Page 10 of The Second Death of Locke
“That’s none of your concern,” Grey snapped. But Kier was grappling against the tether like a dying man—he wasn’t doing it intentionally, but he was drawing alot. For a normal well, it would be too much.
Ola, within earshot, hurried to Grey’s other side. “Surely it’s too much—Hand Captain Flynn, you can’t let him drain you.”
Grey shot Ola a fierce look. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Hand,” Kier said, very quietly. He’d always been better at propriety. A terrible irony, that was.
She didn’t know the edges of her power, the barriers—it’d been a long time since she’d gone looking. She had felt the fatigue of true emptiness only once, after a particularly awful battle years ago, when Kier had overdone it. Then, she’d slept for three days straight and woken to his guilt.
They’d taken measures since then, legal and otherwise. And he’d always been so careful. She didn’t think she was going to run out of power, but they were so far from home.
She couldn’t think of it. Not now.
“Hand Captain,” Ola said again, more urgent.
Her vision was graying out a little bit at the edges, going grainy from the force of her focus. Her jaw was clenched hard enough that it felt like her teeth would shatter. The spool was ever spinning, but Kier’s feet were moving, and his heart was pumping, and if he stopped siphoning…
“He’s going to kill you,” Ola said urgently. She exchanged a look with her mage and held out her hand. “Let me. Please.”
The idea of giving Kier over to someone else was so sweet—and utterly impossible. Grey looked at him, his eyes half shut. There was a scar through his eyebrow from falling out of an apple tree when he was nine. The scratch on his cheek was now clotted, crusted nearly black.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. She adjusted his arm across her shoulders, gripping the hand that hung limply on her chest. It was so, so cold.
“Hand Captain,” Brit said, very carefully, “if you do not disengage, we will be dragging back both of your bodies. Let Ola take him.”
All she wanted was to give him up. Push him out. Let him go. But she could keep holding him; the well of power inside of her was not empty.
If she kept holding him, they would know. They would know she was not normal, that there was something wrong.
If she let him go, Ola would try to tether to Kier, and she would find that she could not.
“Drop it,” he said to one or both of them. His voice was utterly unlike himself—it was like listening to a version of Kier already years in the grave. His head lolled to one side, his forehead pressing to Grey’s temple. “Let go,” he muttered.
“I’mnotgoing to,” she said. She was going to throw up. There was so much of her going, so much of her gone, it felt like she was pulling her intestines out through her navel. “You can’t ask that of me.”
He sucked a breath. She stumbled, pressing her hand tighter. She felt his lips on her temple, chapped, uncoordinated with pain. “Hand Captain,” he said, the lips brushing her skin so very cold. “I order it.”
“You don’t outrank me.” If she let go, there was no guarantee he’d get back alive. No guarantee he’d get back at all.
“Like hell I don’t.” If she didn’t let go, there would be even more eyes on them. Suspicion.
A pause. A breath. How nice it would be, Grey thought, to lie next to him and die. For all of this to be over.
“I have enough,” Kier said.
She snapped the tether.
The relief was so dizzying that she very nearly lost consciousness, and in a moment of panic, she realized that shehadgiven a lot,and she was not as powerful as she thought. Her neck was clammy with sweat under Kier’s arm, her stomach awful with bile, her head pounding. There was a great, caving emptiness within her, the well of magic nearly dry, and then she heard Kier suck in a breath. She couldn’t even imagine—without the power of a tether, any pain he’d kept at bay rushed in, doubling, trebling.
“If you die on me,” Grey hissed into Kier’s shoulder, “I’m going to come right down with you and haunt your bones, Kiernan Seward, you absolute fucking bastard.”
His laugh was weak, breathy and full of blood. “I’ll hold you to that.”
The relationship between a mage and well can be complicated enough, based on the delicate balance of power, without emotional entanglements entering the equation. For the best working relationship, it is recommended that the pairing remains as close as is necessary for trust, but otherwise avoid any feeling more powerful than friendly respect.
Mage’s Codex, Fifth Edition, published 4 yearsPD
My love is yours, as that which beats within my heart is yours, and that which powers the fabric of the world is yours through mine own hand. Take from me, that I may be thine.
