Page 132 of The Second Death of Locke
Kier was out of bed before the squire was fully out of the room. Even though he slept in Grey’s room most nights, they’d had the foresight to keep some of his clothes here; he pulled power from Grey and lit the room with a magelight as he quickly dressed.
She sat up, letting the blankets fall. Groggily, she found a sachet of his contraceptive herbs in the table by his bedside and took a measure of them dry. If they survived this, she would have to see Leonie about a more permanent measure.
“Are you going to the war room?”
“Yes,” he said, fastening his trousers. He poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on his dresser; she accepted it gratefully. “Then onwards from there, I suspect.”
She nodded. She would be needed in the war room, too; then Kier would go, and she would stay, and she would feel every single second as an hour.
He came close as if reading her thoughts and dropped next to her on the bed. He cupped her chin in his hand. “I won’t fault you for leaving the fortress, for fighting, if that’s what you choose.”
“I haven’t decided,” she admitted. Then, “Are you afraid?”
“Petrified,” he said cheerfully. He rested his forehead against hers. Then, haltingly, he said, “Locke will not fall again, Grey. I swear it to you: there will be no second death.”
She brushed her knuckles over his cheek, feeling the drag of the stubble on his jaw. “I trust you,” she said.
He leaned in to kiss her tenderly. There would be no further timefor goodbyes, in the war room, in front of the other sovereigns and their military leaders. “Please don’t die again,” she whispered when he broke free.
She felt his smile against her lips. “And miss my chance to make myself insufferable? I think not.”
He kissed her once more, and then he was gone.
You are not, in any circumstances, to abandon your mage. Without you, they are as good as dead.
Wielding Power, Volume 1: Third Edition, revisedPD
thirty-two
THEY WERE ONLY INthe war room long enough for the lookouts to give their reports before the commanders left to direct their forces. Kier bowed his head, kissed her hand and said a gruff “My lady,” and then he was following Scaelas and Reggin and Dainridge into battle.
Without her.
Ola and Brit were already in the field. Eron, still injured, had been ordered by Leonie to stay away—and that meant he was assigned to stay with Grey.
She kept a thought on Kier, feeding him power as he moved down the Isle. He sent her a swell of reassurance and love and the promise that he would be back soon.
“Well, Locke,” Cleoc said when the war room was clear of all but her attendants and Eron. She nodded to the padding Grey wore, the same she would wear under her armor. “Are you going, then?”
Grey chewed her lip. “Would you think less of me if I told you I still haven’t decided?”
Cleoc’s sharp look softened. Grey wondered, then, how old Cleoc was: old enough to have Sela, but she didn’t know much beyond that. She didn’t even know who she had been before she carried her nation’s title, or how long she had had it.
Cleoc turned to Eron, offering him her arm. She started out of the room; Eron, confused, went with her, followed by Cleoc’s attendants. “Let me know when youdodecide,” she said breezily. “Though it would disappoint my daughter if you died. She is quite taken with you and the commander both.”
Grey stood blinking in surprise. It took her a second to realize why Cleoc had taken Eron with her: Cleoc suspected that he would stop Grey if she did something ill-advised.
She was halfway up the stairs to her room when she felt the tug on the tether. She pushed power at Kier without thought; immediately, she felt the carnage as he began to wield his magic.
She stopped at her rooms only long enough to secure her armor and grab her father’s sword and strap it to her hip. Then she was racing to the tower, pushing her way through the door as pinpricks of death continued to erupt all over the Isle. She felt every one like a blow.
Gasping, she grabbed the edge of the crenelation and looked out.
There were hundreds of soldiers on the beaches below Osar. That was what she noticed first: how the fighting congregated there, how she could see the orderly lines of the bodies even from here. There was more fighting in the harbor as boats landed, spilling forces into the town. Just past the harbor, one of Eprain’s ships burned with blue fire, downed by one of Cleoc’s mages.
She knew, in some distant way, that they’d been prepared for this. That this was exactly what they’d expected. But she also knew the awfulness of battle, and she could not stay here in the fortress while others were dying for her.
No one took any notice of her, in the mess of it. She slipped through the Ghostwood like a wraith, only stopping to drive her father’s sword through a Luthrite mage who would’ve otherwise cut her down. She’d memorized the path Kier was meant to take, and she tried her best to follow it. She was gripped with a sudden, awful fear that he was going to die, and she would be nowhere near him.
