Page 69 of The Second Death of Locke

thirty

I T WAS DECIDED THAT Scaelas and Cleoc would provide enough soldiers to keep the Isle and hold it until they could force a surrender from Epras and Luthos—or until Grey could find some other way to assert her dominance over the nation’s power.

Judging by the growing number of Eprain’s ships circling, waiting for a sign of weakness, Grey understood that the latter option was the desirable one.

While Scaelas and Cleoc went to speak to their advisers, Grey left the planning in the war rooms to her commanders and went to check on how preparations were progressing. Kier sent a pulse of reassurance through the tether as she left the room; she ignored it.

One of Cleoc’s attendants waited for her in a side room. She curtsied when Grey entered. “Your majesty,” she said. “Please accept this gift, from my nation.”

Grey crossed to the heavy wooden trunk and opened it.

Inside, she found a number of rich, dark fabrics in shades of black and gray and navy with a few flashes of ivory silk.

She sat back on her heels—it was the wardrobe that Sela had commissioned.

On top, she found a letter, sealed with a modified Stratan crest pressed into the wax.

“Thank you,” she said to the attendant, forcing herself through speechlessness. “I am immensely grateful to you, your nation and your lady.” And its daughter , she thought.

After the attendant left, she opened the letter.

My fearsome Lady Locke,

I am not allowed to join you on your Isle, and I am not as brave as you—you, for certain, would’ve found yourself a place on one of those ships, forbidden or not. I hope you do not think badly of me for my weakness .

Grey scoffed. If she had to worry about Sela on top of everything else, she might actually combust. She frowned, annoyed at herself for a moment, for finally understanding Torrin’s healthy fear for her own safety.

I know this gift is small, and possibly insignificant. I cannot give you my sword or the promise of a nation I haven’t yet inherited. I can barely help you. But you are the strongest person I know, and the strongest well. You will be okay. You have to be okay .

Thank you for your ruthlessness, Grey. It is its own kind of safety .

Yours,

W. N .

PS You can’t die, because I’ve already started planning Locke’s resurrection party, and the plans I have are in no way appropriate for a funeral .

She laughed, pushing away tears that threatened to overflow.

She rifled through the fabrics, and was halfway through when she felt the press of cold metal.

She frowned, pushing aside the top layer of clothes to reveal a set of cleverly made armor.

It was dark silver, glimmering in the stormy light through the windows, overlaid with patterns of birds and ivy.

It was, she realized with some awe, a twin to the armor Kitalma wore in the icons.

She clutched the metal, feeling the cold bite of it under her fingers. Ruthlessness was, she agreed, its own kind of safety.

That evening, while Kier and Dainridge and Reggin continued their planning, Grey took a candle and made her way through the dark halls to the administrative wing of the fortress.

Cleoc and Scaelas and their various clerks and advisers had taken up most of the rooms, but, probably at Scaelas’s instruction, Grey’s mother’s office was left free for her.

She hesitated at the door. It was warded—perhaps that was the true reason. Perhaps she was assigning kindnesses to Torrin that didn’t belong.

The door opened easily beneath her touch, only creaking a little.

She carried a leather satchel of documents over her shoulder, passed from the other sovereigns for her review.

She set the documents on the carved wood desk and took the room in: the walls were covered with bookshelves, bearing old treatises and folklore alike.

It was small, but far more nicely appointed than any commander’s office she’d been in before.

She could not say if it rivaled the luxury of Torrin’s private office; she had never been there.

She lit the fire in the grate, then sat behind the desk.

There was a stack of letters in the middle, seals broken, all bearing correspondence that was now worthless.

She ran her fingers over the parchment to the other side, where her mother had been halfway through writing a response to Maerin’s harbormaster.

She read it over, but it was irrelevant: preparing for renovations to the port that had never happened.

She sighed and pulled out the documents from the satchel. Grey read the proposed articles of the treaty with Scaela and Cleoc Strata until her eyes were heavy with strain, until the door opened and Kier slipped through, his coat as dark and shadowed as the night itself.

He perched on the edge of the desk. “It’s late,” he said, his gaze careful. “Tomorrow is our last day of peace before it all goes to shit, and you need to rest. You should come to bed.”

Grey glanced at the timepiece on his wrist. “It’s not that late,” she said. Not even midnight. “And you can’t order me around anymore.”

That got a smile out of him. “Oh, I can try.”

She sat back, folding her hands over her lap. Her fingers were cold—she was not yet skilled at keeping fires going in the hearth. Kier must’ve noted the whiteness of her knuckles—he took her hands in his and rubbed the warmth back into them.

“Is it odd?” she asked. “That no one thinks you have power over me anymore? That they no longer see me as just your well?”

Kier snorted. “I never saw you as just my well.”

“Maybe not, but no one else asked my opinion.”

He thought for a moment, bringing one of her hands to his lips, then the other. “It never mattered, what they thought,” he said after a moment. “I always saw you as my equal. Every decision I made, it was with your counsel.”

Grey looked away. Kier misinterpreted her guilt—he took her chin in his hand, turned her face back to him. “Nothing has changed, Grey. Not for me.”

She regarded him, studied his features. She nodded, and he nodded back.

“You should sleep when you can,” he said.

“I will, after I finish this. Half an hour more.”

He sighed, but leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I’m timing you, Locke.”

An hour later, the door opened again. Grey didn’t glance up. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she murmured.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we can enjoy that kind of relationship anymore.”

She looked up, the pen falling from her hand, dripping ink across the note on tributes she was halfway through making. Leonie stood in the doorway, leaning on a cane. Grey frowned—she doubted the Isle’s stormy weather was good for Leonie’s bones.

“Please, sit,” she said, nodding to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. Leonie crossed the carpet, leaving the door cracked behind her. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It’s odd, hearing you talk like a noble.

” Leonie smiled, easing herself into the chair.

She wore a gray coat over her black skirt, and the sight of it brought a lump to Grey’s throat.

“And it’s to whom . It’s the same answer as always, since neither of you is capable of looking after yourselves without the other getting involved. The commander sent me.”

“Ah.”

Leonie shifted her arm, and Grey realized she carried a basket. She drew out a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Think it’s still good?”

Grey snorted. There was no point explaining the time dilation, the unchanging nature of the Isle, the bodies. “I suspect we’re going to find out.”

Leonie’s grin widened. She uncorked the bottle with a thin knife from her belt, then poured two glasses. “Not too much,” Grey cautioned. “I need a clear head, and Kier thinks I should go to bed.”

“I don’t believe we need to heed his every word. After all, he also said Eron would beat Ola in a fight, and that’s certainly false.”

“What kind of fight?” Grey asked, accepting the glass Leonie handed her, and the subsequent clink of their glasses as they toasted. She took a sip: the wine was rich and dark, probably plum. Probably a gift from Nestria sixteen seasons ago.

“Oh, you know. No magic, sparring, the usual.” Leonie sighed, sitting back. Grey watched the tension leaving her shoulders, and wondered if she herself would ever be able to relax again.

“You didn’t have to follow me here.”

Leonie looked over her shoulder, watching the crackling fire. It was a novelty to the Scaelans, Grey supposed; even with its familiarity, it was a novelty to her, too. Magefire did not crackle like real flames; it did not smell like clean pine and woodsmoke.

“I told you I would be here if you had need of me.”

Grey closed her eyes. “I do not want to bring people close to me if it’s only sentencing them to death.”

“Do you really believe that’s what this is?” Leonie said, taking another sip of her wine. Grey wanted to throw caution to the winds, drain the entire glass to the dregs and let her hair loose as she stood on the highest tower of her own Isle. “Do you have so little faith that we may live?”

She swallowed hard, taking a mouthful of wine with it. “They expect something great of me,” she said.

“Of course they do. You raised the Isle with blood and intention alone.”

Not alone .

“What?”

Grey looked up. She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud. But Leonie was watching her with care, and caution—and gods, she just wanted someone else to know about her decision. Not to help; but just to hold it, so she did not have to carry the weight of it alone.

“If I tell you something,” she said, running her fingertip along the rim of the glass, “can I trust your confidence?”

Leonie snorted. “I knew you were Locke for the better part of a year, and I said nothing then.”

Grey scrutinized her. Leonie only refilled her glass. “You did?”

“With the way you manipulated power? With how you healed your captain? Of course I knew, Grey. I’m no fool.”

“Kier is dead.”