Page 61 of The Second Death of Locke
She gave him a long look. If she did not trust him, they would’ve been dead a long time ago.
There was no sign of movement when they went out the door and shut it behind them. She had the impression of the artificiality of the night’s stillness: no birds flew; no small creatures rustled in the grass. They went three paces from the door and stopped.
Grey faced Kier, watching the wind whip the stray curls over his forehead, tug at the bottom of his coat.
“If we live through this,” she said quietly, “I want to bring back Locke.” She knew, with gripping certainty, that there was very little chance she would live through this.
The corner of his mouth tugged up, half scar, entirely hers. “I’ll meet you there,” he said.
Something moved in the grass beyond them. There was a signal, then an increase in the rustling. They did not have much time. Grey drew a breath, but she did not look away from her mage. Inside herself, she felt her own power, and she reached.
It was always meant to be this, she could see now, looking up atKier and watching him look back. The two of them together, dying like this, so close that years from now, someone would come back to this place and find their bones locked together.
She wondered idly, on the edge of death, what had happened to her brother’s body.Severin, she thought.Severin, how could I ever forget you?
She leaned forward before she could lose herself, already feeling the tugging in her middle. She pressed a hand to Kier’s cheek to steady herself, then pushed to her toes and kissed him, once, her mouth to his in a move that was almost chaste. It was the only goodbye she could manage.
She broke away—and one of his hands was at the small of her back, pulling her hard against him. His hand found her hair, his fingers spearing through, thumb sweeping across her temple. Kier kissed her,properlykissed her as he never had before, and her heart ached with everything she would never have.
Maybe he did know. Maybe, after all this time, this was the one consolation he could give her.
He looked at her when she pulled away, brushing the hair from her forehead. “Power in bravery,” he murmured, the motto of Locke.
He held his hands out, palms up. Grey placed hers on top of his, feeling the certain exchange of a closed circuit, of her power flowing into him and growing, growing, growing. She took all of the feelings that made her more powerful and swallowed them, not caring if they traveled through the tether. She faced the adoration and the devotion and the love, the jealousy and the agony and the longing. There was not a single word she could say to him to encompass it all, sixteen years by his side and the devastation of not having more.
She forced herself to focus on the pulsing well of power in her middle. She stretched and stretched, reaching, finding the other pulses surrounding them—and shepulled.
There was a gasp somewhere, then a cry. Another shout. Kier’s eyes flashed open—the irises were not quite hazel, glowing in the gold that emanated from their palms—and there was another yell, too close, and he said, “Grey—”
She felt the power sliding loose from the wells around them, thecries of horror as all were drained and left barren. It was too much, filling her as she pulled harder, stripping them, leaving them as defenseless against Kier’s magic as common typics.
She took all of that power and pushed it at Kier.
The tether in her middle pulled taut, so tight she thought it would cleave her in half. She gritted her teeth against the pain, tears squeezing from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks. She hadn’t remembered how much it hurt, to take so much power into herself, to pull it from the root.
It was like being drunk, to have so much at once, to command it.
“Take it all,” she said.
Kier listened. Grey felt the power leave her in one fierce swell even as more rushed in to replace it, and then there was more screaming, louder, from all around; she thought she was screaming, too, and maybe even Kier.
Grey detonated.
She was on her knees in the dirt. There was blood in her mouth. There was blood in her mouth and she was not quite down because there was something there; something had caught her and held her as the screaming around them cut off sharply.
Severin’s hands on hers, bruise-tight—
There was nothing left. She was an empty vessel, lowered to the ground on her back. She stared up at the night sky for an immeasurable moment, choking on her own blood.
She felt it in her stomach, the shift of power, the moment her mother died—
Power in bravery. Grey’s vision flickered, and she was only half aware of the voice calling her name. Quietly, she slipped away.
interlude
ON THE ISLE OFLocke, night had only just fallen when the ship arrived at the harbor.
In the old days—which really weren’t that long ago at all—the child of the Isle who wasn’t selected to inherit married based on letters and furtive meetings and discussions of the exchange of power and renewals. Such was the fate of Lady Wren, sent to Nestria to marry the week after her eighteenth birthday; such was the fate of Locke’s aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles. Choice, their mothers and fathers always taught them, was an illusion. Though those on the mainland or in the villages could court and engage in dalliances and marry for want, that was not the role of the Isle, nor the role of its family.
