Page 116 of The Second Death of Locke
Neither of them commented on that.
His eyes slipped shut. He hadn’t untethered from her all day, and she realized that she didn’t feel quite so ill. Perhaps that was the problem of Locke, too: it didn’t ache so much when she had someone to share it with, when she had some way to direct the power rushing up through her from the Isle. “Can I?” he asked, flipping his hands palm up, resting on their knees.
“Yes,” Grey said. She laid her hands flat on top of Kier’s to close the circuit. He hummed, low in his throat.
“This will take some getting used to,” he said. A shudder rolled through his shoulders, down his back. “I don’t know how to control this much power,” he admitted.
“Better figure it out,” Grey murmured. “We might be here for a while.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. He leaned forward, just enough to steal a kiss before rocking back down.
“Can you ward some rooms?” she asked.
“Of course. Grey—if it’s too much, we don’t have to stay here. We could find our own place to settle, once everything is calm.”
They couldn’t. The Isle was the only thing keeping Kier alive. The words were on her lips, but she could not say them.
She shook her head. Besides, this was her birthright, her home, the place she had raised with her own blood. It was all she had left of her family, of those who had died for her sake.
“Then we’ll stay,” he said.
“It’s not a cottage in the hills,” she said mildly, “but perhaps it would be good to retire here.”
He laughed, sounding so well and normal that she felt the shadows fleeing the deepest caverns of her heart. “I think we’ve retired fromretirement,” he declared. He pushed to his feet, offering her a hand, and Grey was quick to follow. “Give me a tour of our new home, and we can ward all the rooms you want.”
In a middle floor just off the tallest tower, she found a suite of rooms that had been unoccupied for ages, with a bedroom in the rounded turret that looked out to Scaela. She threw open the windows to let the sea air clear the room of stuffiness as Kier lit a fire in the grate. Grey found clean sheets and made up the bed, barely tutting when Kier straightened her corners.
“There’s a free room down the hall,” she said, hesitating, “should you want it.”
He raised a brow. “I can take it officially,” he said. “But if it is all the same to you… I’ll stay with you.”
“Then it can be yours officially,” Grey said, the corner of her mouth lifting.
There was no further consensus needed. She pulled on a thick winter shirt from the chest of drawers, full of old things; Kier found a rattling jar of tooth tabs in the small bathroom as they prepared for sleep. He drew the curtains, as dark had not yet fallen: the world was still misty and white, unchanged.
Kier set the pale golden magelight above the bed as they crawled in. She draped a leg over his hip—his hand went to her thigh, gripping tight.
She wasn’t sure what reminded her, if it was his grip or something else, but she felt the ring around her thumb. “This is yours,” she said.
“Mm.” He bent to kiss her hand, the ring on it. “Keep it.”
“But it was Lot’s.”
“If I’m to be your commander, I face too high a risk of degloving,” he said solemnly. “Has no one in the army told you?”
She swatted his shoulder. “Are you not even afraid? We might be at war tomorrow.”
“We’ve been at war our entire lives.”
It was true, but this felt different. It washerbanner,hernation,herwar—and she didn’t want it.
“I want peace, Kiernan,” she said, running her fingers through the too-long hair that curled over his ears.
“I’ll do my best to get it for you,” he murmured. “I’ll do my best to get you anything you want, Locke.”
Grey turned this over. “What if I don’t know what I want?” she whispered.
She had to tell him. The words were there, if she only just said them:You died, Kier. You died and I fought the gods for you, and you’re not even really living now. What would you choose? What would youwant?
