Page 55 of The Second Death of Locke
“Grey…”
She shook her head, fierce. “I’m not going to sit here and wait for someone to find me. To kill me. Maybe my father trusted Scaelas, but I—” She broke off, the tears ragged in her throat. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I can trust anyone.”
“You can trust me,” Kier said. He reached out, his hand brushing hers. “Grey, no matter what happens, you can always trust me.”
So he had lied for her, and run away with her, and fought Imarta and both of his mothers on her behalf when they found out. When word got back to him, Lot had only written her a gentle letter about the dangers of battle. He had written Kier a much meaner, strongly worded letter about Grey’s safety, but he had ended it by telling hisbrother he was proud of him. Grey had found that letter again recently, still tucked into Kier’s pack.
Now, Kier took a deep breath, and Grey anticipated his next question, because he could always read her, especially when she least desired it—Do you want to be Locke?all over again, the same question nearly a decade later—which was why she was surprised when he said, “Do you want to go to Lindan?”
“What?”
“It might be nice,” he mused, his thumb skimming over the meat between her thumb and forefinger. “Lindle magic is different. No wells, no mages. Some are just… magicians, like they learned it. Like math.”
Grey knew all this, and Kier knew she knew. Like Idistra, Lindan functioned on an intrinsic system, meaning magical aptitude was a trait the Lindle were born with. Unlike in Idistra,allhad some access to Lindan’s magic, though wielding it well was a matter of practice. “We probably wouldn’t have any magic at all,” Grey said carefully. “Not that far from Locke.”
“Mm. Maybe not.” He didn’t say,But youareLocke. He didn’t have to. “We could leave all of this behind.”
You can let the magic die, if you want to, he did not say.You do not have to save us and sacrifice your own freedom.
“Do you ever think,” Grey said, glancing at the others, but Eron had Sela stirring the pot as he chopped up bits of jerky to flavor the travesty that was dinner, and Brit was carefully braiding Ola’s hair next to the warmth of the magelight, which brought out the shimmers of red in her dark curls. “Do you ever think we’d be better off if we stopped running?”
“Stopped running from what?” Kier asked.
“Locke,” Grey said, the word barely more than an exhalation, and Kier stiffened—it seemed they were both surprising each other tonight.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.
“A terrible one, actually,” she agreed. But she paused, listening to the screaming of the wind—and sometimes they were so heavy on her heart, the family she’d lost, the place she’d never grown to fullyknow. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she was right there in the Ghostwood, and she’d open them and her stomach still hurt, but it ached with emptiness instead of power.
“You know what it would mean,” Kier said. “What could happen to you.”
And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Kier knew as well as Grey did why her family had been killed: to control the power. Whoever controlled Locke controlled all of the magic in Idistra. It was a simple miscalculation that had led to their downfall: they did not know that Locke would rather die than be controlled, that they would take everything down with them rather than allow the heir to be taken.
“You think they’d kill me.”
“Or worse,” he said. “We can’t be certain of Scaelas’s intentions. It’s too much of a risk.”
“We don’t need Scaelas,” Grey said. “We don’t need anyone.”
“We need allies,” he said. “You and I do not an army make.”
“Where’s that ego I know and love?”
He smiled, but only just. “I will go wherever you want to,” he said, “but we shouldn’t rush into a hasty decision, or do something because we’re backed into a corner.” He squeezed her hand, two short pulses. “If you want to go, it should be a genuine choice. Not the result of a forced hand.”
“I know,” Grey said.
“That’s a decision that can’t be reversed.”
She snorted. “Like retirement?”
“We could always re-enlist.”
“Gods, no.”
They sat for a moment in silence before Kier said, “Once you open that box, there’s no going back. It would reveal the truth of you.”
Grey nudged his jaw with her head. “You know the truth of me.” It was easy, like this, to pretend that there was something else between them other than friendship and the tether of power.
