Page 24 of The Second Death of Locke
She wasn’t even fully certain why she’d come. The idea had popped into her head earlier, intrusive as a migraine, as she’d gone from bed to bed in the infirmary. But part of her wanted—no,neededto see her. The girl who claimed to be Grey herself. The girl who’d tried to kill Kier.
Maybe it was a sick sense of curiosity—perhaps if she got close enough, she’d be able to feel the truth of this girl. She could not be Maryse of Locke, so she had to be someone else. All Grey could wonder waswho.
Silence stretched between them. Grey tried to maintain her cool composure, tried to look like a captain herself instead of an exhausted girl who’d never fully come into her own. The prisoner didn’t even look that much younger than her, and Grey felt every one of her twenty-four years as a decade.
The girl’s eyes didn’t stay on Grey’s face—they flicked to the knife at her belt, the hilt of her sword at her hip, the glint of the golden pin over her left breast that signified her rank.
“You’re the well,” she said finally. “I can smell the power on you.”
Grey’s lips curled into a grim, vicious smile. Wells could notsmellthe dormant power of others. Even Locke herself could not do that. The girl was trying to intimidate her.
In an instant, her dagger was under the prisoner’s throat, her hand in her hair. She would not kill her—even knowing what she knew, she wasn’t willing to riskthat—but she needed her to have a healthy amount of fear.
The girl looked up at her, breathing hard through her teeth, eyes wild with fear.This is why, Grey thought,you don’t play games you can’t win.
“Then you know,” she said. “You know what I’m capable of. What he’s capable of through me. And I swear to you—if you try to harm the captain again, if you raise one finger against him, I will kill you. I don’t care who you are. To me, you are nothing.”
You’re threatening achild,Hand, Kier would’ve scolded. But Kier wasn’t here.
The girl whimpered. Grey released her and stepped back, blending once more with the shadows. Before the prisoner could collect herself, she turned on her heel and went out. Her palms were slick with sweat; her teeth chattered with pent-up power. She wished she had Kier to tether to, but it all fizzled out of her, unused and wasted, unsatisfying.
Back in her tent, she stripped down to her shorts and vest and threw her clothes over her bedroll. It would only be a matter of hours before she was in them again. She kneed Kier over and crawled into his bedroll, barely big enough for him, let alone both of them. Kier made a low noise in his throat at her cold hands pressed to his skin, eyes flicking open wearily.
“You can’t die on me,” Grey whispered, tucking her face firmly against his neck. His arms encircled her out of muscle memory.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured into her hair, still half-asleep.
She lay awake for a long time like that, his fingertips stroking thelong line of her spine, her fingers digging into his shirt. Their legs tangled together until she was no longer certain whose limbs were whose.
“Promise me,” she whispered. “Make me an oath.”
“I don’t think that’s the kind of—”
“I promise on your name, Kiernan Trevaine Seward, sworn Locke. As I am your Hand and your power.”
He pulled back just enough to see her face. “Are you okay?”
“Swear to me.”
He grabbed her hand from his chest, knotted their fingers together. “I promise on your true name and your taken, Gremaryse Pellatisa Carnelion Masidic Locke, sworn Seward, Grey Flynn, that I will not die on you.” He pronounced every syllable carefully, breathed directly into her ear. She shivered—they hadn’t sworn an oath since their binding, and it was the first time she’d heard his name in proximity to hers. “Happy?”
Grey dropped her head to his shoulder, seeking comfort, and nodded. It was easy, in the dark, to let herself be convinced.
I fear writing these words, but it is impossible to ignore: my magic is… restricted. Waning, even, if I should be so brave to say so. I keep hearing rumors, and I must be honest with myself, even if I cannot admit it to anyone else: I think our very magic may be dying. Mare has never before felt so weak to me.
Journal of Master Klara Attis, 3 monthsPD
eight
IF GREY EVER HADto see Attis’s office again, it would be too soon. This time, they both sat at the desk, Grey across from Mare, Kier across from the master. The map from the other day was replaced with a new, even smaller one—they were always replacing maps on this assignment. With the constant push and pull of territory between the port and the encampment, it was a necessary evil. According to Kier, cartographers were the best bedmates. Grey had never tested that theory herself.
The map itself focused on eastern Scaela, showing the routes from the southernmost point, where they were, all the way up and across the mountain passes, between Luthar and Cleoc Strata, toward the Bay of Locke. She scanned over the path, trying to recall places they’d been along the way. Moving north, back toward the village where they grew up, the land turned from dense forests to scrubby volcanic cliffs and thin trees, then sparse mountains speckled with gorse. By the sea, it became brown-green cliff grass and pebbled beaches rising up toward slate cliffs that looked out at the bay.
Scaela was a kinder place than Locke, she always thought, though the terrain was not so far removed. Sometimes, when she was at home in Leota, the seaside village where she and Kier had grown up, shelooked at the dark cliffs of the shore and imagined them even rockier, sharper, like the place where she was born. They called Locke “the Obsidian Isle” for the way its sheer black cliffs rose against the sea, and there was nowhere else like it in the world.
“You were previously in Grislar, is that correct?” Attis was saying, running her fingertip along Scaela’s indented coastline. Grislar was the base twinned with Scaela’s capital city, Easlar, but it was still perilously close to Luthar’s border—and also their closest assignment to Leota.
“For nearly a year,” Kier said. He frowned down at the map. “It’s a little late in the season to be crossing the mountains.”
