Page 142 of The Second Death of Locke
Grey stayed still as a stone, the grief like a vise on her heart.
“I will never go to Lindan, to see what their magic is like, or Nisielle, or even Nestria,” he said slowly, “or anywhere at all.”
“No,” she said slowly, swallowing down her own tears. He was silent for a long moment. The wind whipped his too-long hair.
“You’re not going to try to run?” Grey asked.
He snorted. “I’m dead the second I leave the Isle, Grey, and your gods won’t give my life back twice.”
She chewed her lip. They had not spoken much of the decision since that night, before the battle; any time she brought it up, Kier just sighed and told her again that they were choosing the only viable option. It was not a small thing, to give up his freedom—and though they both knew why the choice had to be made, it hurt her deeply. “What if you get tired of me?” she asked.
“I won’t,” he said, his voice softening.
“But what if youdo?”
He sighed, long-suffering. “Then I’ll die, I guess. Or you can go away and leave the Isle to me.”
“You’ll never have space away from me.”
She saw the flicker of the curve of his smile, disrupted by his scar. “A burden, to be sure, but I will bear it.”
“I’m serious.”
“As am I, Grey.” He shifted, folding around her, bringing her to sit between his legs with her back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her; it was much warmer buried with him in his heavy cloak. “You’ve already fought death and your gods for me. I would do the same for you, though let us hope it doesn’t come to that.”
She was quiet for a long moment. It wasn’t fair at all, what he wasdoing, what she was making him do. But perhaps love was a little bit of sacrifice, after all; and perhaps a bit of sacrifice could be allowed, as long as they were together.
“Kier,” she said.
“Yes?”
She found herself suddenly without words. So she gripped the tether, pushing as many warm feelings of thanks and love and adoration at him as she could. She heard his sharp indrawn breath; then he was burying his face in her hair, his lips pressing to the crown of her head, then her temple, then her neck.I love you. At the end of it all, I love you, she thought at him with every emotion she showed him.
“As do I,” he promised.
You would like him, I think. He would sacrifice the world for her— I suppose we all would, in the end.
Journal entry from Vearn Torrin, High Lord of Scaela, addressed to Isaak Masidic Locke, in memoriam, after the resurrection of the Isle
thirty-five
THE WIND WHIPPED THROUGHthe Ghostwood, screaming in the trees. It was a sound Grey knew as well as the beat of her own heart: so many years, she’d tried to recall the timbre of it, to recollect the background noise of her childhood.
She wore a heavy cloak, fastened at the throat, with the hood pulled up to obscure her face. It wasn’t often that people came to pray at this abandoned altar, but if anyone did, she did not want them reporting that the Lady of Locke and her commander had been seen here in the dead of night.
“Stop fidgeting,” Kier said to her. “You’re making me anxious.”
She was only shifting her weight from foot to foot, standing before the moonlit altar, but she tried to school her body into obedience.
“Are you not afraid at all?”
Kier grimaced. “If I think about it, it means acknowledging the fact that I might anger your god, who holds my life in her hands. So really, I’m trying to avoid thinking about it at all.”
He was kidding, but the truth of it made Grey’s stomach feel like it was full of heavy stones. She reached out, crossing the gap between them to take his hand. “She made no mention of your behaviorfactoring into the deal,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Which is good, for obvious reasons.”
Kier didn’t answer. He was looking straight ahead, at the altar. It looked more like a tomb—and Grey suspected it was, the stone container the final resting place for Kitalma’s bones. She wondered if Retarik was laid there as well, or if she really was interred in her own ruined abbey across the Isle. If the gods had been separated in death, by some mortal’s choice.
Kitalma’s temple had fallen into disrepair too. The wall behind the altar, which once held thick glass windows, had half crumbled into the sea at some point during the reign of one of Grey’s ancestors. Now, they looked at the roaring waves and the spray that kicked up as the waves crashed against the cliffs. It was a rare clear night, and the moon shone over the sea, casting Kier’s face in shadowed silver.
