Page 49 of The Second Death of Locke
“Ah, because you have no power left, do you?”
“Fuckinglistento me,” she snarled.
Ola did not respond. She only glared at Grey with a ferocity that made her oddly sad—but she listened. Grey sensed the tether as it took, felt the flow of magic from the well into the mage. She could not give Brit her own power, but she was still a Locke, still a daughter of the very place where the power took root.
She sensed the fiber of the tether—like all other times, she found herself wondering idly how other mages and wells could cope with such a slippery, unstable connection; she’d grown so used to the thick knot of her tether to Kier—and nudged it. She directed the wealth of Ola’s power to the wound in Brit’s stomach, pushing it to bind the meat of them.
Brit clapped a hand over the wound, hissing, “Brine and bone, Ol,what in Locke’s name—”
“I’m not doing anything!” Ola insisted.
Grey felt the heat of infection starting in Brit—“Focus, Ola, I need more”—and nudged it to the fore. Pinkish-white pus seeped through Brit’s skin and she wiped it away, then layered on more antiseptic salve. She probed around the wound, but it was otherwise clean, and much better than it had been yesterday.
“You can detach,” she said.
Brit pushed themself up on their elbows, grunting at the movement. Ola stared at her, wide-eyed. Kier was used to the itching of her forcing his wounds back together, but Grey didn’t usually do something likethatunless the mage was unconscious and beyond notice—but there was no point in hiding. Ola was right: they had to be honest, and they were relying on one another for survival. What was she meant to do? She would never get over the guilt of nearly letting Brit die because she couldn’t tether to them. She’d never forget the agony in Ola’s eyes when she returned to find her mage nearly dead.
If it had been Kier…
She gathered up her things and packed her kit. Before either of them could stop her, she went downstairs to find Eron and Sela sitting at a table with steaming cups of tea. Cloth-wrapped bundles sat on the table in front of them: breakfast, Grey surmised. It was dark in the tavern, the curtains pulled over the windows.
“Where’s Kier?” she asked.
“Seeing a man about a horse,” Eron said. “Close by—don’t get your nerves in a knot, Hand.”
“Impossible not to,” Grey muttered. She glanced at Sela. Though she knew the girl had slept, her face was still pale and drawn. “Are you okay?” she asked, softer. She realized Sela wasn’t wearing her cuffs, but with one mage down and Ola untrusting of Grey’s power, she couldn’t find herself surprised by it.
“I think so,” Sela said. It was unconvincing.
Kier returned a short while later, smelling of the cold, and soon Ola was helping Brit down the stairs too. They assembled around the table and… waited.
“We need to go,” Kier said.
Ola crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving until I have answers.”
Grey gritted her teeth. “You’re endangering our mission.”
Ola looked at her.So are you, she didn’t say.
Kier sighed. She felt the tug of him tethering, then her ears popped as he created a sound shield around them. “You have ten minutes,” he said, his voice sounding like it was underwater for the briefest of moments before it came back into clarity. “And then we’re leaving. We have food for the road.”
“A picnic. Quaint,” Ola said, sitting back, arms crossed—but she’d stopped glaring. “Now. Sorry, Captain, we need to talk about your Hand. And you.” She turned on Sela. “You didn’t tether to Brit either, until the very last moment. Isn’t that something you should, I don’t know,control?”
Grey drew a breath. Ola stared Kier down across the table. Brit, looking pale and caught in the middle of it, said, “If there’s information the captain deems unfit for us to know…”
“That information nearly got you killed,” Ola said. “I have just as strong a memory as your Hand, Captain. Sela might have harmed you, but your well did not tether to my mage in a time of need, and that is, frankly, despicable.”
Grey flinched, but after all, she agreed.
“What Hand Captain Flynn determines to be necessary action would certainly be my call—”
“And you’d let a magedie?” Ola said at the same time Grey said, “Kier.” He didn’t look at her, but his jaw tightened, pulsing with tension. She wasn’t sure how much she liked the beard anymore—it made his expressions uncanny, harder to read.
At least they’d given up on pretending they weren’t in the army.
Grey folded her hands on top of her reports. “There are a few things we need to discuss.”
“Either you’re a heartless bitch who only thinks of your own mage,” Ola said, leaning back even further, “or you and the captain are bound.”
