Page 128 of The Second Death of Locke
What had Cleoc said to her, on that day when they were trying to figure out the problem of Kier’s imprisonment? She could not be loyal to both her Isle and her mage.
Across the table, she met Kier’s eye. He was still angry—but there was surrender there. He would not offer counsel, not on her life; not when this decision mattered so much. He was watching her carefully, but he would not make nor unmake her decisions.
Perhaps, she thought grimly, it was payback for her making decisions without him.
“They’re afteryou, Locke,” Commander Reggin said very carefully, as if urging her to consider her words when her own commander remained silent. “If you are captured…”
“They are here,” Torrin said, not meeting her eye, “to take you prisoner.”
Grey pressed her lips together. She looked at Cleoc, who did not want a rash, impulsive girl for an ally, who would not trust her if she acted out of hand; she looked at Scaelas, who would be fighting under his own banner, but who looked nauseous at the thought of her doing the same.
And then at Kier, who only waited. Who had already died for her once. She ached for all the things she should’ve done differently, all the words she should’ve told him before they’d gotten this far.
If she died in battle, she could not save him.
“I will be in the fortress,” she said, tasting bile in her mouth, “helping as best I can.”
Kier let out a breath. She did not need to be tethered to him to sense his relief.
“But I refuse to be taken prisoner,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. She remembered the feeling in her stomach when her mother perished in battle. “If I am to remain here, then I want poison or a blade. In case they take the Isle.”
Scaelas did not meet her eye.
But Kier did. When she glanced up, he was looking at her steadily. She had been such a fool, to try to make decisions like this without taking him into account. They always chose the cliff, the poison, the blade, to be the sacrifice—they always chose one another.
She remembered her mother braiding poison into her hair. Her father checking her boots for blades. Severin, not hesitating to kill the girl he thought he would marry. She thought of holding Kier’s hand as they jumped. She felt, with bile in her throat, of how she had taken the choice of sacrifice or salvation away from him. And again, she thought of how she couldn’t bear it—and how, if she took the choice away from him, he would be so much more likely to decide on his own sacrifice, without her.
“Then you shall have both, at your disposal,” Kier said.
When darkness finally fell, the eve before the battle to come, Kier was not in her room when she went upstairs to bed. The door to his own room, hisactualroom, was firmly closed. She had not been able to catch a moment with him before they were both pulled in different directions—and still, she was not sure what to say.
She left it. She bathed, sitting in the water with her knees pulled to her chest until it went cold. Then she dressed in warm clothes and a cloak, and left her hair wet down her back, though her grandmother always told her that would be the death of her. She walked through the fortress like a ghost, then up and up and up.
Alone, on the roof of Locke’s tallest tower, she looked out at her Isle.
The stone of the crenelations was frigid under her hands. The torches in the harbor glowed with violet magelight, a warning to any ships that sailed too close. There were a few lights spread around the Isle as soldiers from each camp kept watch. Far offshore, the ships circled. She did not know how much longer they would keep their distance, treating her like prey.
There were boots on the stairs behind her. Grey stiffened, expecting Kier—but it was only Ola who came, wrapped in a blanket, her hair loose over her shoulders. She moved next to Grey and let her head fall on her shoulder.
“I imagine you’re not here of your own free will,” Grey said bitterly.
“Would you believe me if I said I was?”
Grey shot her a scathing look.
Ola sighed. “You’re a good one, Flynn. If you must know, the commander came into my room in a rage the other night and demanded that I make sure you actually went to sleep tonight.”
Damn him.
“You fought.”
It wasn’t a question, so Grey did not answer it. “Do you think we’ll survive tomorrow?” she asked instead, desperate to think of anything else.
“Who knows,” Ola said. “But there have been many days when I’ve asked that question, so it’s not much of a change.”
Grey snorted. “I have never felt so powerless in my life,” she said finally. “Everyone here seems determined to die for me. And I— I don’t know, Ol. There has to be something I can do, something that will save them.”
“You’ve been determined to die for everyone else, Grey,” Ola said mildly.
