Page 74 of The Second Death of Locke

thirty-three

“G REMARYSE .”

Her own name, in the old vowels of the Isle, spoken in its true form—the Scaelan tongue couldn’t quite master the vowels and syllables, except for her father, who had practiced her name until he could speak it as neatly as her mother.

She opened her eyes. It was the same as the nightmares she’d had of Severin.

Then, it was the screams ringing in her ears as she woke, the smell of smoke; now, she felt the lingering aftershocks of battle as an echo.

She was still on the battlefield, still where she had fallen, but it was…

empty. Well, not quite—an uneasy mist crept through the trees of the Ghostwood in the distance, and the space between her and the wood was criss-crossed with threads of multicolored light.

The one nearest and brightest was shimmering gold, so close she could almost grasp the threads in her fingers. So close it was too bright to take in.

Something ached in her stomach. At first, she thought it was her own well, run dry, but that was an impossibility on Locke. She pressed a hand to her side and looked down at it, frowning when it came away dripping in gold.

She closed her eyes against the brightness.

Someone crouched next to her, hands pulling aside her helm, then fingers brushed back her sweat-damp hair.

Someone leaned in to kiss her forehead, the cold metal of their necklace trailing over her nose.

She caught a familiar scent—woodsy and warm, like cloves, with the barest hint of nettlewren, the little purple flowers that grew over the Isle in the summer.

It was her mother’s perfume.

When Grey opened her eyes this time, her mother’s face hovered above her.

“Ma,” she said. She scanned over her, taking in the dark green velvet of her dress, the necklace she wore around her throat, the intricate braids in her hair. She was dressed the same as she was for her death. “Locke,” Grey corrected.

Alma looked away. “Not anymore,” she said, the faintest smile tracing her lips.

Grey looked at the shining threads, at the mist creeping from the Ghostwood. “Am I dead?” she asked.

“Not quite,” Alma said. Her fingers continued tracing through Grey’s hair as if the movement was compulsive, beyond her control. Grey remembered a thousand moments like this, on the edge of falling asleep as her mother told her a story.

Maybe that was what death was like. Maybe this was a mercy, and it would be like falling asleep, safe, in her mother’s arms.

“Come here,” Alma said, dispelling the illusion. She reached down to link her hand in Grey’s, tugging her to sit up. Grey gasped at the pain in her middle, radiating out. “I need you to stand, little bird. Can you do that?”

Her breath caught in her throat at her nickname, the one only her parents used for her, too painful to confront in even her memories. She knew, then, that she could not be hallucinating.

“I can try,” she said through gritted teeth.

She let her mother pull her, both of them shining with that odd gold.

At first, Grey thought it was power, since it was coming from her stomach, but with this much pain, it could only be blood.

In this version of time, her blood shone gold as the magic emanating from that figure in front of her, who could only be Kier.

“What is this?” she asked when she was standing, holding tight to her mother’s arm to stay upright. Alma turned them toward the Ghostwood, leading Grey through short, stuttering steps.

“You only received half of your inheritance,” she said. “I died before I could show you the rest.”

Grey looked at her sideways. Alma walked with her head held high, but she was fuzzy at the edges, half remembered, half constructed. Grey recalled trying to touch her in the Ghostwood, when she’d bargained for Kier’s life, and how her hand had gone right through her.

It could not bode well, now, that she could walk by her side, using the ghost for support.

“What is it?” Grey asked.

Alma waved a hand broadly, showing her the threads. “Do you see it?”

“The lights?”

“Yes. That,” she said, not slowing, “is our power. That is who we are and what we are, as Locke. There has long been the truth known that whoever we marry and bind to, we bestow power upon that nation in a show of favor and gratitude. But it is also true that we can take power away, just as easily.” She stopped next to a knot of the threads, shining dimly in technicolor.

Reaching forward, she ran her finger along one of them.

“As the High Lady, Maryse, you are not just the channel for power. You are the root of it. You can do with it what you will—you can bestow it upon whom you wish, and you can remove it from whom you wish.”

Grey sucked a breath through her teeth. “So I can take the power from Epras and Luthos.”

Alma looked at her, her gray eyes solemn. “You can take the power from Eprain and Luthar , Gremaryse. All of it.”

“But that’s—”

“Awful? Treacherous? Unfair?” Alma laughed, short and harsh. She resumed walking, Grey struggling to keep up with her. They passed through the first trees of the Ghostwood, into the mist. “So is dying, love.”

“I can’t do that,” Grey said. “Tactically, maybe it buys us time, but realistically, it’s a nightmare for—”

“It can be temporary,” Alma said. “Take it. Get what you want. Give it back.” She turned, gripping Grey’s hands in both of hers, her gaze as fierce as Grey had ever seen it. “ Live , little bird. It’s all we’ve ever wanted for you.”

Grey drew a breath. They were nearly to the cemetery in the Ghostwood, nearly to the old temple. She let Alma lead her through the graves to the altar, the same one she had seen Kier’s body on as she’d bargained with the goddess.

“Reach for it,” Alma said.

Grey felt for those thin strands of light.

She felt, very keenly, the threads of magic tangled in a web over her isle, the tethers held and caught and lost and dropped, the snuffed-out deaths of wells firing all over.

She felt them on the sea, in their boats; she felt them far, far away, across Scaela and Luthar and even Nestria, as far as her power could reach.

She felt each and every one, the hearts and fear and joy and love and hate of thousands and thousands, all touched by her power.

How many of them had died for her? How many were yet to perish?

Ruthlessness, Sela had reminded her, was its own kind of safety.

Grey swallowed, tasting blood in her mouth.

She had the feeling her time here was winding down, and she needed to come to some decision—a decision that would save Kier, and maybe the other people she loved.

Maybe even herself. Too slow, her hand came to her side, pressed to the place the sword had been drawn out, as if she could hold her life inside that wound.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Show me how to do it.”

Alma led her to the altar. She helped her onto it, helped her lie down—even in this in-between, she must’ve been worried about Grey’s strength failing—and clutched her hand.

She taught her how to reach with her power, how to sense the allegiances, how to read the intentions in each of those threads en masse.

“And now,” she said, when Grey had them all. “Now, you take it all back.”

Grey felt the tethers in her stomach, the thousands and thousands of them belonging to those who fought for her death, and she snapped them all at once.

It was oddly easy to separate them, those who had clamored to her shores to bring her down—easy as if she was looking at a map of multicolored forces, like the ones Kier presided over in her war rooms. She took the power, all those thousands and thousands of threads, and she pulled . They clung to her, a cauterized wound.

She gasped, arching at the pain of it. Alma’s hands were there to catch her, to soothe her, as she screamed at the agony of it all rushing back.

When she could feel again, when she could see past the pain, she was lying flat on the altar slab with her mother standing over her grim-faced. “It’s done,” Grey said, her voice hoarse from screaming. “And now?”

“You have a choice,” Alma said.

Grey closed her eyes. She was growing quite tired of choices. “Go on,” she murmured.

Alma reached forward with a kerchief, swiping the blood away from Grey’s forehead. “You could come with me,” she said softly. “You could stay with us.”

Grey didn’t trust the softness. Her mother had been many things, but she had rarely been soft. She caught Alma’s hand, lacing their fingers together. Alma squeezed as tight as could be, as tightly as Severin had held her on the night he gave his life for hers.

Grey opened her eyes. “You don’t want that,” she said.

“Part of me does,” Alma replied. “No one else knows what it is, to be Locke. The weight of all that power, of all those choices—you could give it up. Set it aside. Let those fools reap the consequences of what they did to us—what they’re still doing to you. Aren’t you tired , Maryse?”

She was tired. She was exhausted, actually. Tired of running, of fighting, of sacrificing.

“There is another who could carry the line, thanks to your devotion,” Alma said, her gaze on Grey’s face. “Leave him the Isle. Leave him his life. Come with me and rest.”

Kier. Grey chewed her lip, looking away. “And my other options?”

“Go back and face your fate—but I cannot guarantee you will survive it.”

She closed her eyes. That was it, wasn’t it? If she was here, she was already on the edge of death. What her mother offered her wasn’t a kindness, but rather an illusion of choice. “I’m as good as dead already,” she guessed.

“Unless you have a very talented healer and a lot of luck,” Alma said softly, “then yes.”

“And the battle?”

She looked away. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can only hope it is enough, what you have done. If you go back, you are not returning to any guarantee of victory, or peace.”

Grey nodded, taking this in. “Were you afraid? When it was over?”

“Of course I was,” Alma said. “But being afraid is better than being hopeless.”

“And will it hurt? If I go back?”

Alma smoothed her thumbs over Grey’s hands. “Of course it will,” she said. “Living always will.”

Grey swallowed hard, battling past the pain. “And dying?”

“That’s its own kind of pain,” Alma said. “And its own kind of peace.”

Grey looked at her mother, at the coolness of her eyes and the lines of her face. She, too, looked older than her years—and Grey wondered what it would be like to look in a mirror and see this version of Alma staring back at her. To grow older all on her own.

She brought Kier back, didn’t she? What a terrible thing it would be, to bring him back only to leave him to mourn her. To abandon him. To condemn him to stand before Kitalma at the full moon and declare the choice as if it had been his own. Or perhaps her sacrifice would save him entirely.

But perhaps it wouldn’t—and perhaps she was tired of making decisions without him.

And after all, she did have a very talented healer.

Grey leaned down. Kissed the back of Alma’s hand, leaving a smear of golden blood on her skin. “I wish I had grown to know you better.”

“I wish I had lived to see you grow,” Alma responded.

Grey lay back on the altar. Alma got up, going around to her head, combing her fingers through Grey’s hair. She moved Grey’s hands, folded them over her chest, like a body prepared for the tomb.

She leaned down and pressed her lips to Grey’s forehead once more. “Goodbye, Locke,” she said. “ Wake up .”