"Every parting is a form of death,
As every reunion is a type of Heaven."
-Tryon Edwards
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VIII.
DRESSED UP LIKE A MILLION DOLLAR TROOPER
Chapter Soundtrack: "Carousel" by Melanie Martinez
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When Inej woke up, she found Kaz's cage empty.
The door was ajar, just how they'd left it, and there didn't seem to be anything out of place with the cage itself. There were no signs of struggle, no signs that Kaz had gotten hurt; the hay that made up his bed and the deer's hide that was draped over it weren't disturbed, and the troughs hadn't been overturned.
The cage being empty, however, wasn't an uncommon occurrence, since the Demjin usually woke up before the sun did- and Inej would be lying if she said she expected Kaz to be waiting patiently in his cage for her to arrive.
Sighing, she turned and began to trek through the woods, which were outlined against an orange and yellow sky that was ever so slowly bleeding into baby blue.
Winter was slowly dying, bleeding into spring as the months gradually progressed, and though the trees still remained bare and skeletal, there were buds beginning to crop up on the branches, newborn leaves waiting patiently for spring to arrive in full so they could unfurl.
Twigs snapped and the dead leaves leftover from that year's autumn crunched and crackled underfoot as Inej strode through the empty woods, her breath clouding the air in front of her whenever she exhaled. A large and ancient oak tree loomed to her right, one that marked the way to Matthias' grave had she decided to turn at that point, and even though Kaz would sometimes linger there during sunset, he didn't usually hang around when the day was new, so she walked on.
Inej took a deep breath, smiling softly as the crisp air of the dawn filled her nose- it was still wintery enough for it to be chilly during early morning, and the only sounds that filled the air were Inej's footsteps and the occasional cries of birds that hadn't migrated south to stay warm- the ones who had already done so still had yet to return.
As the trees began to thin out on all sides, Inej's smile grew wider as the rolling hills of grass were slowly revealed.
It was Kaz's favorite place to hang around when there was downtime, like on Sundays, because it reminded him of the open mountain ranges in the Sikurzoi- with grassy lands like these usually appearing in the deep valleys between the soaring peak, though- he pointed out- the grasslands in the Sikurzoi were always dotted with elk and would never be as plain as this one.
"Kaz?" she called as she stepped out onto the sprawling slopes, where the tall grasses swayed hypnotically to a breeze she wouldn't've felt had she not seen the stalks shake. "Kaz!"
Her eyes raked over the area and she frowned- Kaz would've heard her by now, even if he'd been romping around on the complete opposite side of the field; Demjin ears were much keener than human ones.
Perhaps he was flying overhead and the wind had drowned out her voice?
She looked up, squinting against the glare of the newborn sun, but saw nothing but empty air. There wasn't a single cloud freckling the sky that day, so Kaz definitely wasn't obscured.
He's probably already waiting in the tent, Inej thought to herself, running a hand down her face as her eyes swept over the empty field once more, trying to imagine what it must've looked like when it was a flourishing farm. Yeah, he's definitely waiting in the tent.
Thoroughly troubled, she turned on her heel and trudged back through the woods, mentally going over a list of places that Kaz may be.
Maybe he'd just gone out to go to the bathroom, and had returned to his as soon as Inej had gone into the forest to look for him.
That seemed like the most reasonable answer, since Kaz has never waited in the tent for her before, but when she returned to the cage, she was shocked to find that it was still empty.
"Do you know where he went?" Inej demanded the albino lion and his lioness, who resided in the cage next to Kaz's, and- of course- only received two blank and fed-up looks from the big cats in return. "Of course you don't."
Inej spent a while waiting around the circus animal cages, in case Kaz was, indeed, going to the bathroom and would be returning shortly, but after what must've been at least a half hour, she knew that he wasn't coming.
Worry began to gnaw at her insides as the tent loomed up in front of her, and her traitorous imagination began to cook up all sorts of scenarios that she'd rather not think about.
The first thing her mind flew to was smugglers.
A few people might've thought that Kaz would make them quite the fortune if they were able to sell him, and had taken him in the night while he was still groggy from sleep and unable to fight. Kaz had told Inej that that's how he was taken the first time, and Inej began to chew on her nails when she realized that, had they not left the door open, the smugglers probably would've never been able to take Kaz in the first place.
But who was she kidding? Maybe it wasn't smugglers.
Maybe it was a group of people who thought Kaz to be evil, and had stormed the camp to take Kaz and burn him at the stake somewhere like how they did with Grisha in Fjerda. The thought made her heart relocate into her throat, but then again, had it been an angry mob of people, they most likely wouldn't've gotten past security- mobs were too loud for that.
Kaz might not even be missing, she chided herself as she reached out for the tent flaps and slipped inside, Maybe I'm overreacting and he's right here with my family.
Her hopes were dashed, however, when- as soon as she strode into the tent- her father asked, "Where's Kaz?"
Her heart rate began to pick up when she realized that, among the people clustered in the center of the tent waiting to begin rehearsal, Kaz was not one of them.
"I don't know, I thought he was with you," Inej replied, trying to keep her voice measured as she began to wring her hands in front of her. In reality, she was panicking, her imagination leaping to smugglers and to hate groups and monsters that could've dragged him away when he was still asleep.
"Did you check the field?" her mother asked gently, sounding calm, but her brows had knit together and the lines of her face deepened. She was clearly just as concerned as Inej was about Kaz's sudden disappearance.
"Of course I checked the field. It's the first place I looked," Inej replied, trying- and failing- to keep her anxiety from bleeding into her words.
"Has he gone to the bathroom?"
"I was gone long enough for him to take ten trips to the bathroom and still come back in time," Inej retorted, folding her arms over her chest.
Dread was slowly settling onto her shoulders, and she swallowed around the lump that was beginning to clog her throat. "Where do you think he could've gone?"
"You checked the grave?"
"No."
And so the Ghafas spent the better part of the morning searching for Kaz.
They scoured the forest, checking and re-checking the grave and the field, but Kaz was nowhere to be found.
The bathing pool was searched, Inej's sisters diving down to the deepest parts to make sure he hadn't drowned, and they walked up and down the river, wondering if he'd fallen in and had been swept away by the current, though that was unlikely- unlike with bird wings, Demjin wings didn't suddenly stop working once they were wet, and had he been in any trouble he could've just flown out of the river,
They didn't dare ask any of the other performers, lest they cause mass panic because of the Demjin's "escape", and couldn't call out his name when they were near the performers' tents for that same reason.
At noontime they returned back to their tent, disheartened and exhausted, and tried to figure out how they were going to break the news to Van Eck, who was most likely going to be livid at the loss of his greatest investment.
The Ghafas would no doubt be blamed, since they'd left the door of the cage open, and they'd lose their jobs, which was the worst-case scenario; it had taken a long time for the Ghafas to be able to join into a huge circus such as this one, and if they lost the job now, they probably wouldn't be able to find a new one.
"Perhaps he's been stolen," one of Inej's sisters guessed. "There are many people in the crowd who eye him hungrily when he passes, and maybe they wanted to make big bucks for selling him to some rich mercher or esteemed noble."
"What if he just wanted to leave?"
A hush fell over the tent, and all eyes went to Inej's eldest sister, who was staring down at her hands.
"What if he was tired of performing? What if he misses his family and wanted to go home?"
The rest of lunch was spent in silence, and later that day, one of Jan Van Eck's representatives came to them to inform the family that the Demjin had been sold for quite the fortune to King Nikolai Lantsov of Ravka, and that they should start coming up with an act that didn't involve the Demjin's participation.
Inej didn't sleep that night.
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Kaz hated the palace. Hated it with every fiber of his being.
Despite the soaring ceilings and lavishly decorated rooms, Kaz couldn't help but think of it all as fake, like a flashy façade that could be easily worked away to reveal the ugly thing that was hidden beneath.
Everything was always meant to be looked at and not touched or used, despite what their function may be in the outside world; Kaz had nearly made a servant faint when she found him sitting on the couch in one of the parlors, and she shooed him off with the exclamation, "You're not supposed to sit!"
Then what was he supposed to do? Stand around awkwardly? Sit on the floor?
When he went to Nikolai with his grievances, the King just waved him off, too enamored in the newest trade deals with Kerch to really pay attention to the wild beast that he was forcing to stay here.
"Yeah, that parlor hasn't been used in, what, a century?" was his explanation, and it had made Kaz absolutely livid.
In that moment he realized that not only did the palace itself have a pretty façade to hide behind, but so did the people who inhabited it.
They smiled and chatted and did their work like a busy beehive, acting like everything was fine in life and that they were getting along well, but behind closed doors they were completely different people, and often those who were best friends in front of company were the bitterest of enemies once no one was around.
Why couldn't they just communicate like Demjin? If two men were rivals, they would fight- perhaps to the death- and the winner would take the other's females (though sometimes the females would revolt and kill the new leader, thus creating an all-female clan like Petra's). What was so hard to understand about this?
Women never fought in a manner like this because women were smart. They talked things over and settled them in a kind and civilized manner, unlike the males, and if the females didn't get along and neither of them wanted to leave the tribe, the other females would kill them if their feud wasn't resolved.
And, of course, Ghezen help a man who offended a woman, because the women would have the entire tribe behind her, and it would most likely result in the man's death. Men were necessary for procreation, yes, but not for individual survival, and they needed to be well aware that the females were only keeping him around to keep the numbers up.
Humans were so confusing, what with their deceit and their lies, and it made Kaz's head hurt.
"Kaz, I know you may not understand-" a maid- who was one of the few that didn't scream at the sight of him- bemoaned as she brought him his food on a silver platter, which was heaped with roast beef and many other delectable things, "-but I feel comfortable talking about these things with you for precisely that reason. I know that each of my words is going through one ear and out the other, so I didn't have to worry about you being a gossip."
Kaz was too busy eating to really be offended, even as the maid sat down on the chair opposite of him, voicing her woes like one would do to a prized pet when they were upset and alone.
"I feel that my lover is cheating on me. I know our love is secret, but he's been making eyes at that stupid Grisha Squaller, Zoya, and I'm not sure what to do-"
In a way, the maid was right- Kaz only understood about half of what she was saying- but it was enough to get the gist.
"Any chieftain caught belittling in another chieftain's tribe is put to death by the females of his own tribe," Kaz scoffed as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, and the maid seemed completely flabbergasted.
"Excuse me?" she spluttered, and Kaz cocked his head to the side, his brows furrowing.
"I'm telling you the traditions of my people. If one of the males is caught…err…cheating, as you say, on the females of his tribe, he's killed and his body thrown to the mountain lions."
Needless to say, it wasn't a surprise that he never saw the maid again.
The palace's only saving grace was its vast expanse of outdoor property, which was breathtaking to say the least.
Whenever he began to grow restless, he threw the doors of his room open and leapt off of his balcony, scaring the pedestrians below half to death before soaring over their heads and rocketing through the sky.
Kaz would spend hours just flying over the elaborate gardens, the open fields dotted with the royal horses, and hundreds of acres of untamed woodlands, relishing in the whip of the wind in his hair and the way everything seemed to shrink beneath him.
He loved the free time, loved not having to perform, but at the same time, whenever he retired to his gigantic rooms, he couldn't help but think of Inej.
What was she thinking right now? Surely she knew of his sale to the king by now, so how was she coping?
Demjin were tribe creatures, and Kaz had just been ripped away from his new tribe- the one he'd been seeking for so long since he'd been kicked out of his old one- and now he was alone again.
The loneliness was the worst part.
In the Sikurzoi it hadn't been that bad, because he'd known that eventually he would create a new tribe, whether he found wandering females who'd been kicked from their tribes and took them under his wing or stole the females of a rival chieftain.
He'd also had a lot to occupy himself- up in the mountains, food wasn't just served to you on silver platter, and several days could be spent tracking the herds of elk, all for just one meal. There's also been the fact that he'd had to sew his own clothes, defend his den from mountain lions and fierce males who were too lazy to make their own, and take regular trips to the lake- which was ten miles away- to get a drink of fresh water.
Here, though, he was isolated and left without anything to keep him busy.
Nikolai was always busy, being the damned King of Ravka for Ghezen's sake, and none of the other humans could bear to even be around him. The servants who brought him food trembled at the sight of him, the maidens who drew him baths starting to wear charms and wards to protect themselves from him- the bones of saints and symbols that deterred evil hanging from cords around their necks.
"I want to leave," Kaz deadpanned as he stormed over to Nikolai, interrupting a conversation the king was having with one of his advisors. "Can I leave?"
"No, not yet, we're not ready."
Kaz's lips curled up into a snarl, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the advisor flinch back. "But I want to go now."
"Why the rush?" Nikolai prompted, frowning and folding his arms over his chest.
"Nobody here likes me."
"Why, of course they like you. What makes you think they don't?"
Kaz cocked an eyebrow and turned sharply to the advisor, who jumped back at least twelve feet. Facing Nikolai once more, he gave the king a very blatant I told you so look.
Nikolai's brow furrowed, "That seems fair, but you just have to bear with me for a few more days. Just a few more."
"No, I want to leave now."
Nikolai chuckled, "Way to put it bluntly. But we still have to gather all of the resources we can muster before we can set out. Leaving early but unprepared will take longer than if we set out late but with all of the proper supplies. This is a trip deep into the Sikurzoi, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember," Kaz mumbled, looking down at his feet, which were clad in the fancy shoes that the servants had given him.
Nikolai clapped Kaz on the back, "Hang in there, Demjin."
"It's Kaz," the Demjin corrected, his shoulders hunching.
"Pardon?"
"My name," Kaz repeated, "It's Kaz."
A slow grin spread across Nikolai's face.
"Well, nice to meet you, Kaz."
Five days later, they set out.
Nikolai had warned him that he wouldn't be able to go along, incredibly busy with running the country and the people in it, but Kaz couldn't help but feel bitter as he was brought outside and was faced with three complete strangers.
"Kaz, meet Zoya, Tamar, and Tolya. They're very good friends of mine, and I guarantee they'll bring you to the Sikurzoi safely," Nikolai announced as Kaz sized them up warily, his shoulders tense as his nostrils flared.
There was something about them that just smelled…off, and he balked when Nikolai tried to lead him over.
"What's wrong?" the king asked as a low growl began to rumble in Kaz's chest. "Did something happen?"
"I don't trust them," Kaz deadpanned, ignoring the indignant looks that came from the strangers. "They smell funny. They're not humans, but they're not Demjin. What are they?"
"They're humans, of course," Nikolai replied quizzically, turning to the strangers. "I mean, I think they are."
"He might be smelling the fact that we're Grisha," one of the strangers, a woman with long black hair and a funny blue outfit, pointed out. "I mean, that's the only thing that would probably make us smell different than anyone else."
"Grisha?" Kaz asked, recalling the word from when the maid had spoken to him, and slowly began to pick his way over to the three people who would be accompanying him on the journey, his wings flared and his ears pricked. "What's a Grisha?"
Nikolai said the word in Kerch and Kaz's muscled seized, his eyes going wide as he recalled the Grisha Healers and Heartrenders that Pekka had brought in when he was trying to "fix" his ankles.
"No, no, no," Kaz stammered, stumbling back as his ankles wilted. "No, no, I'm not going with Grisha."
"What do you have against Grisha?" the other woman, who was slightly shorter and had two double-bladed axes strapped to her belt, demanded.
"No. Grisha are bad. Pekka made them give me medicine that made me stupid and angry."
The three strangers exchanged a look, and Nikolai ran a hand down his face before deadpanning, "Well, these were the only people who were available and wanted to volunteer. So this is all you're getting."
"Then just give me directions," Kaz demanded, wings snapping out in his irritation. "Give me a map to the circus and to the Sikurzoi and I'll go myself."
"No, I won't risk that. You can die or get captured again," Nikolai insisted, his normally easygoing expression now set into stone. "Zoya, Tamar, and Tolya will protect you."
"Humans can't fly. I can fly out of their reach," Kaz pointed out, "They can't reach me there."
"But humans have guns," Nikolai warned. "And hired Grisha Squallers can knock you out of the sky."
Kaz looked away sharply, scowling.
"So are we going or not?" the black-haired woman, Zoya, prompted. "Because if I cleared my schedule for nothing-"
"No, I'll go," Kaz agreed finally, not looking up as he trudged over to the three Grisha.
He was going to ditch them as soon as he had the chance. He didn't trust them, for even an iota of a second.
"Oh, well goodbye, Kaz."
Kaz didn't respond, keeping his back turned to the king and staring at the ground dejectedly as the three Grisha gathered their supplies and mounted their horses, bowing and bidding farewell to the king.
"Goodbye everyone. Goodbye, Kaz," Nikolai repeated, and Kaz still ignored him, his lips curling into an ugly snarl and his wings flaring in his irritation.
"Aren't you going to say goodbye back?" the big bearish man, Tolya, asked curiously as he hoisted himself up onto the back of a huge cream-colored stallion, and only then did Kaz look up.
"He's the one who got me into this mess, and just because he's letting me go doesn't justify what he did. I'm just making sure that he knows that he hasn't been forgiven."
And with that, he spread his wings and launched into the sky, circling over the Grisha as they spurred on their horses and took off at a swift trot down the road.
He pretended not to notice how Nikolai's head was upturned to the sky, his eyes tracking Kaz's movement until the Demjin and his escort disappeared from view.
In a matter of an hour, the big palace was nothing but a smudge in the distance.
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(A/N) Sorry about the long update, I've been very busy working on my novel. Please follow/favorite and leave a review. PLEASE I LOVE REVIEWS!
