Page 47 of The Second Death of Locke
“I’ve requested medical dismissal on your behalf. Go home, Grey. Don’t come back.”
“Kier—”
“I’ll send my wages. Stay with our mothers, and when I can leave my contract, I’ll come.”
She didn’t care who saw. She gripped the back of his head, vise-like, and drew his forehead to hers, nose to nose. Her hair was lank and greasy, falling in her face, but he just pushed it back like always. He was always so careful with her.
“You would be so much safer,” Kier said, “away from me.”
“Don’t ask that of me.”
His hands were at her waist, gripping the coarse fabric of her shirt. “He stole your power, Grey. I can’t even think of that kind of violation without getting…” She heard the anger rising in his voice. He took a deep breath and continued, “He knew who you were,whatyou were, when he tethered. I willnotrisk you again. The things I wish I could say to you…” He caught himself again. “Losing you, living without you would be a fate worse than death.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t think of it, of the invasion of that other tether. It made her sick to remember it. “I don’t… I can’t. It’s just, with the tether as it is, it’s so slippery sometimes. It’s hard to manage. Hard to grasp. Because there’s you, and then sometimes the power goes elsewhere in offshoots, and I can’t hold it in battle—but Kier, if it wasjust you, if I could guarantee that…”
He’d gone very, very still under her hands. “You want to bind to me.”
She chewed on her lip. They’d spoken about it before, on otherassignments that hadn’t felt so life-or-death—to bind oneself to a single mage, to limit power like that, was so dangerous… but it changed the quality of magic entirely. She could give him so much more, and he’d be able to take with abandon. There were other rumors, about the power of a bond: they’d be able to communicate without words, pushing feelings along the tether. It wouldn’t feel like a fraying rope between them, but like a strong tie, a knot.
But.
If they were bound, she wouldn’t be able to use her power on another mage—those tethers would be closed to her unless Kier died. And he would never be able to use another well. His tether would only work for her, would only seek her. It didn’t matter ifshedied—he would only ever be able to use her. If she died before him, in battle or in age, he would never be able to do magic again.
He leaned back, cupping her face.
“You can’t want that.”
“It would be a protection,” Grey said quietly. “For me.”
Kier studied her face. They both knew what she could not say, not in public: to bind to her was to bind to Locke.
“You’d really do it.”
Her voice was fierce, insistent as she laced her fingers through his. “There’s nothing I want more. Only you, Kier. No reassignments. No retraining. Bind to me, take what I have. Let me be your Hand in earnest.”
“And what about you?” he murmured.
She squeezed his hand. “Never ask me to leave you,” she said, voice cracking. “Use my power well. Protect me. It has always been this; it has always been us. Let it be us until the wars end or we find our deaths—whatever comes first.”
When she was out of the infirmary, alone in their little lean-to—it was the first assignment they weren’t in one of the long communal tents, and she was absurdly grateful for the privacy—they sat together on the floor, cross-legged, knee to knee. It was a binding of blood and power, true name to true name, and when he took the name of Locke into his heart, she swelled with such great power that the magelight between them glowed pure, warm gold.
They were fools when they were young: so often on the edge ofdeath, so desperate for someone else to fall into the chasm alongside them, as if the reaper’s teeth would not gnash them to nothing as long as they remained together.
She kept watch by herself as the sun rose fully over the not-so-distant mountains. No one came down the road by the inn. Eventually, she felt a hand on her ankle, gently rubbing the knob of her bone. She looked down to find Kier’s eyes open.
“We have to keep moving,” he said quietly.
Grey glanced around. No one else was awake yet. “I don’t know if we can move Brit. I need to assess.”
Kier sat up, rubbing his face. “There’s a farm close by. I’ll see if I can buy a horse. The faster we move on, the better.” He didn’t say they’d already been loitering there too long. If one group of spies had already found them, the rest weren’t far behind.
He leaned forward, resting his forehead on her thigh. She stroked his hair. “The innkeeper,” he said quietly. “What would you do with her?”
Her hand paused, his hair like silk against her fingers. She knew what her mother would have done: the last High Lady of Locke had a reputation for ruthlessness, to match the bloodlust of their ancestors. The best option, the safest option, was to kill her.
But right now, Grey’s stomach turned at the thought of more blood. More killing. Another life on their hands, the life of someone who had not done her any harm.
“Drug her again,” she said. “I can make something—it will make her ill for a few days, but it will leave the memory clouded.”
