Page 37 of The Second Death of Locke
The tavern keeper, when she appeared, was a bracing woman with a crooked nose and three fingers missing on her left hand. Ex-soldier, Grey surmised, based on both the missing fingers and the sword bolted to the wall behind the keeper’s head, a twin to the ones Grey and Kier wore across their backs, except hers was mutilated and bent out of shape from some long-over battle.
“My companions and I are passing through. Do you have any rooms?” Kier asked in his soft, pleasant voice, the one Grey internally referred to as his “charm the pants off your mother” tone. It had worked, unfortunately, on more than one mother and at least one father, though she could not confirm or deny if all had affinities for mapmaking.
The keeper eyed them shrewdly. “What’s the nature of your journey?” she asked in a voice sharp enough to cut glass.
Kier doubled down, leaning his arm against the counter, that smirk working up on his mouth. “I’ve just been honorably released,” he said, not clarifying—there was only one profession that someone could be released from in Scaela. And though Kier was too young by far for release unless he’d been seriously injured, not all career-ending ailments were visible. “My wife”—he put an arm around Grey and dragged her against him, and she ignored both the way her heart tripped at the title and the way he said it—“and her sisters and their families—we’re resettling. Looking for a patch of family land left in the mountains.”
It wasn’t an unfamiliar story. Many a family estate had been abandoned when the children were sent to fight. Not all of them lived to return.
The innkeeper regarded them for a long moment. It made Grey uncomfortable, but the woman probably just didn’t want to rent rooms to bandits, only for them to steal anything not bolted to the floor. She supposed this place had few other travelers.
She tried to look as innocent as possible, leaning further into Kier. His arm tightened around her.
The innkeeper nodded and opened a drawer full of keys. “How many rooms?”
“Two will do,” Kier said, probably because he couldn’t sayonewithout her asking questions about how six adults would fit into a bed. “We’re not rife with resources at the moment.”
Another lie. Grey had seen the bulging mass of coin Attis had given Kier before their journey. They certainly had enough for three rooms—they had enough for each to have their own room, Sela included, but Sela had to be watched at all times, and someone had to stand guard, which would not work if they were split up.
Grey sighed, because Kier was a liar. Two rooms or not, she doubted he was going to let them split up: they were going to squeeze six adults into one bed and she just fucking knew it.
Once they had their keys and the tavern keeper was getting food and drink for everyone, Grey looked up, letting her nose skim the stubble of his jaw—he didn’t usually like to go unshaven, and seeing him like this now, five days into an almost beard, was positively novel. “Thrilling plans for the evening, husband?”
When he laughed, the sound hit her right in the stomach. He adjusted his arm around her waist, slipping it under her coat to pull her fast against him. He pressed a kiss to her temple that was mostly the vibration of his mirth against her skin, and because she had no sense at all, a shiver of excitement fluttered down her spine. “I suppose you could tempt me.”
She rolled her eyes, pulling away before she could let her bruised, crumpled little heart believe him.
The tavern keeper returned with two pitchers of ale and a stackof glasses, saving Grey. She took the drinks back to the others and distributed them while Kier stayed behind to ask about the best places to get supplies, listening as the woman described the path to the next village over. Grey tried her best not to look at him as she settled into her seat, pretending to be interested in Eron and Ola as they debated the relative merits of knuckle guards over gloves.
She sat back, one hand around her ale, and forced herself back into sense.
Flirting wasn’t new. Theyalwaysflirted. And Kier was the kind of person who required affection for everything: when they were alone, he was always catching her hand or pulling her feet into his lap or rubbing her shoulders or sitting at her feet with his head on her thigh, and they barely went to sleep at night without him pressing his lips to her hand or her forehead or her temple. But that’s how he was. How he always had been.
Beyond that? Nothing. He had always been her right hand, the other half of her, her best friend, the person she knew better physically and mentally than anyone else, and it was clear in every waking moment that he was just as dedicated to her. This was just… this was the line they didn’t cross.
It wasn’t as if they spoke at length about their other dalliances or the nights they spent away from one another. It was just, sometimes he went out after sparring or a late-night patrol and came back in the small hours of the morning, hair wet from washing, and she forced herself not to say anything and was careful not to tether to him then in case any jealous emotions slipped through. She kept it for the light of morning, when it was easier to heckle him without her true feelings escaping.
It was just, she couldn’t fault him. It was so good to feel alive, to feel someoneelsealive with them when they were so often staring death in the face. Between his rank and his annoyingly undeniable handsomeness, he was never short on offers. And she’d done the same, though not as often, sneaking off with someone like Leonie or a Hand from another company in the brief spans of time when she was certain Kier wouldn’t need her, infrequent as those were. She just couldn’t separate her heart from it unless she was desperate, but whenshewasdesperate, it was almost easy. There happened to be, to her surprise and horror at sixteen, alotof fucking in the army.
It was just, she wondered. He knew every single thing about her except for that clawing, desperate want. He knew the span of her power, the feeling of her vulnerability, her true name. And she wondered sometimes (more often than she’d ever admit to anyone, let alone herself) what it would be like to be with him.
And Grey was a liar too, because she longed for him. Endlessly, immeasurably, ceaselessly.
She pushed those thoughts away as Kier came closer, but it was like trying to beat back the rising tide. When he sat next to her, his leg casually pressed to hers, she actively considered death as an alternative.
Usually, it was easier to bear. It was the retirement looming, she decided; once they were no longer forced to be together, where would that leave them?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of food, and silence settled over the group as they ate their first non-beige meal in days. Grey was rather proud of herself for not making any noises of contentment over the thick stew and warm bread, even though the tender meat and potatoes seemed to melt against her tongue. It was far superior to their diet on the road of Eron’s gruel and Grey’s sneakily ingested dried fruit and strips of salted fish.
“I’m a disaster,” Eron announced, sighing.
Ola said, “Generally, or…?”
He sat back, groaning, hands on his stomach. Grey had also eaten too much too quickly. She adjusted, but that just pushed her further into Kier’s side, so she decided it was easier to settle with the discomfort for now. “Give me a new task. Reassign me,” Eron was saying. “I can’t cook for you.”
“That’s why you’re a soldier, not a cook,” Brit said. Grey kicked them under the table—they were not soldiers, not here.
“You didn’t give us much of a choice,” Ola muttered.
