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

by V.L. Bovalino

If one cannot protect their master, their mage, they do not deserve to hold power.

She slipped into place behind him. For his part, Kier’s shoulders relaxed when Grey was there, if only a fraction. In the practiced pose of mages and their Hands, their wells, their power, Grey rested her own hand on Kier’s left shoulder, fingers curving so the tips just barely grazed the line of his collarbone, her thumb the merest inch from his skin over the collar of his cloak. Submission and protection. Fealty and power, all in one.

They’d known each other so long, grown into each other like roots of neighboring trees rather than neighboring children until Kier was so intrinsically tied with her understanding of magic that she sometimes had trouble separating the two.

“No,” she said, feeling him resist the tether. “Take it. Siphon from me. Take it all—don’t you fucking look at me like that.”

The relationship between a mage and well can be complicated enough, based on the delicate balance of power, without emotional entanglements entering the equation. For the best working relationship, it is recommended that the pairing remains as close as is necessary for trust, but otherwise avoid any feeling more powerful than friendly respect. Mage’s Codex, Fifth Edition, published 4 years PD

My love is yours, as that which beats within my heart is yours, and that which powers the fabric of the world is yours through mine own hand. Take from me, that I may be thine. Binding ritual recovered from Locke, author unknown, date unknown

it was like all her training turned to sludge in her brain, overpowered by the realization that despite the fact he was beloved, he too was just meat.

“You look like shit,” Kier said. “You’ve got your eyes closed.” “So I don’t have to see you looking like shit.” “Unfair. I’m the reason you’re alive.” “Doesn’t change anything.”

Binding was foolish and forbidden, and the military didn’t care about the value of sacred acts or devotion. It was a shame they’d been forbidden from doing it. It was an even bigger shame that they’d disobeyed that order years before.

Kier made a small noise, a half-sigh. Grey interpreted it as one of his favorite lines, reserved for when he was ill and she asked him to do the bare minimum, like eat: I suffer and I suffer, and yet. And yet, you ask me to suffer still?

“Trying to save me?” she snapped, turning back to face him. His cheeks blazed with color, his eyes alight with anger. They fought so rarely that the effect was something to be savored. She wondered with a fierce swell of desperation if this was what he looked like in other fits of passion, then pushed it away immediately—that was a thread she couldn’t bear to untangle.

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.

He was a light sleeper, but perhaps he was immune to noises as long as they were hers.

wife do that,,

It was just, she wondered. He knew every single thing about her except for that clawing, desperate want.

“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.”

It 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 looked up from her bucket, wet hair dripping day-old blood down her face. “I’m a lady,” she said primly, “in every definition of the word.”

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.

The thinnest thread of her power caught, and it held. She pushed as much emotion his way as she could: love and apology and fury and relief, as much as she could muster. She was so busy pushing that it took her a moment to realize that the only feeling Kier was sending back was cold, hopeless dread.

It was awful—because it was Kier, and for the first time in her life, he was unfamiliar to her.

“Don’t fucking do this,” she snarled, rolling him onto his back, pressing his chest in a measured pattern, as if she could force his heart back to beating. “I won’t love you if you do this,” she said, her throat thick with tears, forcing the lie through her lips. “You can’t make me love you if you’re just going to…”

It’s a gift, Grey—it’s an inevitability, in some ways, that all I am would be yours.”

Thank you for your ruthlessness, Grey. It is its own kind of safety.

His hand tightened on the mantel, knuckles going white. “Why must you always sacrifice yourself, and call that love?”

Everything I have is yours. Everything I am is yours. Take my freedom, and keep your power, and keep my life. If you are here, I want to live. Even if it requires haunting this godforsaken rock for the rest of my life, never being more than an hour’s walk from you at any time—because, honestly, that’s how we would be anyway.”

You are not, in any circumstances, to abandon your mage. Without you, they are as good as dead. Wielding Power, Volume 1: Third Edition, revised PD

Her answering smile was hot as live steel.