The Second Death of Locke (The Hand and the Heart, #1)

by V.L. Bovalino

He never used too much of her, no matter what she said, and that was the truth—however much he needed was just as much as she was willing to give.

I suffer and I suffer, and yet. And yet, you ask me to suffer still?

it’s clear you’re not just obsessed with him. He’s as devoted to you.”

“He would die for me,” she said. He would desert for her, at least, which was a death sentence in itself. “Undoubtedly,” Leonie said in a voice that made it very clear she didn’t see that as a positive trait.

Think of Hands as devoted hounds. The handbook encourages “healthy respect,” yes, but it often appears more as obsession. A good Hand will do everything in their power to protect their mage, murder included. It would be in your best interest to encourage your own Hand to take a path of mercy and sensibility rather than retribution. You do not want to be on the receiving end of their fiery anger, nor should you wield it without careful consideration.

“You can’t die on me,” Grey whispered, tucking her face firmly against his neck. His arms encircled her out of muscle memory. “I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured into her hair, still half-asleep.

“Promise me,” she whispered. “Make me an oath.”

“You didn’t have to do this for me.” Kier didn’t look at her, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Who said you had anything to do with it? Each assignment chisels away more of my beauty.” “You were never beautiful to start with.” “That is a bold-faced lie, Flynn.” It was. She didn’t care. There was something clawing up inside of her, and it felt an awful lot like happiness. She pushed power toward him, a blaring supernova of it, so much that he stumbled and nearly took a knee in the mud. “Gods and seas,” he muttered, rubbing idly at his chest. “I can feel every heartbeat in the camp when you do that.”

“That’s some Hand of yours,” she said. “She’s too good for me by half,” Kier confirmed. “At least you know it.

“If only any of them were enough to steal my heart, but I fear I’m too much a fool for that,” he lamented, his gaze lingering on her for a moment too long.

I will not risk 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.”

“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.”

They were fools when they were young: so often on the edge of death, 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.

“Not pretty enough for you, Captain?” He smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You are a vision, even with blood clots in your hair. But I don’t know if all would share my depraved tastes.”

She loved him in every way it was possible to love a person.

Her belly was warm with power, overwarm really, and she pushed a great knot of it to Kier. He made a low noise in his throat, his hand closing over her knee. “You’re making me very sensitive, Flynn,” he murmured.

Jesus

“Do you trust me?” Grey asked. He looked at her, serious as she had ever seen him. She had no idea what he could possibly be thinking when he said, “Unquestionably.”

was always meant to be this, she could see now, looking up at Kier 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 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, properly kissed her as he never had before, and her heart ached with everything she would never have.

“Take it all,” she said.

It was his hands on her heart, forcing it to beat. “I have you,” he said. “I’m not letting go.”

His heart magic omggg

“Grey, beloved, you absolute fool—if that was the worst of you, then you remain a saint among us.” He shook his head wonderingly. “And I have been trying to make you see me as more than your mage for six years now.”

“I adore you,” he said, all in a rush. “No—no. Listen. I… I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for years, maybe forever. Sometimes it’s all I can think about, and I can’t breathe because it’s so heavy on my chest that I… I might be holding it alone, the only thing about you I can’t be certain of. It’s agony, Grey, the not knowing.”

They’d kissed before—not like this, never like this, not even when he had kissed her the other day—but his lips to her lips in a move she always wrote off as chaste. After battle, when they were alone again and alive, or sometimes before bed, when he’d kissed her temple and then her mouth. He probably imagined he was stealing those kisses, Grey thought desperately, before any thoughts washed away in the overwhelming headiness of him.

Oh yeah the casual after battle kiss between friends, classic

shouldn’t keep you to myself.” She moved her hands to his shoulders. “You could, if you want.” He laughed, leaning forward to kiss her with an exuberant joy that she felt through the tether. “There will be time,” he promised.

He stroked her hair tenderly, pausing after a moment, a smile spreading across his face. “Hand,” he said wearily, “do you ever not have blood in your hair?”

Kier hadn’t been lying earlier when he accused her of having blood in her hair. She was surprised he’d wanted to kiss her, but perhaps that was the thing about love. She didn’t mind him filthy post-battle. The sweat, the dirt, the blood—it all meant he was still alive.

“You know,” he said, taking the cup and pouring a stream of cold, clean water over her hair, “I imagined telling you my feelings a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. And yet I never imagined the evening ending with your head in a bucket.” She winced. “Sorry.” “Grey, if I don’t spend the rest of my life washing gore out of your hair, then it’s not a life worth living.”

“Does this mean I get citizenship?” She crumpled one of the discarded pieces of paper and lobbed it at his head. “Only if you’re very, very good in bed.” His eyes darkened, grin twisting with something that woke the tether up inside of her. They always flirted… but never with the potential of following through. “My lady,” he said. He reached across the table for her hand, leaning to raise it to his lips. “I look forward to the opportunity to prove myself.”

Since his declaration the other night, she’d developed a new personal obsession with all the ways he touched her during the day, the casual affection that remained unchanged from before, now heavy with meaning.

“I suppose I have a demonstration for the nation of Locke.”

I am TWEAKINGGG

She went out into the room wrapped in towels and shy, which was odd, because she’d just been thinking worse thoughts of him, and because they’d seen every inch of one another’s bodies in a non-romantic context already (she’d touched his intestines, for sea’s sake);

The height of romance

“I wanted to know everything I could,” he said quietly, not quite meeting her gaze. “And I didn’t want to burden you with the telling.” She leaned back against the door. “And have you learned anything?” “A million things. But they left out the part about how astonishing you are.”

“Are you always this cheeky with your lovers?” Grey swatted his chest and spun out of his grip. He caught her, drawing her back against his chest. “No,” he said, leaning down to nip at her lower lip. “I’ve never been with someone I loved before.”

Maybe nothing had changed—maybe she only noticed it more. But his fingers skimmed against her arm when he reached over her for his trousers hanging on the wardrobe, and he didn’t brush past her without a touch to her waist or a kiss to her forehead. Maybe this was how he’d always been, a delicate ballet of stolen touches that she’d written off as his insistent grease-fire need for affection. But now she was able to watch him with reckless abandon, without fear of him catching her—and truthfully, she could spend the rest of her days watching Kier doing the most mundane activities and still die happy.

She wanted to run her hands over that careful work, mess him up. She wanted to ruin him.

Cleoc shot them a look so savage that Grey made a mental note to study it later, to figure out how to create the expression on her own face—and

It was just… it was just, he was the same as always, her favorite person, her beloved person, and she could not fathom that he felt any fraction for her of what she felt for him, no matter how much he insisted he did.

She didn’t understand this shyness (hands in his intestines, etc.), but now that they were alone, she could not shake it.

“Is this more how you imagined it?” she asked. Kier laughed. “Grey, you’re a treasure beyond any imagining.”

She would not be deprived of the joy of tormenting him.

Then he was looking at her again, and the pure adoration on his face knocked the wind right out of her.

He looked at her like he hadn’t seen her skin a thousand times, every single day, in a million contexts.

“How long?” He skimmed his nose over her skin, sighing against it. “Oh, just the better part of a decade.” What absolute fools they were. All that time, and they could have been doing this.

He was so confident, so sure of himself. He’d never been with her, but he knew her, knew her better than she knew herself.

until she had no thoughts; she was a creature of want and desire and nothing more.

“I think I’ve always known.”

“No,” he said. “I always knew you were a survivor.”

“But that’s not the kind of love I want. I don’t want sacrifice.

“I already have your name in my heart, Locke,”