Page 140 of The Second Death of Locke
She kissed his chest, then bit gently at his ribs. He had only recently stopped treating her as if she was made of glass, and now he kept his dark eyes on her as she slipped lower. “If there’s a party, not a single person on this Isle will need us. We could make our own plans.”
“They’ll notice if you’re not there,” he murmured, eyes slipping shut as she kissed his hip. “It’syourresurrection.”
“I don’t care,” Grey said, before demonstrating exactly what they could be doing instead.
Grey sat in the chair in her office and watched the sea below her window. Her desk was piled with correspondence. At least two messages bore Imarta’s careful handwriting—she was due to arrive from Scaela when the Isle was safer, for the feast that Kier insisted Grey couldn’t skip.
The door to her office opened. She turned, expecting one of her new cooks with questions about dinner, or Eron with a note about supplies needed for the armory, or Leonie asking for more medical provisions. But it was Kier, dressed simply, smelling of rain. He’d just come in from the cold—he was negotiating the delicate process of rebuilding the shield and setting up a static warning system that couldn’t be disrupted by breakbloom. He found it easiest to do this alone, in the ruins of the abbey to Kitalma on the edge of the Ghostwood. Grey did not examine the complicated feelings she had every day when he went there.
One more day, and then she would need to go to the wood herself and declare her choice to the goddess. One more day before Kier was no longer a free man.
He, too, had his nose buried in correspondence, and more stacked on the table he’d dragged next to her desk the week before. Though his own office was next door, he’d spent so long hunched over her shoulder or sitting on her floor as they discussed what to do, she’d just given him a space in here permanently.
It was better this way, when they could be in the same room.
“Ma wrote,” he murmured, perching on the arm of her chair. She kissed the bend of his elbow, more out of habit than anything else, though the desperate appeal of regular physical affection was not lost on her. “There was a well born, in Scaela.”
“We can’t verify it,” Grey said, leaning forward to read over his arm. “It’s difficult to detect aptitude in a baby.”
“Difficult,” Kier agreed, “but not impossible.”
“And it’s only rumor until we hear it from Scaelas.”
“Who should probably return to his own nation,” Kier said darkly. He folded his letter and tossed it onto Grey’s desk. “What are you reading?”
She sighed, waving the paper in his direction. “Requests from our new Nestrian ambassador, ahead of their arrival. It’s tedious business. Hurts my head.”
“They don’t think enough of the state of your head,” Kier agreed, bending low and somewhat awkwardly to kiss the top of the aforementioned oft-neglected subject.
“Sela wrote too. She wants to hold a unity ball in Cleoc,” Grey said.
“Ah.” The sound came from low in Kier’s throat. She felt the immediate stiffness in every line of his body. “In Cleoc?”
“Yes. But the letter came from Sela and not her mother, so.” She sat back in her chair, twisting the signet ring on her finger. “A large party, full of nobility who were our enemies only weeks ago… it sounds like an invitation for an assassination attempt. I’ve written back that we are, possibly, not quite stable enough for that yet.”
“Diplomatic to the last,” Kier said, his breath ruffling her hair.
She tugged his arm and pulled him down with her. With a bit ofreconfiguring, he’d slipped under her and lifted her into his lap. His arms wrapped around her, safe and strong as always. She watched the movement of the sea through the window over his shoulder, the crash of the waves against the cliffs below, the rising of the tide.
“We’ve received further petitions for citizenship,” he murmured against her collarbone. “It would be worth figuring out how to go about that.”
“It would be,” Grey said. Though she wanted to close off the Isle, to keep those already here, those she loved, close to her, she knew the error in that: Locke’s isolation had led to so much fear and betrayal before. She could not allow it to happen again.
A knock sounded on the door. Grey made to move, but Kier’s arms did not release her. It was inappropriate, perhaps, for the Lady of Locke to be found in the arms of the nation’s commander, but the follow-up thought to that was that anyone who’d gotten past the guards at her door (which she protested, but both Kier and Scaelas vehemently agreed she should keep them; Kier and Torrin rarely agreed, but when it came to matters of her safety, they were a force to be reckoned with) was already quite aware of their relationship.
“Yes?” she called, shifting to be slightly less entwined.
It was Leonie, bustling in with a list of provisions needed, Brit on her heels. “It’s not an easy task, rebuilding a hospital,” she said, all business, even as her eyebrow raised and her lips quirked at the sight of them.
Brit threw themself in the chair in front of the fireplace. At Grey’s look, they waved a hand. “Ola’s with her captain again,” they said darkly.
Now Grey did push up to take the list from Leonie. She skimmed over it, chewing on her thumbnail as she focused. “I’ll pass it to Ikaaron. See if Scaela can help.”
“And in return? You’re going to be drowning in favors by the year’s end,” Kier said. His eyes were shut, his arms spread on the arms of the chair, like he was waiting for the moment she sat again so he could wrap them around her.
“I don’t think sixteen years of reparations have been paid back to us just yet,” Grey said mildly. She put the list on her desk and startedto copy it down.
“Also,” Leonie said, “I have cleared Scaelas for travel. He can leave as soon as he wishes.”
