Page 123 of The Second Death of Locke
“Yes.”
“And my father’s Hand, before he married my mother.”
Torrin looked away. “Yes.”
“Did you love him?”
“Not in the way of you and your commander,” he said, considering. “But in my own way. As, I suppose, we all do.”
Grey nodded. That she could understand.
“To lose you would be like knowing his death all over again,” Torrin said quietly. Behind them, the fire was crackling low in the grate; soon, it would be only embers. She did not move to prod it back to life.
“I am not yours to lose,” she said, but gently this time.
“I know,” Torrin said. “That doesn’t make it easier.”
Kier barely stirred when she finally came down from the tower, where she’d been pacing and watching the sea. She found one of his shirts, exchanged her own clothes for it and slid into bed. He immediately turned, pulling her against his chest.
“You’re cold,” he said against her shoulder, adjusting her so her back was flush with his front, his legs pressed to hers.
“I wasn’t ready for sleep,” she admitted. “Did anyone question you, when you came to my rooms?”
“No. You have no guard. The others went to sleep hours ago.”
“Oh.”
He pressed a kiss to the space under her ear. “Was he very disappointed? Scaelas?”
“No,” Grey said, unable to fully account for the lump in her throat. She laced her fingers with Kier’s and pulled his arms even tighter around her. “He told me about my father.”
Kier was quiet for a moment. “Perhaps it’s a good thing,” he said, “to have some part of him. Of his memory.”
Grey nodded. “Perhaps,” she said. But she lay awake in the dark for a long time after that, thinking of her ghosts.
Blood of my blood, soul of my soul, thine hand is over my heart. When you ache, then shall I ache; when you perish, then shall I perish. What is known to me is known to you. Let me not break this troth.
Verse 27,The Holy Verses of the Isle, often used in rituals of binding and marriage
thirty
IT WAS DECIDED THATScaelas and Cleoc would provide enough soldiers to keep the Isle and hold it until they could force a surrender from Epras and Luthos—or until Grey could find some other way to assert her dominance over the nation’s power.
Judging by the growing number of Eprain’s ships circling, waiting for a sign of weakness, Grey understood that the latter option was the desirable one.
While Scaelas and Cleoc went to speak to their advisers, Grey left the planning in the war rooms to her commanders and went to check on how preparations were progressing. Kier sent a pulse of reassurance through the tether as she left the room; she ignored it.
One of Cleoc’s attendants waited for her in a side room. She curtsied when Grey entered. “Your majesty,” she said. “Please accept this gift, from my nation.”
Grey crossed to the heavy wooden trunk and opened it. Inside, she found a number of rich, dark fabrics in shades of black and gray and navy with a few flashes of ivory silk. She sat back on her heels—it was the wardrobe that Sela had commissioned. On top, she found a letter, sealed with a modified Stratan crest pressed into the wax.
“Thank you,” she said to the attendant, forcing herself through speechlessness. “I am immensely grateful to you, your nation and your lady.”And its daughter, she thought.
After the attendant left, she opened the letter.
My fearsome Lady Locke,
I am not allowed to join you on your Isle, and I am not as brave as you—you, for certain, would’ve found yourself a place on one of those ships, forbidden or not. I hope you do not think badly of me for my weakness.
