Page 58 of The Second Death of Locke
He smirked, finishing the last stitch. Grey directed him to applya salve and wrap the healing wound as the others bickered over the relative merits of other types of magic.
“Captain,” Eron said when he saw they were getting up. For a second, Grey thought he was talking to Kier, but he was looking at her. “You grew up on the coast. Tell us, what were the stories there? Where did they say our magic comes from?”
“Oh. Um.” Grey chewed on her nail. She knew the stories she believed, the variations they used to tell around the fire at night on Locke. She glanced at Kier, but he only gave her a smile. Bastard.
She accepted the bowl Eron handed her, pausing to let it warm her hands as she settled in next to Brit. Kier took a spot across the magelight from her, closer to Eron.
“Surely you heardsomestories growing up,” Eron said, tucking into his food.
Grey pushed her spoon around. “Well, they say that this land existed before we did, don’t they? Hundreds of years ago, when no one lived here—actually no one; it was an island of sheep—there was a ship lost in the sea. It bore explorers from what is now Lindan, where magic is freer. Looser. But when they landed, they found that they were so far from home that the magic did not come as it once had.” She paused, looking up. “Have you heard this one before?”
Ola wrinkled her nose. “I think so?”
Brit and Eron shook their heads.
Grey chewed her lip, but she continued. “Now, after a hard winter, only two explorers remained. But they were out of food, and though they’d retreated to a small isle for protection and made a home for themselves, they could not live another winter there alone. So one suggested she could go searching the mainland, close by, to find provisions. The other woman feared she would never come back for her. So in the night, she stole her heart, and with it, her magic. The intrepid explorer went in search of food, and found it, but she did not feel whole—and she could not perform any magic on her own. When she returned to the isle with her provisions, she was delighted to find that her magic had returned, but only when she remained with her lover and betrayer. And for that reason, we need both: one to love, and one to betray.”
There was quiet for a long moment. She knew Kier was looking at her, but she did not look back until he cleared his throat and said, “I think I know a different version of that.”
“Gods, I hope so,” Ola muttered. “That was bleak.”
“In the version I heard, she gave her heart freely, as a promise to return.”
Grey felt her cheeks warm. She looked up, meeting Kier’s gaze. “Who told you that version?”
“Mom,” he said.
“Hopeless romantic.”
He shook his head, but he couldn’t hide his smile—the dimples of his cheeks were dark in the dying light of evening. Mom had heard that version from Imarta, Grey knew, who had heard it from Grey herself. And both versions were passed from Grey’s own mother, who decided which version she would tell based on how well behaved Grey and her brother had been that day.
There were other stories after that, but Grey didn’t participate in the telling. It was too easy to slip, to say something she wasn’t supposed to know. That night, when she and Kier went on watch, she looked out into the valley below and thought of the remains of the temple that went down with Locke, dedicated to the goddesses of love and betrayal—or of love and devotion, depending on who was there to make an offering. Retarik, Locke’s goddess of forgiveness, was also the goddess of devotion, the first of the named mages.
She hadn’t thought about the temple of Retarik, she realized, in many years. It was partially intentional, since the temple had been repurposed into a festival hall—the very same hall where the Isle had met its end.
Even that made her sad: there were so many things on Locke, so many details, and she was the only one to hold them, to go on remembering when everything else was lost.
She hadn’t believed in the gods, not really, even though she’d been named for one of them: Gremaryse, the goddess of the sea. Sometimes, she wondered if that was the only reason she survived the sea that night after Locke burned, if it was her namesake pushing her further and further toward Scaela’s foreign shores.
She tucked her knees to her chest, thinking of the ruins on the edge of the Ghostwood, looking out at the sea. Alma, her mother, was named after the other character in the origin story: Kitalma, the first well, the patron goddess of Locke.That, Grey thought bitterly, hadn’t been enough to save her.
In Scaela, there used to be more monasteries and altars devoted to Locke’s gods, but half were destroyed by Eprain and Nestria, who held no respect for the Isle’s superstitious ways. Grey herself had only been to one altar on the mainland, the one in Grislar, dedicated to Kitalma. She’d gone there to think and stare out at the sea, but most of all, to ask the goddess if the burden of her blood could be taken from her. If Grey, the last of her daughters, would be blessed with the mercy to forget.
They found the abandoned remains of an old shepherd’s cottage as the dark bled through the sunset. They were dotted all over the hills in this part of the country, out of season, closed up for the year. Kier inspected it thoroughly by magelight, repeating the process he’d gone through with the one they’d stayed in two nights before, though that one had been far nicer and less shack-like.
Grey stood in the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her, leaning into the power that flowed through the tether. She’d used so little of it lately, Kier only drawing from her when he was making magelights or clearing brush or seeking heartbeats in the path ahead: it left her feeling restless and overfull, to keep her reservoir of power so high.
He moved carefully through the two little rooms and up to the loft. The floor was half rotted, glassless windows looking out over the valleys that spread below. It might’ve been nice, once, she thought. Scraps of cloth hung from the bars over the windows, and she could just barely see the cheerful blue floral print. There were the ashes of a hearth near one wall, the chimney open to the dark night. It might’ve been cozy. Quaint.
She leaned against the wall, watching as Kier examined a patch of writing on the arched doorway between rooms. There was just something about looking at him. She’d never get tired of the familiarity ofhis shoulders, the shifting hazel of his eyes. He had his hand against the wall now, that ring from his brother shining dull silver—how many ghosts they carried, the two of them—and she imagined, aching, what that hand would feel like on her skin.
“What are you thinking, Flynn?” Kier asked, voice soft. She realized he was pulling from her, the tether showing more than she wanted. It happened, sometimes, that her emotions came through without her pushing them.
“Just, somewhere like this would be nice, maybe. In the hills. Away from it all. When we’re retired, I mean.”
He looked over, the corner of his mouth tugging up. “We’ve been living on top of each other for years. You’re not sick of me yet?”
“Never,” Grey said before she could think better of it. “And I wouldn’t even make fun of you if you brought a whole league of cartographers to your bed.”
