Page 135 of The Second Death of Locke
“I can’t do that,” Grey said. “Tactically, maybe it buys us time, but realistically, it’s a nightmare for—”
“It can be temporary,” Alma said. “Take it. Get what you want. Give it back.” She turned, gripping Grey’s hands in both of hers, her gaze as fierce as Grey had ever seen it. “Live, little bird. It’s all we’ve ever wanted for you.”
Grey drew a breath. They were nearly to the cemetery in the Ghostwood, nearly to the old temple. She let Alma lead her through the graves to the altar, the same one she had seen Kier’s body on as she’d bargained with the goddess.
“Reach for it,” Alma said.
Grey felt for those thin strands of light. She felt, very keenly, the threads of magic tangled in a web over her isle, the tethers held and caught and lost and dropped, the snuffed-out deaths of wells firing all over. She felt them on the sea, in their boats; she felt them far, far away, across Scaela and Luthar and even Nestria, as far as her power could reach. She felt each and every one, the hearts and fear and joy and love and hate of thousands and thousands, all touched by her power.
How many of them had died for her? How many were yet to perish?
Ruthlessness, Sela had reminded her, was its own kind of safety.
Grey swallowed, tasting blood in her mouth. She had the feeling her time here was winding down, and she needed to come to some decision—a decision that would save Kier, and maybe the other people she loved. Maybe even herself. Too slow, her hand came to her side, pressed to the place the sword had been drawn out, as if she could hold her life inside that wound.
“Okay,” she agreed. “Show me how to do it.”
Alma led her to the altar. She helped her onto it, helped her lie down—even in this in-between, she must’ve been worried about Grey’s strength failing—and clutched her hand. She taught her how to reach with her power, how to sense the allegiances, how to read the intentions in each of those threads en masse.
“And now,” she said, when Grey had them all. “Now, you take it all back.”
Grey felt the tethers in her stomach, the thousands and thousands of them belonging to those who fought for her death, and she snappedthem all at once. It was oddly easy to separate them, those who had clamored to her shores to bring her down—easy as if she was looking at a map of multicolored forces, like the ones Kier presided over in her war rooms. She took the power, all those thousands and thousands of threads, and shepulled. They clung to her, a cauterized wound.
She gasped, arching at the pain of it. Alma’s hands were there to catch her, to soothe her, as she screamed at the agony of it all rushing back.
When she could feel again, when she could see past the pain, she was lying flat on the altar slab with her mother standing over her grim-faced. “It’s done,” Grey said, her voice hoarse from screaming. “And now?”
“You have a choice,” Alma said.
Grey closed her eyes. She was growing quite tired of choices. “Go on,” she murmured.
Alma reached forward with a kerchief, swiping the blood away from Grey’s forehead. “You could come with me,” she said softly. “You could stay with us.”
Grey didn’t trust the softness. Her mother had been many things, but she had rarely been soft. She caught Alma’s hand, lacing their fingers together. Alma squeezed as tight as could be, as tightly as Severin had held her on the night he gave his life for hers.
Grey opened her eyes. “You don’t want that,” she said.
“Part of me does,” Alma replied. “No one else knows what it is, to be Locke. The weight of all that power, of all those choices—you could give it up. Set it aside. Let those fools reap the consequences of what they did to us—what they’re still doing to you. Aren’t youtired, Maryse?”
Shewastired. She was exhausted, actually. Tired of running, of fighting, of sacrificing.
“There is another who could carry the line, thanks to your devotion,” Alma said, her gaze on Grey’s face. “Leave him the Isle. Leave him his life. Come with me and rest.”
Kier. Grey chewed her lip, looking away. “And my other options?”
“Go back and face your fate—but I cannot guarantee you will survive it.”
She closed her eyes. That was it, wasn’t it? If she was here, she was already on the edge of death. What her mother offered her wasn’t a kindness, but rather an illusion of choice. “I’m as good as dead already,” she guessed.
“Unless you have a very talented healer and a lot of luck,” Alma said softly, “then yes.”
“And the battle?”
She looked away. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can only hope it is enough, what you have done. If you go back, you are not returning to any guarantee of victory, or peace.”
Grey nodded, taking this in. “Were you afraid? When it was over?”
“Of course I was,” Alma said. “But being afraid is better than being hopeless.”
