Page 56 of The Second Death of Locke

Torrin looked between the two of them, clearly furious, trying his best to tamp it down. It took all of Grey’s focus not to smile sweetly at him.

“Then it is settled,” he said, shrugging. “You will come, but not alone. Select one of your guard to accompany you.” He nodded to Reggin, signaling for him to resume his explanation of troop movements on the map.

“It is settled,” Grey agreed.

An hour later, Grey and Eron were lined up with the rest of Scaelas’s guard, marching off to the meeting.

Brit and Ola had protested, each volunteering in turn to accompany her, but if one of them perished, she could not imagine being responsible for splitting the pairing.

For his part, Eron understood, reaching to squeeze her hand after the other two had stomped off to sulk.

With Grey’s hair up and braided around her head, and dressed in Scaelan armor, she looked like any other guard. She felt the comfort of armor settling over her, the weight of it as familiar to her as the feeling of her own power.

Despite her anxiety, she had to appreciate the beauty of the coast as they rode to the meeting point.

This close to Luthar, there were no beaches; the rolling hills went all the way to the cliffs, which fell away into the sea below.

When she and Kier were children, Lot would take them to similar cliffs, and they’d take turns jumping into the waiting arms of the ocean below.

When Imarta found out, she boxed all of their ears for making her panic, but she did not tell the boys’ mothers.

“Gremaryse.”

She was brought out of her thoughts by Scaelas’s voice, and looked up to realize he had fallen back, riding next to her. He, too, wore armor, but no helm. His own crest was embroidered in gold.

“Have you come to scold me more?” Grey asked. Eron, glancing over, slowed to give them privacy.

Torrin looked at her, frowning. “I will not pretend,” he said. “If I had my way, you would be locked in a tower until we figured out the safest way to do this.”

“You could try to keep me locked up, but you would fail.”

“You know,” he said, “your father would not remain in a locked tower, either.”

Grey chewed her lip. She wasn’t sure how he could bear it, talking about them like this, without the grief swallowing him whole.

“When he died,” Torrin said, “I did not think I would make it. That first day, when the smoke hung heavy, I was certain— Well. We had not tethered in almost two decades, not since he was married and bound to your mother. But somehow, still, I knew.”

Grey forced through the panic rising in her chest. “Are you telling me this because you think Kier is as good as dead?”

“I’m telling you this because I care about you.”

“You barely know me.”

He looked at her evenly. “Does it matter?” he asked. “Maybe that is true, or maybe I know you better than you could ever imagine, because you are their daughter, and you are just as fearsome as they could ever hope you to be.”

She couldn’t go into this thinking of her parents and all the ways they never knew her.

A beat of silence passed between them. Grey looked up ahead, catching sight of Cleoc, riding straight and tall among her guard.

She wondered if she herself would ever emulate that instead of battle-worn stubbornness.

Finally, Torrin sighed. “Do you promise to run at the first sign of trouble?”

“Absolutely not,” Grey said. “Not without Kier.”

“I worried you would say that.” Torrin glanced at her sidelong. “You’re going to try to save him, aren’t you?”

Grey looked at him evenly. “I will do anything in my power to save him,” she said. “I’m sorry, Torrin. I know it makes me sound young, or impulsive—I can’t say I make a level ally. But if I had to choose between Kier and this whole sodding nation, I would always choose Kier.”

Torrin frowned. “Well then,” he said. “Whatever you do, I ask that you do it sensibly. I have already lost so many to this war, Maryse. And I ask that whatever you do, you don’t do it alone.”

“You won’t try to stop me? If I try to save him? If I do something foolish?”

He snorted. “If you’re anything like your mother, I don’t see the point in trying.” He glanced up the column. “Just do me a favor and don’t tell Cleoc. It would be best if she only thinks you are a bad ally, and we leave me out of it.”

“I can do that,” Grey agreed.

They rode in silence for a few minutes longer, Grey’s thoughts swimming with possibilities, with plans. As they crested the last rise, Torrin turned back to her. “You matter more than your power, Maryse. I beg you to keep that in mind.”

Grey nodded, and did not say that she did not matter more than Kier. As they came over the hill, she could see the grassy area set up for the meeting. A murmur went through the guard as they spotted what lay beyond: Luthar and Eprain had brought nearly double the army of Cleoc and Scaelas.

“My lord,” one of the commander’s squires said, riding close to Scaelas. “Shall we call for reinforcements?”

Torrin stood in his stirrups, surveying the mass of Eprainish and Luthrite forces.

He swore profusely—then sighed. “No,” he said.

“At the first sign of skirmish, call for a retreat. I will not let this dissolve into yet another pointless battle.” He glanced over at Grey, lips pressed together, and nodded.

The party of Scaelas, Cleoc, and their assorted guard split off from the soldiers and rode toward a small grouping in the middle of the field.

Scaelas rode ahead, catching up with his guard, and Eron fell back in with Grey.

It was a peaceful meeting—for now. At the first sign of harm, of attack by steel or magic, the guard was trained to surround the High Lord and get him to safety.

Grey surveyed the knot of people, her heart in her throat.

There were about a dozen, all mounted—except for one.

He stood between two riders—Grey thought it must be Epras and Luthos, unhelmed like Scaelas and Cleoc—dressed in all black.

As they rode closer, she drank in the sight of him, the familiar bearing of his body, the wind rippling through his hair.

One of his arms was in a sling, probably due to his broken collarbone, so at least he’d seen a healer. Next to her, Eron sighed in relief.

Kier.

She reached for the tether, struggling for any thread of him.

She felt nothing, so he was still drugged.

If they didn’t have breakbloom on his person—and drugs were forbidden within the shield of a diplomatic meeting, so he must have been dosed beforehand—it would be at least twenty minutes, maybe more, before she’d be able to tether.

“He’s alive,” she said, her throat tight.

“Of course he is,” Eron said, as if he had never doubted at all. He glanced over, offering her a crooked half-smile.

It took all of Grey’s will to fall into line a few paces behind Scaelas with the rest of his guard; all she wanted was to race ahead, grab Kier and run from this place. He wore no armor, unlike Epras and Luthos, and carried no weapons.

He glanced up as Scaelas and Cleoc approached, something flickering on his face—and then he looked at the line behind the sovereigns, and his eyes lit on Grey.

She reached out, but she could not tether. Kier took a half-step forward before he remembered himself. Imperceptibly, he shook his head, grimacing.

“Luthos,” Cleoc said, nodding to the shorter of the two men.

He had hair black as pitch and slouched in his saddle.

“Epras.” Epras sat straighter, his horse dancing under him.

“Locke.” She did not reveal a thing as she greeted Kier.

“You could have saved us a lot of trouble if we had spoken of this the other night, on different terms.”

It was a scolding, Grey knew, that was meant for her.

Kier shrugged with his good shoulder.

“It has been too long since we met like this,” Cleoc continued. “Since we spoke sensibly and peacefully.”

“I have no interest in your speeches,” Luthos said shortly.

“Then present your terms,” Torrin said, “and we can move on.”

Luthos and Epras exchanged a glance, and Grey was not sure what to read in it.

She glanced at Kier again, but he was staring at the ground at her feet, his face unchanged.

She reached for him with a tether, as if she could push all effects of the drug away with the force of her mind alone.

She kept her hand resting lightly on the pommel of her sword, not quite able to calm her racing heart.

“We have found and recovered Severin, the lost heir to Locke,” Epras said. “As such, the High Lord shall restore his Isle, take a consort from my court and continue the line of Locke in the name of Epras.”

Torrin looked at Luthos—who was much younger than the other sovereign, Grey remembered, only a few years into his reign. “And you agreed to this?” he asked, incredulous. “You allied with Epras, and yet will allow him to seize control of power?”

“Epras is capable of seeing reason,” Luthos said flatly. “Unlike others.”

“All those years, and the heir was right under your nose,” Epras said, his tone dripping with contempt. “All those years, and the power could’ve been yours.”

“It was never the power I wanted,” Torrin said.

“Gentlemen,” Cleoc cut in. She turned her gaze to Epras. “It is not your role to rule Locke. He may be your prisoner now, but what happens if he kills your bride? Controlling power is not so easy.”

“Not if he’s bound to his bride,” Epras said, “as is the Isle’s custom.”

Cleoc sighed. Grey tried again for a tether, forcing through the fog of the breakbloom that clouded Kier’s system. Nothing.

“It looks like you have made up your mind, then,” Cleoc said. “Locke shall be restored, and Epras shall rule. But I will raze your Isle. I will kill your bride. I will destroy everything you create, Epras.”

Cleoc had never reminded Grey so much of her own mother. Not for the first time, she wondered if this was what the throne did to women like them.