Page 133 of The Second Death of Locke
She’d been afoolto let him go alone.
She felt the tether grow stronger as she drew near the companyKier led. She almost stumbled over the first of the bodies as she entered the thick of the fighting, the smell of blood and magic and sweat mixing. A Hand captain from Eprain nearly ran her through before she raised her own sword and drove it up through their sternum. She felled three more opponents and took a hit to her side, protected by her armor from anything more than a bruise, before the battle shifted and she spotted Kier. He wielded magic carefully, cutting down a soldier in front of him even as he deflected a blow to his side with a shimmering gold shield; he called something to Brit, who fought to his side with Ola at their back.
All of his castings were gold now, she noticed with a rush of adoration.
She pushed a heavy knot of power at him. His expression shifted, concentration rippling for only one second, and then his eyes were on hers and there was a wicked smile curving across his face.
“Watch my back?” he called.
“Always,” she agreed, fighting her way to his side.
“Welcome to the party, Hand Commander,” Ola grunted, dodging a sword before Brit aimed a spray of metal pellets at the attacker.
Kier pulled another knot of power from her. She felt vital, like she would never run out of the warm, golden power. Even with each quiet explosion within her, she felt more rushing up to replace it.
“How are we doing?” she asked, in the faintest lull.
Kier made a low noise, dodging another hit. “Not as well as we could be,” he admitted through his teeth. He turned, just enough to catch her eye. “Grey, I’m glad to see you, but you shouldn’t be here.”
Her answering smile was hot as live steel. “It’s a good thing you don’t outrank me.”
They pushed back, but it didn’t take Grey long to realize that the tide of soldiers from the beach was endless and growing, and their own force of ten thousand was dwindling. With blood leaking from his newly rebroken nose, Kier angrily ordered his regiment to pull back, closer to the Ghostwood.
“Grey,” he said after a while. Her arms were exhausted, every muscle aching with the strain of keeping them alive. She was bleeding from asplit lip and a cut across her eyebrow, and she’d lost sight of Ola and Brit. “We’re losing ground. If they push us through the Ghostwood, we’ll be cut off from the other regiments.”
Grey swiped the blood out of her eyes with the edge of her surcoat. The horror of war, the blood and the bile, the fear and the hate—it was all hot on her tongue. She couldn’t remember why she’d wanted this, why she’d left the fortress at all. She watched as one of the Stratans was disemboweled, falling to his knees as his insides slipped out, slippery and red and purple. The swordsman, a Luthrite Hand, turned toward Grey with murder in his eyes.
She froze. Felt the power rising up within him, this man in front of her, who carried the power of her own nation. She felt it as it slipped down the thread to his mage, fighting a little ways away; felt it as it was directed at her. It glanced off her, because a well could not be harmed by magic, but it didn’t matter.
This was the truth of power.
She reached out, felt the power in the snarling well before her and pulled. His face went blank with shock as he reached for his power— and felt nothing.
“Grey!” Kier shouted, feeling the pull and realizing what it meant: his lady was revealed. Grey’s brain faltered, realizing that she’d pulled the power with barely a thought, like a reflex, as easily as she fed power to her own mage.
“LOCKE!”the soldier shouted, lunging toward her. Kier threw a shield to protect her a half-second too late: the sword bit into her side and pierced her armor. The soldier dragged the blade to the side to do as much damage as possible before Kier’s shield caught it, lodged in her flesh. Not even the mostly decorative armor of Kitalma could save her as she looked up at the shocked face of the man before her and saw death staring back. She only barely saw a sword cut him down as she fell to her knees.
It was like time slowed down, her very own dilation.
“Grey.”
Kier caught her as she fell, shielding both of them without a second thought. She pressed a hand to his face, leaving a print in blood behind. Her vision was crowding with dots—behind him, shethought she saw the goddess at the edge of the Ghostwood, surveying the destruction Grey had wrought on her very own Isle.
She felt the deaths, every single one. Perhaps that, too, was what it meant to be Locke: even as she felt her own heart stalling, even as she felt the weight of her soul caught in the balance, she knew the dance of the battle in the pit of her stomach. She felt it in every strong thread of power tethering her soldiers to their mages; she felt it in the broken cords of tethers as Hands lay dead and dying.
They were hers, all of them; she felt every single life on her shores. Some of those lives were familiar, like Kier’s in the center; or like Leonie, her well of power waning as she fought to keep Grey’s army alive. She felt pain from somewhere close, from someone she loved—Ola’s name flickered briefly, like a dying light, before Grey felt herself again unsettled.
She reached for them, those she loved, and there were no words that came back: only a rush of agony, the sear of determination. She felt like she was outside of her body as the lights she held inside of her flickered out one by one, as she felt the power in the Isle tightening and receding.
And above it, all around her, she looked up, and she saw him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She tasted blood, which meant nothing good for her wound.
“Grey,” Kier said, his face wavering in her vision. “Don’t—”
The Isle is not the root of power—it is in the hands of the figure Locke, not the nation. Control the person, you control the power. Kill the ruler—and, well.
Goodbye, power. Goodnight, magic. Farewell to Idistra, and all you once were.
