Page 48 of The Second Death of Locke

twenty

I N THE SMALL HOURS of the morning, Grey was roughly awoken by something coarse and wet being pressed to her face. She inhaled sharply, pulling back, but there was a hand against her hair and something smelled awful, like bitter bile.

She knew the scent. It smelled like the death of the Isle, like screaming in her ears, like the end of everything.

“Kier?” she tried to say.

There was a sound across the room, a muffled shout—she couldn’t see anything but shapes in the dark, one holding a cloth over her mouth, and the smell made something animal and furious rise up within her.

She struggled, but was held fast by strong hands.

She bit down, her teeth sinking through the towel into something fleshy that swore and drew back.

She sat up swinging, groping for her knife under the pillow until her fingers closed on the hilt, mad and feral.

Her eyes were streaming, fuzzy; she couldn’t see clearly—and she couldn’t feel Kier. She couldn’t feel him beside her, or grappling for her power in the tether that connected them as easily as breathing.

She slashed out and met flesh, felt hot blood on her hands. She could only just see the shapes: three of them, large, looming over her. More in the room where she couldn’t see.

“She’s armed,” one of them called.

“No one said they’d be together ,” another seethed. She heard a strangled noise, a half-gasp across the room, the sound of something solid meeting flesh and bone. She knew the timbre of the noise even though she’d never heard that sound from him. Kier .

Grey fought. She slashed with her knife, connecting more than once, relishing the profanity that spilled from their attackers.

The hand fell away from her face, but the damage was already done—no matter how she grappled with the tether, she was unable to feel Kier nearby, even though she heard him fighting just as surely as she was.

She knew the smell. They’d drugged her with breakbloom, a flower Eprain had found and cultivated for its abilities to dull magic, making it impossible for a mage to draw on their well.

It was the same drug, the same poison Eprain had used to splinter the tethers on Locke as they razed the Isle. The same poison that kept the High Lady from sensing the destruction they wrought.

But the men around her did not have the tight, fast Eprainish accents, nor lilting like Scaelan—their Idistran was broad and flat.

Luthrite or Stratan, but she couldn’t tell which.

The people in the room with them were either typics, unaffected by the heady scent, or strong enough fighters without their powers—even a whiff of breakbloom broke every tether in the surrounding area for at least a few minutes. It was reserved for extreme situations.

Perhaps it was a comfort, Grey thought as she fought, terrified, that she and Kier were considered an extreme situation.

Then there was a knee heavy on her back, pinning her down. Fingers on that sensitive spot on her neck, the one that made her vision crowd with dots. A hand gripped her wrist, pressing hard.

“Stop fighting,” a voice growled in her ear, “or I will kill you.”

She tasted blood and bitterness in her mouth. “Kill me, then,” she snarled, and she swung again. The last thing she saw was a grim face through streaming tears, and the outline of her own mage on his knees in the corner with a blade to his throat.

Everything went black.

Grey came to an immeasurable time later, breakbloom cloying on her tongue.

Her senses felt dulled, and she was still unable to feel Kier, but at least she could see.

She choked on the gag, heavy on her tongue; there was too much saliva in her mouth, her chin wet with spit and blood.

The gag itself had been soaked with the bitter floral solution.

Her hands were bound behind her back, the rope biting into her skin; her feet were bound too but they had long since lost feeling. She sat at an awkward angle. Her head rested on someone’s shoulder. She lifted it with a jolt, coming to full consciousness.

“Mmph.” She followed the noise. It was Ola next to her, also bound and tied, a nasty-looking scratch running from her temple to the parting of her hair, jagged and bloody.

She had clotted blood in her eyebrows, her eyelashes, crusted down the side of her face.

Grey spotted Brit just past Ola. They were in a narrow stone room, cold and damp.

She scanned the space—Eron was straight ahead of her, and then Kier…

Kier.

He was bound similarly, lying on his side, dressed only in trousers and boots. His face was slack and he was covered in blood—for an awful moment Grey feared he was dead, until he took a quick, rasping breath. Judging by the bruising, she surmised that at least one of his ribs was broken.

Grey herself wore Kier’s shirt and her own shorts, and Kier was similarly attired in the loose trousers he’d gone to sleep in—their captors had not bothered with providing coats or blankets, even though the cold chilled her to the bone.

Always the healer, she surveyed, taking stock: Ola’s wound was ugly but hopefully not life-threatening; Eron was bleeding from his arm and had a black eye, but nothing further; Brit looked mostly fine besides a few scratches.

She could not see the source of Kier’s wound, which was worrying—if he’d been kicked unconscious, there was the potential for a concussion or brain damage, and that was something she couldn’t stomach without some panic.

But it was also possible that he was incapacitated by other means, and there was no way to know until she could see him up close.

For herself, the assessment was short: she’d been hit hard on the cheek by something, and she felt the hot, irritated swelling on the left side of her face.

The breakbloom was heavy in her stomach and awful on her tongue, but she was otherwise all right.

When she flexed her hands, she felt the crusted blood on them cracking, but she did not think it was her own.

She managed a look around their surroundings. There was a door in the corner, cloaked in gloom, with a knight on either side, standing guard silently. A high window let light into the room, but it would be impossible to reach, and it was covered in bars anyway.

She looked at Ola. Ola looked back, as if she could read Grey’s mind, and shook her head. There was no way of escape. With the breakbloom on their tongues, none of them could tether—not that it would do Grey any good, with Kier unconscious.

Kier. She couldn’t stop looking at him, her terror growing.

She couldn’t say how long they sat bound in the dank, dark room. She tried to inch closer to Ola, to loosen the other well’s bindings, but they were all tied so tightly it was impossible; besides, when one of the soldiers near the door saw her moving, he came and kicked her in the ribs.

She suffered the blow and did not try again.

She cursed herself for letting her guard down, for going to sleep with only one knife, for not waking when Kier was apparently wrenched from her.

She’d never slept so soundly in her life—Kier’s arms around her must’ve lulled her into a false, deadly sense of security.

Some time later, he woke with a great exhalation and went straight to panic—it was agony to watch him, unable to move or speak words of comfort, though she tried to shuffle in his direction.

When their eyes locked, she saw all the words he couldn’t say there and tried to make her expression as calm as possible.

I’m alive , she thought at him uselessly.

I’m alive and so are you, and though I cannot feel you, I can see you, and soon I will find a way…

The door swung open, heavy wood hitting the wall. A retinue of guards entered, swords drawn, cautious. No surcoats. No crests. No way to tell which nation they fought for.

Enough guards streamed in for two to take each prisoner.

Though she wanted to, Grey knew it was best not to fight, not yet; she could not guarantee that she could get everyone out safely if she did, and there was no point in getting killed for no reason.

She did not resist as two of the guards grabbed her arms and hauled her down a stone hallway, toward a large atrium.

She stumbled behind Ola, keeping tabs on Eron’s ragged breathing behind her, and she could only just feel Kier.

She still could not tether, not with the gag soaked in breakbloom, but she could feel the blunt edges due to their binding, and the headache was easing ever so slightly.

She grappled with her well, waiting for the instant they removed the gag, and found her power whole and sound. She gritted her teeth against the fabric. If anything went wrong… She remembered Severin gripping her hands. Then, he was nine years younger than she was now, and still so much braver.

In the atrium, they were shackled to the wall a few feet apart from one another.

The guards were conversing now, in quiet tones—their accents sounded Luthrite, but she couldn’t be certain.

She shifted her weight from leg to leg, trying to keep herself from going numb.

The stone against her back was wet with rivulets of water, chilling her further.

She leaned her head back anyway—Kier was chained next to her, just out of reach. The side of his head she hadn’t been able to see was crusted with blood. He’d been hit by something—the hilt of a sword, she thought—and it looked like it hurt terribly.

If she could just tether to him, push some power into him, she could negate the worst effects—maybe put her hands on him, try to force a tether with contact, if that would keep him stable. But with the breakbloom on her tongue, she was absolutely useless.