Page 52 of The Second Death of Locke
“I don’t know. And if they do, I don’t know if they care. Lindan was never… kind to me.”
“Ah.” Kier glanced at Grey, then away. “So you took a ship back. Then what?”
“I didn’t expect…” Sela trailed off. Grey didn’t know what it was she didn’t expect: that she’d be returning to a nation at war? That someone would care about one girl coming back from abroad? She was anxiously ruining a bit of bread with the hand Grey wasn’t holding. “The ship was trying to land in Scaela, but it was searchedand I was not on the manifests, so they knew I was not meant to be there. They asked for papers, and I didn’t have them. So they…” She stopped, thin lips pressed together.
Grey squeezed her hand. Sela looked away.
“They were going to drown me. I knew if I revealed my identity, they’d kill me. So I said I was Locke.”
Grey pretended to be very interested in her fish to hide any reaction to the story, and immediately regretted it. It tasted like post-battle leather armor. “Why?” she asked finally, saying out loud what everyone else seemed to be thinking.
Sela looked at her, only her; those big eyes were doing their best to appear earnest. But Grey didn’t doubt her for a minute. She was a kid. Grey herself had run away when she was sixteen, looking for the first place that made her feel something. It just so happened she actuallywasthe long-lost lady of a dead house in hiding, while Sela was not.
“Because I didn’t want to die, and I know Locke is important,” Sela said. “No one has ever found Severin—so what if he wasn’t the one who survived after all? What if it was me?”
“Because you’re twelve,” Eron said, exasperated.
“Fifteen,” Sela corrected.
Kier had gotten up at some point, and he was now pacing back and forth. “Eat, Captain,” Grey chided, and he grudgingly bit off half of his dried fish and struggled to chew it, wincing the whole time.
“Okay,” he said once he recovered. “The problem with taking you to Cleoc Strata, even if you tell the truth, is it’ll look likewekidnapped you. Plus, it’s much farther than Grislar, and we’d probably be killed at the border. Too many complications.”
“Why take her to Cleoc? Why not bring the High Lady to us?” Grey asked. Kier looked at her, withering, but she was his Hand, and often, his reason. She went on. “If we go to Grislar, like we’re supposed to, and send word ahead to get an ensign from Cleoc—we can barter for peace, Kier. If Sela says we rescued her from Luthar when we’re actually protected…”
“But our leave,” Brit said sadly. “We’re meant to deliver Maryse of Locke.”
“They only said we had to deliver theprisoner,” Grey said. “If weget caught on the way, we’re fucked. But if we make it there, if we’re able to arrange it? That will mean something, won’t it? Perhaps it will even lead to an alliance on one front?”
Kier looked at her for a long time, sending something down the tether that she couldn’t quite read. That was the problem with feeling someone else’s emotions, even someone as close to her as Kier: there was not always a direct translation from his heart to hers.
“What if that doesn’t work?” he asked.
Grey shrugged. “Then we’ll figure it out.”
He looked at her, the expression clear on his face:What if they find out about you?She tried to school her own expression into an answering gaze ofWe will deal with it if it happens.
Ola blew out a long breath, tugging on the end of one of her braids. “It would be nice to have one less border to worry about.”
“I can do it,” Sela said, without anyone asking her. “I can get the truce—I’ll push for it. I’m supposed to inherit in a few years. My mother has to listen to me.” She was still squeezing Grey’s hand and ruining the bit of bread, still just a girl who’d run away from safety into something she didn’t understand—but Grey understood better than anyone that little girls grew up, and little girls with titles grew into rulers with power.
Grey looked away, far past the mountains, toward the sea. Something like longing stirred within her.
They made camp that night halfway up one of the rises, in a shallow dip protected by crests on either side. The cliffs above had just begun collecting little drifts of snow. “It will only get colder,” Kier warned as they set out blankets and bedrolls. “Keep close together.”
They sat together as Eron cooked up a new variety of beige. Grey changed the bandage over her stitches, then inspected Brit’s healing wounds. Kier was a ways away from them against the cliff, reading a book. Sela sat near Grey, stroking the horse’s side. It was called Pigeon, she’d learned, which made absolutely no sense. Horse names rarely did.
“Eron,” Ola said. “I canhearyour wheels turning. What are you thinking about?”
Eron looked up, nearly knocking the pot over. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “How do we know for certain that someone survived Locke? What if the whole survivor thing is a lie? Didn’t the entire isle… explode?”
“If everyone had died,” Ola said, “there would be no magic at all.”
Eron considered this as he poured in the mush to soak. “But how do weknow?” he asked finally. “It could still be possible that the letter from Severin was forged, and no wells have been born since the Isle’s destruction. How do we know that that isn’t because Locke is well and truly dead?”
“Because Locke is the root and foundation of power,” Sela said quietly. Grey focused on Brit’s skin, on the task at hand. “There is no power at all without Locke.”
“Then how wereyouborn a well, if you were born after Locke?”
