Page 77 of The Second Death of Locke

She tugged his arm and pulled him down with her.

With a bit of reconfiguring, he’d slipped under her and lifted her into his lap.

His arms wrapped around her, safe and strong as always.

She watched the movement of the sea through the window over his shoulder, the crash of the waves against the cliffs below, the rising of the tide.

“We’ve received further petitions for citizenship,” he murmured against her collarbone. “It would be worth figuring out how to go about that.”

“It would be,” Grey said. Though she wanted to close off the Isle, to keep those already here, those she loved, close to her, she knew the error in that: Locke’s isolation had led to so much fear and betrayal before. She could not allow it to happen again.

A knock sounded on the door. Grey made to move, but Kier’s arms did not release her.

It was inappropriate, perhaps, for the Lady of Locke to be found in the arms of the nation’s commander, but the follow-up thought to that was that anyone who’d gotten past the guards at her door (which she protested, but both Kier and Scaelas vehemently agreed she should keep them; Kier and Torrin rarely agreed, but when it came to matters of her safety, they were a force to be reckoned with) was already quite aware of their relationship.

“Yes?” she called, shifting to be slightly less entwined.

It was Leonie, bustling in with a list of provisions needed, Brit on her heels. “It’s not an easy task, rebuilding a hospital,” she said, all business, even as her eyebrow raised and her lips quirked at the sight of them.

Brit threw themself in the chair in front of the fireplace. At Grey’s look, they waved a hand. “Ola’s with her captain again,” they said darkly.

Now Grey did push up to take the list from Leonie. She skimmed over it, chewing on her thumbnail as she focused. “I’ll pass it to Ikaaron. See if Scaela can help.”

“And in return? You’re going to be drowning in favors by the year’s end,” Kier said. His eyes were shut, his arms spread on the arms of the chair, like he was waiting for the moment she sat again so he could wrap them around her.

“I don’t think sixteen years of reparations have been paid back to us just yet,” Grey said mildly. She put the list on her desk and started to copy it down.

“Also,” Leonie said, “I have cleared Scaelas for travel. He can leave as soon as he wishes.”

Grey ignored Kier’s sigh of relief. “Is he going, then?”

“Soon. Tomorrow, probably.”

Grey straightened slowly, her thoughts a jumble.

Though Torrin’s presence made Kier antsy—she knew, though he didn’t admit it to her, that even though it was their fault that Torrin had given up his search for his goddaughter, Kier resented him for it simply because it had hurt her feelings—she would be sad to lose his guidance.

“You can go with him if you want,” she said.

Brit and Leonie only blinked at her. Finally, Brit said, “What?”

Grey paced, struck with new conviction. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. Eron and Ola, too. You’re Scaelan—I don’t want to force you to be here.”

“We’re all here because we want to be here,” Leonie said firmly.

“Speak for yourself,” Kier said, but he was ignored. Grey shot him a dark glare.

“What even are we?” Brit mused. “Lockians? Lockstrian? Keys?”

“ Brit ,” Leonie murmured, rubbing her temple.

They waved a hand. “And you can ask them, but Ol and Er will tell you the exact same thing. We’re staying, Grey. If it means Scaelas has to sell you our contracts, then so be it. But we’re staying.”

She hesitated, still uncertain. She wondered when, if ever, the worst of the uncertainty would fade.

“But you should pay me,” Brit said. “Just saying.”

Grey sighed, and made a note to herself to review her own treasury, and to have a discussion about salaries with her commander.

In the evening, she and Scaelas dined alone. He imparted as much wisdom as he could to her, but in the end, he just kissed both of her hands and said, “Obsidian born and iron made, Maryse. Gods, they would have been proud of you.”

It took her a long time to swallow the lump of sorrow in her throat.

After dinner, she dressed in a nondescript outfit of black trousers, a blue tunic and a heavy cloak, slipped past her guard and set off for one of the newly reopened pubs in Osar.

There was a woman waiting for her in a shadowy back corner, sipping ale, with a frosty second glass waiting at the empty seat.

She’d arrived earlier on the ship that came to take Scaelas away and had sent word through Eron.

“Master Attis,” Grey said, slipping into the other side of the booth. “I’m glad you could get away.”

Attis studied her. The space under her eyes was dark and shadowed, as with grief. She opened her mouth to speak, swallowed and looked away. “I just want to know,” she said, “that she wasn’t alone.”

Grey shook her head. “She was not.”

Attis’s eyes slipped shut. She took a long breath, held it, then another. She was trying very hard, Grey could tell, not to cry.

“Will you tell me how it happened?” she asked.

Grey nodded. Though there had been so much horror, so much terror, it was the least she could do to put Mare to rest.

She was too lost in memories to go to bed, so she went to her tower, where the winter wind whipped her hair.

She did not look out to sea, but to the harbor, where the ship was being prepared to take Torrin back.

She was turning to scan the sea when she noticed a small, dimly golden magelight glowing on one of the cliffs. She squinted down at it.

There was a path that went all the way down the cliffs; when she was a girl, Grey was told it was to receive shipwrecks or retrieve bodies.

She and Sev had used it for crabbing. There was a deep ledge halfway down, shielded from view from all but those on this very tower.

It was about the size of Grey’s courtyard.

Sometimes, when she was younger, she and her father used to sit there to watch the storms roll away from the Isle, protected from the weather with the cliff at their backs.

There, one could sit very quietly, unseen, and look out at the shores of Scaela in the distance, without judgment.

It took her twenty minutes to get down, but Kier was still there when she reached the ledge. He sat with his knees tucked to his chest, his arms around them. She hesitated when she saw that his cheeks were wet.

“You can join me,” he said gruffly—of course he’d known that she was there.

She stepped carefully and lowered herself to the ground next to him. His magelight glowed dim and golden; his magelights were always golden now.

She did not ask. After an immeasurable moment, the sea crashing on the cliffs below, Kier said, “I was just thinking that I would never see Lot’s grave again, or the tree behind our house, or the village square, or that awful yellow kitchen.”

Grey stayed still as a stone, the grief like a vise on her heart.

“I will never go to Lindan, to see what their magic is like, or Nisielle, or even Nestria,” he said slowly, “or anywhere at all.”

“No,” she said slowly, swallowing down her own tears. He was silent for a long moment. The wind whipped his too-long hair.

“You’re not going to try to run?” Grey asked.

He snorted. “I’m dead the second I leave the Isle, Grey, and your gods won’t give my life back twice.”

She chewed her lip. They had not spoken much of the decision since that night, before the battle; any time she brought it up, Kier just sighed and told her again that they were choosing the only viable option.

It was not a small thing, to give up his freedom—and though they both knew why the choice had to be made, it hurt her deeply.

“What if you get tired of me?” she asked.

“I won’t,” he said, his voice softening.

“But what if you do ?”

He sighed, long-suffering. “Then I’ll die, I guess. Or you can go away and leave the Isle to me.”

“You’ll never have space away from me.”

She saw the flicker of the curve of his smile, disrupted by his scar. “A burden, to be sure, but I will bear it.”

“I’m serious.”

“As am I, Grey.” He shifted, folding around her, bringing her to sit between his legs with her back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her; it was much warmer buried with him in his heavy cloak.

“You’ve already fought death and your gods for me.

I would do the same for you, though let us hope it doesn’t come to that. ”

She was quiet for a long moment. It wasn’t fair at all, what he was doing, what she was making him do. But perhaps love was a little bit of sacrifice, after all; and perhaps a bit of sacrifice could be allowed, as long as they were together.

“Kier,” she said.

“Yes?”

She found herself suddenly without words.

So she gripped the tether, pushing as many warm feelings of thanks and love and adoration at him as she could.

She heard his sharp indrawn breath; then he was burying his face in her hair, his lips pressing to the crown of her head, then her temple, then her neck.

I love you. At the end of it all, I love you , she thought at him with every emotion she showed him.

“As do I,” he promised.