Page 51 of The Second Death of Locke

The commander shook his head. “You ask for too much.”

Kier met his gaze, unfaltering. “I am the High Lord,” he said loftily, daring the commander to protest. “Would you not treat me in a way befitting my station?”

In the end, they let him say goodbye. They each were injected with a dose of breakbloom and given civilian clothes to dress in. Afterward, they were taken to the entryway, and the supplemental guards backed to the wall, leaving the Lord of Locke to say farewell.

Grey could only stare at him, silent with anger, as he spoke to Brit and Ola and Eron, still held back by the guards. It was a death sentence, what he was doing. Finally, he turned to her, to where she glared at him.

“And you,” he said finally, so quietly it broke her heart. “Would you leave without saying goodbye?”

He was three paces away, his own guards giving him healthy space even as hers didn’t—it was as close as he could come to her before someone swung at them.

They shifted uneasily as it was, and she hated him in that moment, more than she had hated anyone before.

It was easy to hate him like this, when he was making sacrifices, because she could not look in his face and accept that she was about to lose him.

She wanted to curse him. She wanted to fight him. She wanted to kick him in the shin with her heavy boot. She would’ve, too, if her ankles weren’t tied.

“Beloved,” he said, because he could not say any of her names without revealing the truth.

She wanted to throw herself against his chest and beg him to never leave her—she wanted to hate him all the more for this.

She made a sound that he seemed to interpret as If you could try to tether, you could kill them , because he said, “It is too weak and there are too many.”

Grey bit the gag, a low and awful sound rising in her throat.

“Tell Lot I will see him soon, and give my love to our mothers,” he said, quiet and grave.

She could not respond, so she only glared, forcing as much emotion as she could into her gaze since she could not put it through the tether.

For a long time, he looked at her, as if he was trying to memorize her face. She could not force herself to do the same, not when he was half blood, not when he had betrayed her.

“We either release them or we don’t,” one of the men behind Kier said sternly. “Your call, Locke.”

Kier sighed. Leaned forward. “You deserve to survive,” he said, very quietly.

Survival is not a meritocracy, Kiernan , she thought. Because if it was, Lot would be alive, and Severin, and her father, and all those who were so much better than her.

Then he stumbled, the move unlike him, and Grey felt something slip into her boot as he caught himself against her. The soldiers moved forward and he murmured, “I’m so sorry.”

For an instant, she thought he’d smuggled a knife in—but the object in her boot was small and blunt.

“ Locke ,” the commander said, coming up behind them.

Kier nodded. He straightened, his eyes not leaving Grey’s as he said, “Take them away. And if any harm does come to them, I will keep my promise, Commander, and you know I will do it.”

That was it. They started to lead them away, and Grey fought with such ferocity that even Kier looked disappointed.

She tried to do as much damage as possible until they finally drugged her, and as her eyes slid shut, she held his gaze and tried to convey with all of her might that she would never forgive him for this.

When Grey woke, she found herself slung across Ola’s lap, her head pillowed on the other woman’s thigh, Ola’s fingers stroking her hair. She felt a surge of panic, then an unbelievable rush of bitterness. Her whole body was heavy, weighted, like she’d never move again. She kept her eyes closed.

Kier.

Above her, Ola was saying, “… and the closest encampment is Grislar, but I don’t know where we are, and if we’re in Luthar, it doesn’t seem sensible to go asking.”

“Who would know the difference?” Brit asked from somewhere close by. “Who would care? Let’s head east, then follow the coast north.”

“We can’t leave him.”

There was a silence, then, and Grey couldn’t take it.

She shifted, the others immediately focusing on her with a lot of soothing sounds that did absolutely nothing.

She opened her eyes to find they were in a clearing surrounded by a dense wood of skinny, light-colored trees, in the middle of nowhere.

Eron was pacing back and forth next to a magelight that Ola and Brit were maintaining.

Grey felt the ache in every part of her body.

She needed to speak, but the words were too heavy.

They would not form. They would not come.

“Grey?” Brit was saying, looming over her. “Did you hear me?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t. She tuned them out because nothing mattered, not anymore, not when Kier was gone and good as dead. She sat up, nearly hitting her head on Ola’s chin, and hugged her knees to her chest. Ola’s fingers were there on her back immediately, scratching down her spine.

“He did what he thought was best,” Eron said, and Grey wanted to throw something, because that sounded like Kier was already dead. Before she could stop it, a sob clawed its way out of her throat. She slapped a hand against her mouth, nails digging into her skin.

She wouldn’t cry for him. Not when he’d done this to her. Not when he’d abandoned her, taken her name and her title and her heart and disappeared.

She could cry for Mare, who deserved it. For Kier, she would just remain angry.

“Fuck Kier,” she said, too loud, her tongue still thick with sleep. She lurched up, pushing off Ola and Brit, nearly careening into a tree with the unsteadiness of a monumentally pissed-off newborn deer.

“Grey!” Ola called after her. “Where are you going?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t look at any of them, not with this anger brewing up within her. She pushed through the trees, wobbling unsteadily, breathing hard and grappling at the tether in her middle as if it would connect to Kier. She felt nothing .

An arm wound around her, right on her bruised stomach, pulling her against a chest—Eron, she realized. “ No ,” she gasped, grappling against his arm, but he said, “We need you.”

She turned on him. “What the fuck was that back there?” she demanded, the words clawing out of her. He gripped her wrists so she couldn’t swing, accidentally pressing on the bruises left behind by her restraints. “You just let him lie.”

“We can’t lose you, Grey,” Ola said over Eron’s shoulder.

Grey shook her head. “You should’ve let me go. You should’ve let them take me .”

“Kier needs you alive and functioning,” Eron said firmly, “and you are only doing half of that.”

She looked at him, the rage clear in every line of her body, even though it wasn’t Eron she was mad at.

She wished Kier was in front of her if only so she could shout at him, and the thought was so devastating and overwhelming that she did not know what to do with all the feelings she could not contain.

“ I’m Locke,” she said, loud enough so the others could hear her as they moved toward her, unease on their faces.

“We know that,” Eron said. “Now what are you going to fucking do about it?”

She stared at him, wordless. Kier was gone—Kier was in her place.

But she was Locke, and Locke was her, and she was a well with the power to actually do something.

Even now, she felt it, curling inside of her, vibrant and visceral with anger, a wounded animal ready to strike.

She pressed one hand to her stomach as if she could grip the power in her fist and drag it out of her.

She sat down heavily on the forest floor. As she did, something in her boot pressed to her shin. She dug into the top and pulled out Kier’s ring. She stared wordlessly at the silver in her palm, everything aching.

Not Kier’s ring, not at first. Lot’s ring. Lot, who had lied for her, who had died in the war the sovereigns started because she was not strong enough to tell the truth, to claim her Isle; Lot, who had died because she ruined everything.

“They’re all dead,” she said to the others, to Kier, to no one. “Do you know what that’s like? Everyone who ever cared for me is dead.”

“You’re not,” Ola said. “We’re not.”

“Not yet, but the odds aren’t promising,” Brit pointed out. Someone hit them; they swore in response.

Grey looked up at the sky far above. It was impossible to tell where they were. Her heart, broken and bruised, had retreated somewhere deep inside of her.

“Locke,” Eron said, crouching so his face was level with hers. He had such kind eyes; she’d always envied the soldiers who’d kept any kindness after so much bloodshed. “What are we going to do?”

Grey sighed. It wasn’t the sacrifice that was the hard part; it was the running head-first off the cliff that she and Kier had always been so very good at.

Perhaps it was the surviving that was worse.

She remembered his face on the night she’d given him all the power she had, the flash right before he used it; she remembered his gaze last night, which now felt so long ago, the way he’d gripped her as he said, You are everything I’ve ever wanted .

She slipped Lot’s ring onto her thumb, as it was too big for her other fingers. Grey stood up. She squared her shoulders, wincing at the ache even as she remembered Kier’s broken collarbone, the echo of the pain she would’ve felt through the tether.

“Well?” Brit said. “Are we marching into the sea?”

Grey was quiet for a long moment, turning over the rumors and her memories, examining each of them in turn.

The truth was, she was one person, one sovereign without a nation, and she had gone so long without thinking about what that meant.

She thought of Cleoc and that little obsidian moon, of Scaelas’s hand in hers when she was only a girl.