Page 43 of The Second Death of Locke
“Okay. I need you to go get Ola. Once she’s here, you can sit with us or on the stairs and wait to let the others in. Okay?”
“Yes,” Sela squeaked. She hesitated for only a moment. “Will they live?” she asked.
Grey glanced up. Sela stood with her hands pressed to her chest, like something had wounded her. She had a scrape across one cheek, Grey noticed, but it had missed the eye.
“If I have anything to say about it, yes.” She forced her tone to soften. “It will be okay, sweetheart. Go get Ola.”
Sela was out the door in a second, and Grey glanced over her shoulder to make sure the girl ran across the yard into the wash shed. Then she spent an agonizing minute cataloging everything that could go wrong.
A moment later, Ola appeared, running across the yard. Sela followed, not as fast, still shaky on her feet.
Grey turned back to her work.
The worst of the injuries was the slash across Brit’s ribs, then the wound on their stomach. The arm was gruesome to look at, but overall fine, and the head wound looked much worse than it actually was. Grey could worry about a concussion after she was certain none of Brit’s insides were about to become their outsides.
“What thefuck?”
She lifted her head to see Ola in the doorway, but she needed to focus. Her hands were shaking, half from fading adrenaline. Though she’d helped in the infirmary often, it had been a while since she’d actively operated on anyone who wasn’t Kier. She forced herself to remain calm now, to think only of her training and those endless days of surgery after surgery when she was a healer. She didn’t have the tools to keep Brit unconscious and cursed herself for it, but she could only work with what she had.
“I need you to tether,” Grey said very carefully.
“Locke’s bones, Captain—”
“Tether,” Grey hissed through her teeth. She noticed Sela edge into the room behind Ola. The girl went very quietly back to the nightstand and sat with her knees pressed to her chest.
Ola narrowed her eyes, but Grey could feel the greenness of new magic as the tether took. “Yes, Hand Captain.”
Brit sighed in relief, their face relaxing just a fraction. Ola sat at their head, her hand pressed to Brit’s uninjured arm.
“Can you remain tethered and secure downstairs?” Grey asked, detached as possible. “I didn’t have the time to do a thorough search.”
A pause. Then, “Yes, Hand Captain,” Ola said, brimming with anger.
Neither wound had perforated the internal organs, but they were still serious. Grey cleaned them up, nudging the threads of Ola’s magic to heal what she could, and carefully stitched Brit’s stomach. Ola returned when she was tying off the thread, settling back into the space next to Brit.
“Why didn’t you have them tether to Sela immediately?” she asked, her voice strained and bitter. “Isn’t Locke meant to be some great well? Some unbelievable power?”
Grey froze, her breath caught in her throat. She looked up at Sela— but the girl only hid her face.
“I cannot answer that,” Grey said through her teeth. She went back to her work, her own heart pounding with the lies she held.
When she was finished, she moved to the wound over Brit’s ribs. She focused on bringing the muscle together, then the flesh; she forced herself to think only of that, and not of Sela sobbing in the corner, or of Ola’s hard, unforgiving glare.
If she stopped, she was going to fall apart, or throw up. She’d lost so much fucking blood herself and she couldn’t even tell if Brit was dying under her.
“What’s going on?”
Grey lifted her head to see Eron in the door, shock clear on his face. She couldn’t deal with it right now.
“Where’s Kier?” she asked, tying off her knot and examining her work.
“Downstairs.” He grimaced, and Grey thought again of the innkeeper; she wasn’t sure if she was awake, or even still alive.
“Can I just… What thefuck?” Eron repeated, as if they had not heard him the first time, as if Grey had the capacity to answer. She was busy adhering a strip of gauze to Brit’s forehead.
“Can you take Sela into the other room?” she asked. “And—Kier. I need Kier.”
It was only then that her voice broke. As if he sensed it, the tether she’d been reaching out found its mark. Kier caught her, and before she could stop herself, she sent a pulse of agony through.Help.
