Page 51 of The Second Death of Locke
And to his credit… The horror was prickling and insistent. Shehad a memory tugging from some distant past of running her fingers over the name in cursive, flicking up the accent on the e. She remembered the shape of it in her father’s voice, his hand caught on her mother’s waist as he said,There’s a letter on the desk for you. Naudé—the new Cleoc—sent a proposal—and she was again on the island, again watching the wind through Severin’s hair; and her mother was leaning over to kiss her forehead before bed, the cold silver of her necklace skimming over Grey’s nose; and her father was carrying her up to the tallest tower of the fortress, up and up and up, and she sat on his shoulders as he pointed at the different masses of land and said,Look. You have to know them all, Maryse. You have to understand them all, and determine who you can trust.
“Eron,” Kier said, “you know that name because the Naudés are the High Family of Cleoc Strata. And if my incomplete knowledge of political inheritance is correct—which Ireally fucking hopeit isn’t— Sela is the First Daughter of Cleoc Strata, heir to our enemies.”
Sorry it’s been so long since I last wrote. We’re on the northern coast, near Cleoc Strata. Being so close to the sea has me feeling tense. I don’t think Kier has noticed, thank the gods. I don’t want him to worry about me with everything else going on.
Letter from Hand Captain Grey Flynn to Imarta Flynn, undated
Grey has been having nightmares again. They don’t wake her, but her fear keeps me up at night.
Letter from Captain Kiernan Seward to Imarta Flynn, 14 yearsAD
thirteen
“BRINE AND BONE,” OLAswore, the first to recover. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
But Kier was already moving. “Look. Let’s chat on the road—we’ve stayed too long. Pack your things. Brit, you and Sela will ride.”
Over the years, Grey had become very good at compartmentalization. That was the only reason she was able to launch herself up, finish tidying the room and pack her bag and Kier’s, don her new gray coat and stand ready at the door without utterly falling to pieces.
The First Daughter of Cleoc Strata. She couldn’t wrap her head around it, couldn’t understand—how? Why? How had she even ended up as Luthar’s prisoner, and did they also think she was Maryse of Locke, or did they know the truth?
And, uncomfortably, Grey understood better than anyone what it meant to be the lost daughter of a nation. She realized all over again, with a sick sort of desperation, what would happen to her if that secret got out.
She sent a pulse of worry down the tether. Kier answered with his own tentative comfort, but it wasn’t strong enough to be believable.
Her mage actively relaxed when they were back on the road, the inn fading into the distance behind them, the mountains loomingahead. Sela and Brit rode the horse Kier had acquired, Brit’s arms framing the girl in a way that wasn’t fully restraint but wasn’tnotrestraint.
“Captain,” Ola started, but Kier said quietly, “Wait. There will be time. I want to get out of here.”
They continued in silence, Kier shushing them any time one of them got anywhere close to probing the matter. The captain kept his own counsel, chewing on his lip, clearly preoccupied. Grey glanced up more than once to find him looking at her sideways, his expression unreadable.
But he did not confide in her. Grey did not know what to think of that, of all things.
She focused instead on the walk. The scenery changed as they wound up into the foothills, from forest to grassy hills, then rocky paths with cliffs that rose up and up. They kept to the trail now, Ola pausing every so often to peer at the map and the compass, sometimes consulting Kier. It grew colder, too: Grey’s breath came in great puffs, and she was grateful again for her new coat. She buried her fingers deep in the pockets, thumbs tracing over the bits of lint and coin left behind by the previous owner. Her sword clinked against one of the straps of her bag, more sensation than sound, and she lost herself in the monotony of it until Kier said, “Okay. Let’s eat and talk.”
She stopped. Brit pulled the horse to a halt, too; it snuffed gray-white clouds of breath and pawed at the rocky trail. Grey didn’t know its name. She reached to gently run her hand across the beast’s nose, damp with the condensation of cooling breath.
Brit and Sela slid down, and Kier took the reins. He nodded to a rocky formation to the side of the path. They sat in a loose circle, waiting, as he tied the horse to another rock near a patch of grass so it could graze. Eron distributed their afternoon helpings of cheese and dried fish. Finally, Kier seemed to come to some decision—perhaps he’d been wrestling with it all day. Grey felt the tug on the tether as he siphoned, the pop of her ears as he shielded them.
“Sela,” he said. “I have two questions. Why does anyone think you’re Maryse of Locke? And how did you end up Luthar’s prisoner?”
The girl kept her head down, chin to chest. Grey remembered thefirst time she saw her, bundled and tied up in that carriage. She felt an uncomfortable stirring of pity.
“I was staying with nobles in Lindan, getting my education.” Lindan was on the continent, and like all other continental powers, it stayed far out of the warring within Idistra. They did allow children to journey to the continent for safety, though, particularly those from the noble families. One of the Lindle universities had offered Severin a place, back when there was peace, but since Grey was still a child, he could not leave the Isle to accept it.
“Nicer than here,” Brit muttered, nudging a rock with the toe of their boot. Grey took in their pallor, even paler than their usual alabaster. She made a mental note to give them a draft for pain relief before they moved again.
“I don’t know why I did it,” Sela conceded. “Homesickness, maybe? I… I feigned illness and slipped out of my lessons, went to the harbor and boarded the first ship I could find that was going to Idistra.”
Despite herself, Grey reached over and took Sela’s hand. The girl looked up at her, eyes big and glassy with tears.
“We all made bad decisions at fifteen,” Grey said evenly.
“Speak for yourself, Flynn,” Ola muttered.
But this seemed to strengthen Sela ever so slightly—or perhaps she, like Grey, was just happy that Ola no longer looked murderous every time Grey spoke. “I wanted to come back. I knew it was foolish. I didn’t care.”
“Does anyone know you left?” Kier asked, arms crossed. That scar on his lip was tugged down, making his frown deeper on one side than the other.
