Page 55 of The Second Death of Locke

twenty-three

S CAELAS AND CLEOC, WORKING together after realizing the ruinous possibilities of the situation they found themselves in, decided the best course of action was to blast the entire business wide open.

Grey helped as much as she could as they wrote to the sovereigns of the other three nations, urging them to come together to discuss the unfolding situation surrounding Locke.

The letters to Luthar and Eprain were, as Grey surmised, diplomatically threatening.

After the missives were sent, Scaelas himself walked Grey to a room in the imperial wing of his fortress.

Night had already fallen. She felt the ache of the day on her, the lack of sleep from the night before catching up.

Ola, Brit and Eron were already sleeping in rooms near hers; Scaelas left his own guard to watch them overnight.

In the hall, Grey hesitated. She didn’t know when she would next have the High Lord alone—she figured it was a rare occurrence.

“Why did you send that letter?” Torrin asked. “Claiming Severin survived.”

There was no reason to keep it from him, not anymore. “I was afraid,” she said. “I was only a girl. The soldiers you sent to look were not kind or gentle. I didn’t want you to find me.”

“Ah,” Torrin said, so quiet she barely heard.

“What do you know about the Isle’s death?” Grey asked, since he had opened up the door to questions.

To her surprise, he answered immediately. “Your father,” he said. “He told me about the Isle’s failsafe. He wasn’t even supposed to know—it is the way of the Isle’s sovereigns to keep their own secrets, even in marriage. But your mother loved your father—probably in spite of her upbringing.”

Grey pretended to be very interested in the stitches of the tapestry hanging on the wall near her rooms, running her fingers over the edge of the fabric. “I know she did,” she said. “And he loved her too.”

“More than life itself,” Torrin agreed. “I never understood it—don’t get me wrong, Maryse.

I, too, adored your mother, when I got to know her, but I did it with a heavy measure of fear.

She was a striking woman. She had this look, and when she turned it on you—well.

One would wish they were dead rather than being on the receiving end of that look. ”

“I remember,” Grey said; she herself had been on the receiving end of that look more than once. “But he made her smile. She was always laughing, in private, when they were together.”

“Some would call that a weakness.”

Grey shrugged; she wouldn’t. “But the failsafe,” she said. She could not stand here talking about the love her parents once had for one another, remembering all the ways that love had led to their deaths.

“Yes,” Torrin said. He nodded to her room.

They stepped inside, and he locked the door behind them.

He went to the fire, burning with light violet flame, a static working from some unknown mage, and leaned against the mantel, staring into the flames.

“We were drinking together, late into the night, one evening when he came to visit—we did that more than I should admit, when we were reunited—and your mother had already retired for the night. Severin was just a boy; I don’t remember if you were even born then.

“It’s a protection from the Isle’s gods.

The risk of power is that it is coveted.

It was understood that someday, others might turn on the Isle and all it stood for, so when each child in the direct line came of age, they were told the truth.

If the Isle was ever set upon, if all hope was lost, there was a choice: the line could continue if all others died to save one.

If they gave their lives, both their power and their magic, the one with the best chance of saving the line would survive. ”

Grey stumbled back, her back hitting the poster of the bed. She had suspected as much, but she thought it had only been Severin who had given his life.

“All of them,” she said.

“Everyone on the Isle,” Torrin said quietly, “died so you could live.”

She crossed her arms over her stomach as if there was any way possible to hold herself together.

“Do you wish it was him? After all this time, do you wish it was Severin who had lived?”

Torrin looked at her aghast. “Gods, Maryse,” he said. “How could you even ask me that?”

She didn’t know. She couldn’t speak. Some days, she herself wished it had been Severin who had lived instead.

Torrin crossed the room, taking her hand in his. He was tall, taller than her father had been, and broader in the shoulder, but there was something about him and his bearing that made her thoughts turn to Isaak the second she looked at him.

“I will do everything in my power,” he said, “to make it up to you.”

“Do you know,” Grey asked, leaning forward despite herself, “how to bring it back? How to resurrect the Isle?”

He sighed, his eyes flickering shut. He stepped back. “I don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Grey nodded, trying to ignore the acid in her stomach. He wouldn’t have known, she’d suspected, but that hadn’t stopped her from hoping someone else held the answers for once.

“I should have forgotten that letter. I should’ve kept looking,” Torrin said.

Grey looked up at him. She had spent years of her life wishing she’d heard those words, but now that she did, they were empty.

“You should’ve,” she agreed. Except if he had, she never would’ve stayed with Kier.

She looked away, swallowing down the lump that threatened her.

“You will tell me the minute you hear back?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I will trust Cleoc for your benefit, though it makes me uneasy. We will do everything in our power to find him.”

Grey nodded. They had no other choice.

He took leave of her and she shut the door behind him.

Though she was exhausted, she forced herself to bathe, to wash away the remaining grime and to apply more salves and ointments on her cuts and bruises.

The one on her stomach was particularly nasty; her face looked worse than it felt.

Once she was clean, she braided her hair and pulled on a nightdress someone had left for her, and let herself slip away to sleep.

That night, when she dreamed of the death of Locke, it was Kier’s hands that held hers as the power rushed between them. Kier’s bruises on her skin. Kier’s body destroyed when the world exploded.

It was still dark when she woke to someone shaking her. She blinked up wearily to find Brit’s form over her. They were already dressed, a magelight glowing blue between their fingers.

“Wake up. There’s news.”

She hurried to dress, leaving her hair in its braid.

Outside her door, Ola waited—“Letting Eron sleep, though he might kill us for it,” she said through a grimace—and the three of them followed two of Scaelas’s guards to a bigger council chamber than the one from the day before.

There, Cleoc and Scaelas waited with their commanders and a number of other high-ranking officials.

Grey wished, too late, that she had rebraided her hair.

“We’ve had news?” she said, accepting the bitter, dark coffee someone offered her. She glanced at a clock on the wall. It was just past four in the morning.

“Epras and Luthos have agreed to meet,” Cleoc said. “You are right. They have allied.”

“And Nestria?”

“They remain silent, thus far.”

Grey nodded. She felt the eyes of the other knights on her; she could basically taste the confusion coming from Commander Reggin and his Hand.

A few eyes widened when one of Cleoc’s guards pulled out a chair and Grey slipped into it, as if they were expecting Ola or Brit to claim the seat.

Perhaps, Grey thought darkly, it was because both looked older, and had brushed their hair, and did not have a bruise covering half of their faces.

“We are to meet Eprain, Luthar and an ambassador from the continent in two hours’ time,” Scaelas said. “We have patrols on the sea, in case they attempt to do anything beforehand, and we have petitioned for the release of Captain Seward.”

Grey blanched. They often petitioned for the release of soldiers taken prisoner outside of the allowable context: more often than not, they were returned dead.

And if Kier was killed for naught—if Kier was killed at all …

she would raze the entire island. She would swallow it all with the sea in the depths of her grief.

“If I may, my lord?” Commander Reggin started.

Scaelas inclined his head. “Your highness,” Reggin said, turning to Grey.

He said the title like it burned his tongue, but he continued all the same.

“We have arranged two companies from Scaela and have accepted two more from Cleoc Strata. These soldiers will accompany the High Lord and Cleoc as they negotiate the release of Captain Seward.”

Grey glanced over at Torrin. “And I…?”

“You will remain behind our forces, in the fortress and safe,” Torrin said firmly.

Grey scoffed. “I have been in your forces for nearly a decade, and I have not died yet.”

“You will not risk yourself,” Torrin said, acting again like her father. If he was trying to make up for sixteen years of lost time, this was not the way to do it.

Grey felt Ola’s hand heavy on her shoulder. Fingers dug into her flesh.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “If you are meeting, I need to be there. If you are discussing my future, I need to hear it.”

“She has a point, Scaelas,” Cleoc said mildly.

“I will not reveal you as Locke,” Torrin said firmly. “Not when they would accept Seward’s death and leave you safe.”

Grey could not allow herself to think about the possibility. “Then don’t,” she said. “Take me as your own guard. I will stand behind you and listen, but I will be there.”

“I cannot allow—”

“That is an acceptable compromise,” Cleoc said, sitting back in her chair, her gaze on Torrin cooling by the minute. “And if he refuses to armor you, Locke, you may act as one of my guards.”