Page 35 of The Second Death of Locke
She didn’t bother responding. She moved quietly through the perimeter of the camp, her eyes soft and searching in the darkness. It had taken her a while to adjust to the forests of Scaela. The Isle of Locke was a scrabbly, mountainous thing, half cliff and sea spray. The trees that grew there were sparse and tall, so she could see her brother even halfway across the old patch of growth they called the Ghostwood, which separated the fortress from the Isle’s villages. Severin, seven years older than her and barely more than a boy when he died, used to take her into the largest of the villages when they had time away from tutors and lessons. She remembered holding his hand as they made their way through the scant forest, listening to the scream of the wind (on Locke, the wind was always screaming) as Sev tried his best to convince her they wouldn’t be eaten by ghosts. Sometimes they’d go off the trail, into the trees, all the way past the little creek to the circular clearing, climbing over the ruins of the temple that lurked on the cliff’s edge. That was where all Lockes were buried, all the way back as far as they went, all the way to the first well.
It hurts my stomach, Grey, then Maryse, always said when they went there. She didn’t like to go in, didn’t like the feeling of a cavern opening all the way inside of her, like it would turn her inside out and swallow her up.
It’s nice, Sev said. He liked to raise flowers there, when they went, and little saplings that bent to him. It was the only place on the Isle that she could remember being rife with color, from Sev’s flowers. Everything else was unchanging, steely gray, from the sky to the stone of the cliffs to the angry expanse of the sea.
Far off in the distance, depending on where they were on the Isle, they could see Cleoc Strata or Scaela or Luthar or Eprain. There was only one bit, far up in the highest reaches of the Barrens, the part of the Isle uninhabited and covered by rocky cliffs and thin trees, where they could look out and see nothing but sea.
That’s where I want to go, Sev said.
Where?
Anywhere but here.
She hadn’t realized, when she was only a girl, how difficult it had been for Severin. In the tradition of the Isle, the heir to the title and its power would not be declared publicly until all children in consideration were fully grown. Until that came to pass, all eligible children were kept on the Isle for their own protection, apart from closely guarded diplomatic journeys. With seven years separating Grey and her brother, he had a long time to wait before he could officially either take up the role of Locke or leave the Isle and its customs behind for her to rule.
They never made it that far. The heir to the Isle was never revealed. On the mainland, it was assumed that Severin was the true heir, that he would inherit; after all, in the rest of Idistra, inheritance followed the right of primogeniture.
In Leota, there hadn’t been much more in the way of forests. Cliffs overlooked the stony beach, and the rest was seagrass and scrubby old rock. She remembered the long ride to the training camps, her arm pressed to Kier’s in the convoy as they wound toward the mountains, further from Locke than she’d ever been before. They stopped to stretch their legs and they were in the middle of a wood, trees stretching on either side and high above, so thick and dense that she worried they’d all fall in on her.
But now she’d been everywhere, seen every terrain Scaela had to offer. Forests were no longer unfamiliar, and she found she liked them. There was something peaceful here that she’d never found by the sea—she could move through the trees without her heart in her throat.
For years, she looked at every single view, forcing away that awful thought that Severin had never gotten to see any of it. That he died only really knowing the Isle.
Grey eased into the monotony of the watch and the pain of her own unceasing guilt, scanning the forest ahead, moving every so often. Her sword was drawn, but there was no need to use it.
When her joints were just beginning to ache, she heard a stirring in the wood. She searched for the source and saw Kier cutting through the brush before her. He slipped the note back to her, stub of graphitewrapped inside.
“Switch,” he said. Grey nodded and moved away. At her new post, she checked the note and frowned.
The girl’s shoulder joint is unfused
MEANING? EXPLAIN LIKE I’M A CHILD
There was no point in saying she’d talked him through this process hundreds of times before purely out of boredom. Kier had not lived her life, her training: he had not been brought the bones of lost villages like she had; he had never been asked if there were children among the dead.
Twice more in the deep hours of night, they switched positions and notes. When Grey’s eyes were heavy, she gripped the tether between them and sent two pulses of exhausted power in Kier’s direction. She felt an answering two pulses and turned back to camp.
He caught her just outside the clearing and handed her the note. She skimmed over it.
Like a child: shoulder ball fuses to arm bone. Full fusion happens in late teens. The girl has too big a gap. Her bones are too young.
WHEN DID L GO?
16 yrs
IT’S ALMOST YOUR BIRTHDAY
She looked up at him, gaze steely. “That’s not the point.”
Kier shrugged. He took the note back, and with a fine twist of his fingers, the paper burned in a quick, flameless burst and crumbled to ash.
“She was probably a baby when Locke disappeared, if she was alive at all,” Kier said quietly. “You got all of this from, what?Bones?”
“Mm.”
He sighed.
“To be discussed,” she said, turning back toward camp.
