Page 54 of The Second Death of Locke

Grey took a shuddering breath. Maybe that was what it meant to be the High Lady of Locke. What it took. Time, when she didn’t need to, when it meant more to someone else than to her.

Kier , she thought, a little desperately. If only we get more of it . The tether ached within her, dormant and still, but at least she could feel its presence.

Time, and a bit of ruthlessness.

“Sela,” she said, reaching to grab the girl’s hand. “Promise me you won’t come with us. You’re welcome on Locke, but only when it’s safe.”

Sela shrugged. “I can only do what I’m told.”

A knock sounded on the door. They all jumped, too uneasy for this. Grey fussed, her hand instantly going to check her braids, but her hair was still down, and she only managed to hit herself on the bruised side of her face.

The others were looking at her. In a voice she hoped was chilly and regal, she said, “Come in.”

It was one of the High Lord’s house guard, one he’d brought with him from the capital. “You have been requested, your highness,” he said with perfect formality. Grey sucked in a breath, her hand gripping Sela’s for the barest second.

“Thank you,” she said. She looked back at the others. “Can I bring my guard?”

Ola raised an eyebrow.

“Of course,” the man said. “I will wait to escort you, if you would like to finish your business, your highness.”

Grey nodded, letting the door shut behind him, and released her breath. “I don’t mean it like—”

“No,” Ola said quickly, “but you should have a guard.” She looked at Eron and Brit, something passing between them. “And it makes sense, for now, as long as you’re okay with it, that it should be us.”

Grey looked down at her hands, chipped nails, scarred from battles long since past. Who was she to think she could be sovereign? Could have a guard ?

She ached for Kier. Longed for him in a space beyond thought, beyond words. It caught her every time she had one of these thoughts, every time she found herself needing counsel, or just someone else to tell her that she was not utterly ruining her namesake.

“I’ll have you,” she said, “if you’ll have me.”

A hand gripped hers. She looked to find Ola there, sure as always, biting as always.

“We had you as our captain,” she said. “It would be an honor to have you as our lady.”

“Okay,” Grey said. She took a second, forced herself to remain calm. “Okay.”

With nothing left to discuss, they went out into the hall and followed the guard down the stone passageways and stairs. Grey walked with Sela, the others falling behind like shadows, in the same way Grey was taught to orbit Kier.

They arrived downstairs to a small, well-appointed meeting room dominated by a large table.

It was one of the council chambers, Grey thought, based on the anteroom, which acted as a holding area for guests until they were admitted.

Cleoc and Scaelas were already seated in the chamber beyond, a small retainer of guards blending into the shadows between each of them.

The rest of their counselors had been dismissed—perhaps, Grey surmised, the other rulers were not quite ready to reveal Grey as Locke.

She had seen herself in the mirror lately; she understood.

Sela nodded once to Grey and took the seat next to her mother.

Though Grey was at rest and content to stand, Eron pulled out a chair to the other hand of Scaelas.

He did something with his eyebrows, probably a reminder that she was now publicly the Lady of Locke, and she would have less trouble if she acted like it.

She sat and allowed him to adjust her chair, and did not look behind her as Eron, Ola and Brit faded like the other guards. It was a comfort to have them behind her, to hear their familiar breathing.

Cleoc regarded her with open curiosity. Here, unmasked, she was Locke uncontested. She folded her hands in front of her on the table, conscious of her lack of finishing; that she was battle-made and bruised and nothing like a High Lady should be.

In another world, she would’ve been raised to live up to her title.

Once she was fully grown, it would’ve been announced that she was the heir instead of Severin; in the tradition of Locke, he would have then been able to leave the Isle, if he chose.

Until that time, she would’ve been shaped by her parents into something hard as iron.

She would’ve traveled, maybe—perhaps been trained for a year in Lindan, like Sela, or one of the other nations on the continent.

Probably not, though, since Locke tended to keep to itself.

But she would’ve been taught diplomacy and respectful negotiation and the means of survival in enemy courts.

She would’ve learned the words to say, the expressions to make.

But Alma and Isaak were dead, and had been for sixteen years, long enough that Grey had learned very few lessons. She clung to the ones she had, the ones she remembered, squaring her shoulders and sitting ramrod straight like her mother always used to.

“You must know I believe you,” Scaelas said finally, breaking the silence. “I’m just not certain how to convince my council.”

“You’ve already taken a risk on an imposter,” Grey said. “At least this time you’d be correct.”

He inclined his head, allowing that.

She looked between Scaelas and Cleoc. “What did you decide, then?”

“Why do you need to recover Captain Seward?” Cleoc asked.

Grey searched for a way to explain her relationship with Kier. “He is my mage, your majesty.” She felt the tether inside of her, limp but there. She felt with an iron certainty that he was not dead. Harmed, maybe, but at least he was alive, and if he was alive, then she could still save him.

“Mages are replaceable,” Cleoc said, her finger dancing up and down the line of the pen in front of her. Grey did not know if Cleoc was a mage or well herself. Most of the sovereigns hid that information as if it was a weakness.

“It is non-negotiable. If you unite with me, you have me—and Locke, restored in full power—as your ally. Surely that is enough to entice you, even if you don’t believe me fully. I will keep my word.”

“You’re asking both of us to engage in open warfare with Luthar and potentially Eprain, if you are correct about their recent alliance,” Scaelas said, not meeting her eye. “Along with any outside allies they may have.”

“You’re already at war with both Luthar and Eprain.”

“ I am not at war with Luthar,” Cleoc said. “And tensions with Eprain are easing. Why would I endanger my nation, again, for your mage?”

Grey turned toward her. Cleoc wanted a confession, she could tell—she wanted to see Grey’s weakness.

She felt that simmering anger inside herself.

She didn’t want to proclaim her love for Kier to them, because it was hers and she was not willing for it to be a bargaining chip.

She wanted to hold that love deep and protected in her chest, keep it where no one could see it or hear it or feel it, and protect Kier in the same way.

“He is my mage,” she said again. “I know the old meaning of that does not persist on the mainland, but I am Locke, and it matters to me.”

Scaelas’s eyes snapped to hers. Before he could say anything, Cleoc said, “You cannot be both Hand and High Lady, loyal to your mage and your nation. There must be a choice there. It is easier to make it now.”

Grey stood, her feet moving before she had even fully made the decision to do so.

“If you refuse to do this, allow me to make things easier: I will not negotiate and there is no need for me to prove myself. Either you lend your forces and assist in the rescue of Captain Seward, or you do not. Either you unite with the nation of Locke and reap the benefits, or you do not. I cannot make that choice for you, but I will not stand here and listen to such distrust and doubt.”

“Hold on, Locke,” Torrin said wearily. “That’s not… that’s not what we mean. We have our nations to think about.”

“And I have mine,” Grey said.

“Then help us to help you,” Cleoc said. “Give us a reason.”

She did not sit. Torrin looked at her, a strange expression on his face, until he said finally, “Cleoc, if you will permit, I’d like to dismiss my guard and yours. Everyone in this room apart from the three of us.”

“Grey…” Ola started immediately.

“We have more to lose if she deigns to murder us in your absence,” he said, devoid of humor.

He turned his attention back to Cleoc, quirking a brow.

After a pause, a weighted moment, Cleoc inclined her head and waved a hand.

Her guard shifted, looking uneasy, but they filed out with the Scaelans and Grey’s own retinue.

When Sela did not move, Torrin looked at Cleoc. “Your daughter?”

“I am—”

“Go, love,” Cleoc said, squeezing her hand. Frowning, lodging a lingering glance at Grey, Sela went out after Ola.

Grey sat back down. The three of them were silent for a long moment, all eying one another, until Scaelas spoke.

“You and your mage are very powerful.”

Grey looked at him coolly. “I am Locke,” she said. “You did not have to dismiss our guards to tell me this.”

“That was what I thought, until today.” Scaelas spoke slowly. “But another idea has occurred to me: that you are bound. I hope I am wrong, because surely, as Locke, you know the risks.”

Grey went very still. If Torrin was going to punish her for binding, scold her like a child, she was prepared to remind him that it would be overstepping on his part. She was no longer a Scaelan soldier, no longer within his control. There were no restrictions on binding on Locke itself.

“I don’t see why it matters.”

Torrin winced. “So you do not deny it?”

“No,” she said, without hesitation. “I am bound to Captain Seward.” It was a relief to speak the words so openly, to claim them. To claim Kier .

“Maryse,” Torrin said, his eyes slipping shut. “You didn’t.”

“Can she not bind? She is Locke,” Cleoc said, looking between them.

“Don’t speak to me as if I’m your child,” Grey said, her tone colder than she intended, but still not cold enough to encompass her emotions.

Torrin rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We have a conundrum,” he said, meeting Cleoc’s gaze in a way that Grey did not like.

“Whoever controls Locke controls power. Of course, when we thought Seward was just a mage, it did not matter if he was being sacrificed to resurrect the Isle. If they had him try to call it back from the sea, it would be unsuccessful.”

Grey winced. It did matter, but not for the reasons Torrin meant. “It will be unsuccessful,” she said. “Kier is not a Locke. He doesn’t have the blood.”

“Ah, but that is where you are wrong,” Torrin said.

Grey looked with alarm at Cleoc, but she looked just as confused as Grey herself felt, her lips pressed into a thin, grim line.

“When you bind to a mage, as a Locke, they take your power as their own. He is the blood of your blood now; you and he are one in a complete exchange of power. That is the way of the Isle, Maryse. Binding is a sacred act, a union even stronger than marriage.”

True names are for Hands and husbands .

Grey’s heart thundered too loud in her ears. What else did she not know about her own nation’s rites? “So Kier…”

Torrin nodded. “Kier is now a Locke himself, and has just as much claim to the Isle as you do. He doesn’t need you. If he discovered the means to bring back the Isle, call it forth, Locke would rise to his command—granting Eprain and Luthar the Isle restored, and all power therein.”