How much time do we have?”

“Not much,” he said, unmoving. “Cleaned up, dressed and downstairs for our escort before the hour.”

Grey slipped off her coat. He raised an eyebrow. She crossed the space between them in three easy strides and pushed him against the door. She rose on her tiptoes, leaning her weight against him, and kissed him as sweetly as she could.

“And then,” she said against his mouth, “after dinner?”

He laughed, warm and certain, his hands coming to her waist. “I suppose I have a demonstration for the nation of Locke.”

She nipped his ear lobe. “Not the whole nation, surely.”

He moved quickly, sliding his hands down to grip her thighs, pulling her up into his arms, turning them so she was the one against the door. Both froze as the wood clattered in the frame, waiting for someone to check on them—but nothing.

Grey sighed, relaxing against the door, locking her legs around Kier’s waist. It felt so safe to be in the unyielding circle of his arms, his weight pressed against her, his focus hyper-fixated on the small section of skin where her neck met her shoulder and the span of her collarbone—

“Kier,” she said, tilting her head back to give him more access. But.

“Hmm?”

“Are you positive you don’t want to be a master?”

He pulled back so quickly her back came away from the door—but she was safe in his arms, always; he would not drop her. He did set her down, very gently disentangling from her.

“Yes,” he said.

“But you always wanted it. Titles, promotions… to be a commander. To go to unknown shores. To see the world.”

He laughed, looking at her with a bizarre incredulity. “I always wanted you ,” he said. “And I still can’t believe… that I have you. I think I do.”

“You do,” she said, shy under the weight of his gaze.

He pushed her hair behind her ears. “We can see the world together,” he said, kissing her forehead. “We can be free together.” He kissed her nose.

“Is that freedom?” Grey asked.

He cupped her face in his hands. She rested hers on his chest, relishing the heat of his skin through his shirt, the beat of his heart against her palm.

“It is its own kind of freedom,” Kier said.

She wasn’t sure about that, but it didn’t matter because he leaned in to kiss her, pushing her a heady sense of certainty. “We should clean up,” he said a few moments later. “We can talk after.”

Grey raised an eyebrow. “After the after. We have plans, Seward.”

“After the after,” he promised.

They separated. He called for a bath, then Grey went first into the small bathroom, washing for an inordinately long time because hot water was a luxury.

She vaguely regretted not inviting Kier in with her, but it was good to have time alone, to think of nothing, to stare at the wall with a hazy sense of peace as the water warmed her cold bones.

She went out into the room wrapped in towels and shy, which was odd, because she’d just been thinking worse thoughts of him, and because they’d seen every inch of one another’s bodies in a non-romantic context already (she’d touched his intestines , for sea’s sake); but Kier was in a chair by the window, half-undressed, flipping through a book.

Grey paused, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

She didn’t think she’d ever stayed at an inn that had a bookshelf in every room.

The High Lord had clearly spared no expense.

“What are you reading?” she asked. “Does Scaelas stock anything saucy?”

“It’s mine, actually.” To her surprise, he flushed. “I, um, found it in a shop. In Pista.”

“What is it?”

He held it up, and Grey squinted at the title. It was, to her surprise, a book on the history and customs of the Isle of Locke.

“Kier…?”

“I wanted to know everything I could,” he said quietly, not quite meeting her gaze. “And I didn’t want to burden you with the telling.”

She leaned back against the door. “And have you learned anything?”

“A million things. But they left out the part about how astonishing you are.”

“Glad to see you’re just as much of a shameless flirt as always, Seward.” She glanced down at herself, adjusting the towel. “I’ve heard some astonishing rumors about you, too, truth be told. Care to prove their merit?”

He laughed, but he put the book pages-down on the windowsill and stood. He had the sinuous grace of someone who knew, deeply, how every muscle in his body worked. He came close and cupped her chin. “We have thirty minutes, Flynn, and I need more time than that for what I’m planning.”

She laid a palm flat on his chest, fingers spread, over his heart.

Kier went to bathe, and Grey focused on finding something to wear.

Scaelas had kindly provided a chest of formal wear for each of them, approximate in sizes, so she had more than enough options to choose from.

She kneeled next to it, parsing through silk shirts and velvet vests and trousers and gowns.

She found a deep navy gown, and though it wouldn’t have been her first choice otherwise, something about the pattern of leaves and vines reminded her of a similar gown worn by her aunt, Wren, on one of the many occasions she’d brought her three boys from Nestria to Locke to spend time with their cousins.

At some point, Kier emerged in a cloud of steam, and she very conspicuously did not look at him as he started to dress.

That didn’t stop him from glancing over at her in her chemise, his gaze scanning over the bare skin of her shoulders. “This is unlike you,” he said, nodding to the dress cast over the bed.

“Unusual times call for unusual attire,” Grey said loftily, buckling one of her dagger holsters around her upper thigh.

“Indeed,” Kier said, moving behind her for the briefest moment to press his lips to her shoulder, his hand tracing the top of the leather buckle she’d just secured.

“Are you always this cheeky with your lovers?” Grey swatted his chest and spun out of his grip.

He caught her, drawing her back against his chest. “No,” he said, leaning down to nip at her lower lip. “I’ve never been with someone I loved before.”

She would never get used to this. She allowed it for only a moment, her heart warm with light—but then she pulled back, because he was correct: they did not have the time to get carried away.

Maybe nothing had changed—maybe she only noticed it more.

But his fingers skimmed against her arm when he reached over her for his trousers hanging on the wardrobe, and he didn’t brush past her without a touch to her waist or a kiss to her forehead.

Maybe this was how he’d always been, a delicate ballet of stolen touches that she’d written off as his insistent grease-fire need for affection.

But now she was able to watch him with reckless abandon, without fear of him catching her—and truthfully, she could spend the rest of her days watching Kier doing the most mundane activities and still die happy.

He’d cleaned up his patchy shave from the other day, so his jaw was pink and sharp; she longed to press her lips to the juncture just there, the soft shadow where mandible met throat, and she filed that away for later inspection.

She leaned against the wardrobe, arms crossed over her chest, and watched as he pulled on a formal jacket.

He had taken a cue from her, she suspected, and dressed in deep blue, his shirt unbuttoned a touch low in the fashion of the noblemen at court.

He was careful, straightening the cuffs at his wrists and the creases of his shirt, detail-oriented to a fault. When they were children, he used to redo the corners of her bedsheets because they were not crisp enough for his liking.

She wanted to run her hands over that careful work, mess him up. She wanted to ruin him.

“We’re going to be late, Hand,” he said, not looking up from his ministrations, “if you don’t get your dress on.”

She sighed and pulled on the navy velvet, turning to the mirror and catching her own reflection as she braided her hair.

Kier came without her asking and laced up the back of her dress.

Grey watched his serious expression, then looked back at her own face.

She pressed her lips together—she did not often see her reflection, and even more rarely did she see herself clean and finely dressed; she was both startled and unsurprised to find her mother looking back at her.

“You clean up nice, Fastria,” Kier said, hiding a smile as he tied his boots.

Grey rolled her eyes, straightening her skirts. He caught her a final time before they left the room. “One more night,” he promised her.

“One more night,” she agreed, gripping his hair just hard enough to mess it up.

She had been to formal dinners before, honoring commanders and masters and marking high holy days, but she’d always been a guest at one of the far tables with Kier, watching their soldiers like hawks for any signs of childish misbehavior.

They’d never been the guests of honor themselves, and the feeling was, frankly, startling.

They’d also never been in a diplomatic meeting-slash-hostage situation. Grey felt positively posed, her and Kier flanking Sela. Eron, still standing in as Kier’s Hand, was on Kier’s other side. Brit and Ola fidgeted next to Grey.