Page 13 of The Second Death of Locke
“You’ve got to try harder than that.”
“Unlimited access to my shirts?”
Grey shrugged. “I could be convinced,” she said finally. The answering smile on his face was utterly dazzling.
I have received further reports that the Isle is gone entirely. There are no survivors. I have seen the empty bay with my own eyes, and though it has been days, no bodies have washed ashore. It is reported that the High Lady, the Lord Consort, and both children are dead, along with their court.
More personally: I am so sorry, your majesty. I know what they meant to you.
Letter from Commander Finnegan to Scaelas, 2 daysPD
four
KIER DIDN’T DIE ONthe walk back to camp, which was a small miracle in itself. Ola and Brit half-dragged him, mostly unconscious by this point, into the medical tent. In a side area, Leonie, the lead healer at this camp, waited for Grey. Leonie’s dark curly hair was piled on top of her head, stuck through with a pencil to hold it in place. She wore a deep blue healer’s apron over her black dress, pockets stuffed with gauze and tools and herbs.
“You’ve looked better,” she sighed when Grey walked in.
Grey frowned at her. “And you look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“Only two,” Leonie said. She came close and helped Grey unbuckle her armor, laying it piece by piece on a cloth-covered table. “You’re filthy.”
“Thanks, love,” Grey said.
Leonie’s fingers lingered for a second too long on Grey’s waist, working at the leather buckle that clasped her breastplate on. Grey took a shuddering breath, finding an odd comfort in the steadiness of Leonie’s hands, the coolness of her brown eyes as she scanned Grey over quickly. “None of this blood is yours?”
“The captain’s,” Grey said crisply, stepping away. She recounted Kier’s idiocy as she wiped down her sword.
“Should I begin without you?” Leonie asked, gathering instruments on a tray after Grey finished reporting the extent of Kier’s injuries in a measured, emotionless voice. “Or delay? Surely an hour won’t make a difference. You look—”
“No.” Grey took the three packets of prepared nutrient-dense sludge that Leonie held out, cursing the mages who formulated this shit years ago, cursing herself for needing it, then cursing herself again for not washing off first—the mud added flavor of the worst variety.
But she had to replenish her power in whatever way she could, as quickly as possible.
When the sludge was gone, swallowed in uncomfortable gasps, she fought her way out of her padded shirt, then pulled her soaked undershirt and vest off too for good measure. Naked to the waist, she did her best to ignore the chill of the air as she washed the dirt and blood away from her skin. Every muscleached: from battle, from carrying Kier back, from her depleted stores of power. She sluiced mud away until the water rolled clean down her chest and arms, then washed once more for good measure. Finished, she pulled on the clean shirt Leonie offered. The pair walked through the flap of fabric that led to the back of the infirmary.
An assistant had already stripped Kier, washed his wounds and rendered him unconscious with a cloth soaked in an anesthetic herb blend placed over his mouth and nose. They sat by his head now, carefully monitoring his breathing. She noted the dark streaks pooling under his eyes, the remaining crust of blood on his cheek, the crookedness of his nose under the damp white cloth—but she’d worry about setting that for him later.
“The captain has left his last words,” the assistant said quietly when Grey entered the room, and Grey very nearly threw her out in a fit of rage even though it wasn’t the assistant’s fault that Kier was such an absolute disaster.
But it was good to feelsomething. Strong feelings, anger and rage and desperation, made her power replenish faster. She felt the swell of it crawling from somewhere in her lower belly.
Good. She needed it.
“He can tell me himself,” she muttered, glaring at the folded piece of paper, “when he’s awake.”
There was no further argument to that. Leonie set the instruments out for Grey as she slipped into a set of sterile gloves and surveyed his injuries. She had six years of putting him back together under her belt. It was her duty to do it yet again.
She took him in, the slope of his pectoral muscles, the shadowy peaks and valleys of his ribs, the scar from yet another near miss over his heart.
She turned her attention to her own well-being. Her power was moderately replenished—she cursed the sludgy porridge, but itwaseffective—but this could be a long one. Her inspection of his wound revealed that the blade had gone in through his lower intestine, so she had to deal with any contamination to ensure the wound didn’t go septic.
She laid her palm flat on his chest and focused. The power came slowly at first, an exhausted trickle. But that was all she needed. She felt the strands of him in her fingers, the tether between them tightening.
She took a thin blade and opened him up.
She had fixed him up after battle more than once, but Kier was usually better behaved than this. She’d only really been wrist-deep in him thrice before: once after a mage from Cleoc Strata with intriguing internal capabilities tried to turn his spleen inside out, another time when he’d been stabbed in the stomach by a soldier from Eprain, then the final chest wound from a Hand after he’d killed their mage. All of these had left her utterly terrified, anxious with every move that she’d fuck up something inside of him permanently.
She’d had so much experience with internal surgeries, but when it was Kier she was working on, Kier under her hands… it was like all her training turned to sludge in her brain, overpowered by the realization that despite the fact he was beloved, he too was just meat.
