Page 63 of The Second Death of Locke
“Whoever comes must know the recitation of the Isle’s holy verses,” Maryse said. “And I can’t keep picking the twenty-seventh verse, just because I like it, as that makes it too easy,” she added.
“Very good,” Isaak said. He tugged on her hair. “Your ribbons?”
She turned her head, swallowing hard. Her mother had done her hair herself. Isaak ran his fingers over the ribbons and the pearls threaded through them, which really were not pearls at all. They were poison.
“And your boots?” he asked.
She got up, using her father for balance as she turned and lifted her heels, showing him one boot heel, then the other. He tapped them, checking the knives.
“And Maryse,” Severin said. “If one of them tries to kidnap you?”
She hated this question most of all. “They are not to succeed,” she said quietly.
“Very good,” Isaak said, kissing her knuckles. He stood, knees creaking, keeping Maryse’s hand in one of his. “And Severin? If you’re with her? If you are able to save her?”
A muscle in Severin’s jaw tensed. “I know what to do.”
It wasn’t the third month they came for her, or the fourth, or even the fifth. It was the seventh month, weeks before the feast to celebrate Maryse’s ninth birthday, when Isaak’s desire to give his son a choice became the Isle’s undoing.
In Retarik’s temple in Osar, now a great hall, Severin and Maryse sat at the high table, awaiting their company. Maryse hated the cold, massive hall, and she was growing so tired of these monthly reception feasts, and Severin had stolen the last of her honey cakes. She sat pouting, arms crossed, as the courtiers in front of her danced. She did her best to avoid Locke’s gaze; her mother was surely sending her a stern look to act in a way more befitting her station. To act like the heir to the Isle.
Before these monthly feasts began, Locke had so rarely hosted great dinners like this, so rarely called all the inhabitants of the Isle together for a feast—but now, seven months in, they too danced asif they were weary of the adventure.
Maryse wondered, kicking a wooden beam under the table, how long the treachery could endure.
Beside her, her brother slouched in his chair, one knee brought up to support his elbow. Their father kept darting reproving glances over at him, which Sev studiously ignored.
This was the seventh month—but it was the first time the visitor was a repeat suitor, specifically requested by Severin for a second visit.
It wasn’t a wedding, but it wasn’t an insignificant event, either. Maryse kept glancing over at Severin. He was only fifteen, but he would probably have to marry at eighteen, which wasn’t really that far away—but at least he would be marrying someone he knew. Someone he chose. If she had to marry someone she’d never met before, like Aunt Wren had to, she supposed she would be terrified. She supposed she’d want three years of awful monthly parties to prevent something so heinous.
Maybe, she thought, if Severin made his choice now and focused on courting instead of meeting, the parties could stop, or at least slow down.
If anyone was left in Maerin that night, they would’ve noticed the shimmering of shields bending around ships, and the soldiers that unloaded from them after the lady was unhanded and taken up to the temple. They would’ve noticed as the forces moved swiftly through Maerin, then the little houses between Maerin and Osar, making tidy work of anyone who had stayed behind from the night’s festivities. They would have noticed the cloying scent in the air—some drug only just discovered on the mainland, one that broke the tether between a mage and a well. One that rendered the warning system of magic between the guards and their High Lady unusable.
They would’ve noticed as the first of the houses began to burn.
In the great hall, the revelers came to a stop as the doors opened, and the citizens of the Isle melted away toward the walls, clearing a wide aisle between the doors and the head table.
Next to Maryse, Severin stopped his fidgeting. He did not look any less bored, but that in itself was a mask.
The knights came in four columns, their surcoats bearing the crest of Eprain: a boar, speared through, over a field of arrows. Whenthey reached the head table, they split apart to reveal the girl. Last time, she had come with her father, Eprain’s commander and Epras’s younger brother; this time, she stood alone. She was dressed in pale pink silk, her blonde hair braided and pulled away from her face. She seemed to Maryse to be dripping in gems, from the heavy sapphires at her throat and ears to the pearl and diamond netting that covered her hair, as if she’d been dipped in the sea and had brought the shining remnants of the deepest blue with her.
Maryse wondered if any of her gems were poison, too.
The girl dropped to her knees before the table, her head bowed. “Your majesty,” she said to Locke, a show of deference. Then, softer, “My lord.”
Locke stood. “Lady Polenna,” she replied, addressing the girl first before she nodded at the knights. “How lovely it is to see you again.”
It was a lie. The last time, after Lady Polenna left, Maryse and her mother went on a spirited ride through the forest to practice Maryse’s tethers under pressure, and at a distance.
I don’t like her, Maryse had admitted to her mother as they tore through the forest.I think she’s dull.
Locke had frowned, looking over at her daughter, and Maryse prepared for disapproval—but her mother’s eyes sparkled, and she had only shaken her head.I can’t say I disagree, she said finally.But a dull wife is better than a dangerous one.
There was no sign of that now. As usual, Locke greeted outsiders with a cool, lofty disinterest—maybe even superiority—that Maryse herself never managed, no matter how often she practiced the look and tone in the mirror.
“His Lord Epras apologizes for his absence, your majesty,” one of the knights said.
