Page 64 of The Second Death of Locke
“I am dismayed to hear he could not accompany his niece,” Locke said. Maryse watched her mother’s hand on her wine goblet. The silver seal ring tapped against the metal as she lifted it to her lips.
Something was wrong. Unlike Maryse, Lockeneverfidgeted.
“As is he, I assure you.”
Locke inclined her head.
Maryse shifted in her finery. She did not like the look in hermother’s eyes—there was an anger there, simmering just below the surface. It was like when Maryse did something she wasn’t supposed to in front of strangers and Locke had to keep her temper and not scold her until they were alone. Maryse was very happy, in that moment, that the look was not directed at her.
“You’ve brought quite the force,” Locke said. “Especially for a second meeting.”
The knight said nothing.
The girl, ignored until now, made her way toward the table and bowed her head to Severin. Severin inclined his as well, not as low as formalities would deem appropriate, but enough to acknowledge. Maryse saw her brother’s hand by his side, clenched into a fist.
“Did you get my last letter?” the girl asked, her voice low and sweet.
“I did,” Severin said. Maryse did not really understand what they were talking about. She’d seen her brother blushing as he read parchment in the keep’s library, but he always folded the papers and pushed her away when she came close.None of your business, he said when she asked what he was reading. He spent long hours in his room after the letters started arriving, his fingers stained more and more frequently with ink.
He was so nervous that his voice trembled. Maryse looked at him with something like wonder as Severin reached out to touch the girl’s face, his own expression softening. Locke herself did not look at the couple; neither did Isaak. Both stared straight ahead as if daring their court to comment.
“How was the voyage?” Severin asked quietly.
The girl opened her mouth to answer—just as bells started outside. The tolling, Maryse knew, was the sound of alarm for when all other enchantments of warning failed.
Outside the hall, there was a shout. Maryse, paying attention again, felt a great wrenching inside her stomach as the drugs outside began to wear off, as she sensed the desolation unfolding across the Isle without their notice.
A ripple went through the crowd. Maryse heard someone shout, then Locke was on her feet. “Guards!” she shouted.
Maryse tore her eyes from Severin—there were people falling allaround the room, mages crumbling, wells standing shocked. She saw one of the girl’s soldiers turn, plunging a sword into someone’s stomach.
Severin moved so quickly that Maryse missed it. One moment he was standing still with the girl at his arm; the next, his dagger was through her heart, and she was falling to her knees before him, shock clear on his face.
Maryse stood watching, jaw dropped. For all her lessons, all her poisoned pearls and boots full of knives, Severin had been learning his own rites of protection over the Isle and his sister.
Severin had learned not to hesitate.
“Take her,” Locke said urgently, moving around Severin to Isaak as he rose.
Severin grabbed Maryse, his hands still slick with blood. It took Maryse a moment to realize she was sobbing, great racking cries tearing from her throat. Sev shushed her as he fled through the kitchens with her in his arms, then down a back passage into the cellar. There was another stairwell down that way that led to the sea—but when he wrenched the door open, they were greeted with a wall of flame. He slammed the door, coughing from the smoke.
He hesitated, and they both heard the boots on the floor above them.
“I thought you loved her,” Maryse cried, unable to make sense of it all. Upstairs, someone shouted—one of the cooks.
“I love you more,” Severin said fiercely. He set her down in the dirt and paced, pulling at his hair. “I just—Retarik’s bones, this wasn’t supposed to happen. What do we do? What do wedo?”
Maryse flinched when Sev swore on the name of the gods. She sat, her knees pulled to her chest. Upstairs, she could feel the push and pull of magic; she could sense the wells being extinguished like flames. She could not make herself reach for her pearls, nor her knives—not when she wasn’t alone here, not when Severin had escaped too, not when it was actually happening.
“Is Locke living?” Severin asked, dropping to his knees in front of her.
She reached out—she was not good at it, unpracticed still, but she pressed. She tried to sense her mother in the battle above. There wasa great flame in the middle of it, but it was waning.
“Yes,” she said.But not for long, something whispered in her mind. Severin must’ve read the look on her face.
He gripped both of her hands. “I cannot protect you from this,” he said. He held her face, pressed her close to kiss her forehead. “Don’t be afraid, Maryse.”
“I’m not.”
