Page 106 of The Second Death of Locke
“Kier?” Grey asked, stepping forward. Her heart was again in her throat. Isaak looked over his shoulder, frowning at the place where Kier sat. Grey looked back at her mother. “Is he…?” She swallowed down any sign of her own weakness. She was Locke; she was born of these hard black cliffs and unforgiving sea. “Is he dead?” she asked, forcing herself to be steady.
Alma looked over her shoulder, her face a mask of grief and regret. “It required a sacrifice to save the Isle,” she said slowly. Grey remembered what Scaelas had told her. That they all died, so she could live.
“And it required a sacrifice to bring it back,” she said through numb lips.
Alma did not look at her. Grey felt her knees go weak; the very fabric of her world shredded around her. She stared at his back, but Kier did not turn to look at her, did not seem to hear.
In that moment, she understood the future. She would wake on this Isle, to a Locke resurrected, and she would find the bodies of her family. She would bury them. Kier’s body would be there, too; he would join her family in death as he had never met them in life.
She would be Locke restored, and all of the power in the world would be hers. She could feel it now, thick in her stomach, waiting for her to call on it.
Without Kier, she was free to tether to anyone, if she chose. She would lead the forces and hold the Isle. She would power armies.
She would bury Kier, right here, on this Isle. The thought caught in her throat—she felt for a moment like she was choking, like she’d never draw breath again.
What she would give to see his face one last time, alive. His smirk—the light that came to his eyes when he saw her. How much she’d taken him for granted.
Her breath stuttered, her heart heavy in her chest—because she could not bear it. She could not bear a future that did not include him. She could not bear to stand on this Isle, the place where everyone she loved had died for her, and was still dying; she could not bear to do italone.
But she was Locke, and this wasbullshit.
“No,” she said. She stalked across the path, across the wood, toward where Kier sat.
“What do you mean,no?”
She whirled on her mother, her father, her brother; the three ghosts gathered behind her. “I saidno. I do not accept it. I will not let him be your fucking sacrifice. You can have your power—you can have the entire Isle. But I am taking Kier.”
“You cannot just take it back,” Severin said, reaching for her, as if that would do anything.
“Then I am going with him,” Grey said, her voice catching.
“Youcan’t,” Alma said fiercely. She moved toward her daughter, but Grey twisted out of reach.
“I am Locke,” she seethed, feeling the power of the Isle rise up inside of her. “I can do whatever I want.”
“Gremaryse Pellatisa, thirty-fourth daughter,” a voice said from somewhere behind the others.
Grey’s head snapped up. She watched a figure come through the trees, wearing the old armor of the early Isle. She was utterly unfamiliar, with dark hair braided into an intricate formation that fell over her shoulders. She carried a jeweled blade in one hand. Her skin was alabaster pale, paler even than Alma’s; her lips were too red to be real.
“And who are you?” Grey snapped.
“Do you not know me?”
Grey started to say no—but she did. She was utterly unfamiliar because she was real and human, looking like flesh and blood instead of a ghost or a saint. But when Grey focused, she realized that she’d seen her face on icons and tapestries, painted on the murals of the crumbling abbey, carved into the face of the tombs.
She hadn’t recognized her because it wasn’t possible to fully capture the awful, terrifying beauty of her, or the shade of her eyes, or the deep metal of her armor, set with details of birds and ivy.
This was Kitalma, the first of the Lockes, her great-ancestor many times over.
“If you’re also here to tell me all the reasons I can’t have Kier back, I don’t care. I am taking him, and I will forsake this Isle and your power. I promise you.”
Alma winced. Grey wondered whether, if she’d grown into a woman under her mother’s watch, she’d disappoint her as most daughters tended to do.
“Hold your promises, daughter of Locke,” Kitalma said, a smirk curling on those unnatural lips.
“Please,” Grey begged, barely recognizing the raggedness of her own voice.
Kitalma’s face was unchanged. “What’s done is done,” she said.
