Page 26 of The Second Death of Locke
“I don’t care,” Kier said. “Based on what you’re saying, this mission is a death trap. We have a target on our backs. Luthar, Cleoc Strata, Eprain, all after us? Nestria will be there too, I imagine. They’ll all be just as savvy as we think we are. For all I know, there are soldiers waiting for the minute we set out from camp. If I make it—ifwemake it—we’re not coming back.”
He was so good at this, but under the table, he gripped Grey’s hand. His was clammy with sweat, and she realized that despite his posturing, he was terrified.
Attis stared him down, grim-faced, for another full minute. Finally, she opened one of her desk drawers with an angry clatter. Mare’s eyebrows were drawn together, furrowed, her thin-lipped mouth twisted in a pucker of surprise.
Grey watched as Attis conspicuously wrote a note on fresh parchment. She finished, read it over twice, folded it, and sealed it with wax and the stamp of her office.
“If you live through this,” she said, holding it out to Kier, “you are free to go.”
Kier squeezed Grey’s hand hard enough to bruise. With his other hand, easy as anything, he took the missive and handed it to her. She tucked it serenely in the inner pocket of her cloak.
“Pick your team,” Attis said. She was an unusual shade of red—and Grey almost felt bad for her. If she wasn’t sending the pair of themon a suicide mission with a girl who’d just stabbed Kier (and who was also pretending to be Grey), she would find some measure of sympathy in herself.
But Kier was right. Attis was only agreeing because the likelihood of them coming out of it alive or fit for service on the other side was… slim.
“Hand Ola Et-Kiltar. Brit Wyvern. Officer Eron Fastria.” Grey sent a wave of approval for choosing Brit and Ola—they were a strong pairing, and they’d seen the blood. They knew what the girl was capable of. Grey had figured Kier would want Chappelle over Fastria, but Chappelle would probably take over command in his absence.
Mare noted the names, chewing on her lip. Grey resisted the urge to stick out her tongue and shout,I told you so. I told you we were different.
“I will notify them. You leave as soon as preparations are finalized. Report to the infirmary for assessment.”
Kier nodded, thanked the master and finished with a salute. They were halfway out when Attis called, “Seward.”
He turned, one hand gripping the cloth to hold it aside. Grey lurked in the shadowy path between tents.
“It’s not always easier,” she said, “to be free of duty.”
“Not everything is about duty,” Kier said. Something odd flickered across Mare’s face—maybe she disagreed. Grey had one fixed image of them, the two women who’d spent more time together than any Hand and mage she had ever met, who she could never really understand.
“Freedom does not guarantee you the world,” Attis said mildly.
Kier smiled, the move not quite reaching his eyes. “I would choose freedom over anything, Master.”
Attis inclined her head, both allowing for Kier’s words and dismissing them.
Grey waited until they were halfway to the infirmary before she said, “You didn’t have to do this for me.”
Kier didn’t look at her, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Who said you had anything to do with it? Each assignment chiselsaway more of my beauty.”
“You were never beautiful to start with.”
“That is a bold-faced lie, Flynn.”
It was. She didn’t care. There was something clawing up inside of her, and it felt an awful lot like happiness. She pushed power toward him, a blaring supernova of it, so much that he stumbled and nearly took a knee in the mud.
“Gods and seas,” he muttered, rubbing idly at his chest. “I can feel every heartbeat in the camp when you do that.”
She pushed him a bit more, just to be an ass.
“Don’t celebrate too soon,” he said. “We’ve got to survive this first. And figure out some way to keep our hand firmly concealed.”
“With your unchiseled beauty on the line,” Grey said, “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
They entered the infirmary to find three assistants and a healer Grey didn’t know manning the ward. “Where’s Leonie?” she asked before she could stop herself, earning a sly grin from Kier, who knew nothing about anything.
The healer stood, curtsied and said, “Doing paperwork in the back. She asked for a moment undisturbed.”
“But—”
