Page 134 of The Second Death of Locke
Letter from Wren Locke Teinek to Scaelas, undated
thirty-three
“GREMARYSE.”
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 fromEprainandLuthar, 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.”
