He feels her at his back with the chill of the gale.
The window slips open, and—like some sort of compass—Kaz knows it's her. "Come to end my reign, Wraith?" She slips in softly on sweet leather shoes, leaning against the sill. Her eyes glow under the lantern light, staring at her toes.
"It's cowpox," she murmurs. Her gaze lifts, guarded, jaded against his armour. Her voice is rusty. "What is it you want me to do with that?"
The question hangs, lynched, a dead man swinging in a noose.
Kaz wants to throw a knife at it, brand it into the wall. He wants to let it die there, soaking in its implications. The papers beneath his fingers feel like air, his bare grip fastening on his pen, his scars shining and vibrant.
He can feel his shrug coming. The urge to blow her off comes as easy as murder.
(Truly. It's easy to see, to do. An aloof shrug.
The bones in his spine would crack. The heart in his ribs would crack too. Her eyes would widen, hurt lacing into them. She would be gone, out the window. The crows wouldn't follow. He would rise, set his fingers on the cool window's frame, and he would slam it down.
This cycle, his shrugging, his stoicism, her hand reaching and grasping: one day, her hand would not be there, and he would be all alone.
Kaz realizes he fears that.)
He can shrug. It would be easy.
He looks at her fully, blinded, but entire. She is so different than she was when she ran with the Dregs, now clad in a stained, white blouse, and the sash around her waist is green.
Her knives aren't hidden like they used to be. The blades are proud on her body.
Her body is proud. Her body is hers.
Inej is a pirate. A beautiful one, eyes brighter, hair fuller, life better. Happier. Away from here. You will find none of it with me. He'd refused to promise her happiness, so she took it by its lapels.
Still, she comes back for him.
She raises a brow, catching his stare. A tendril of shame clogs his throat—because of who he is, the scars from boyhood crawling up his palms.
What is it you want me to do with that?
His answer:
I don't know. "I'll be there," he promises, pen pattering on the desk. "I swear I will."
She'd been expecting his rejection, clearly. His struggle, she can probably see it in his shoulders, in the way his brows tighten. She smiles—too knowing—and shifts to sit on his bed.
She says, "When you're ready."
It's about talking, about not shutting her out. It's about patience, about not shutting himself down. Kaz could've shrugged, could've called her an investment like he has again and again.
He could break her heart. Break his own.
She wants him, his crippled leg and bloody smile. She wants his reborn soullessness, and the boy who learned magic too, giggling into cups of hot chocolate like they shared secrets. Rietveld. Brekker. Names. So many names. Words.
A grin tickles her lips. "A farmer," she muses, pulling a knife from her hip to fiddle.
People are made up of words. Throughout life he's been given many. Brother. Orphan. Naïve. A mark Pekka will never remember. Afraid. Cruel. Vengeful. Bastard. Angry.
Because he was a farmer, and now he's broken.
..
Kaz can't stop thinking about it.
Geryn, the other dealer, works diligently with Kaz behind the table. Kaz stares at the gamblers, shuffles cards. His life is on a tightrope and they are no Inej Ghafa. Geryn scooches by behind him in the small space.
Kaz tenses and rusts, focusing on the smell of gunpowder; there is body odor in the air, and alcohol.
Kaz flips a card disinterestedly. The disappointment on the customer's face is palpable, and when the sticks of a woman places another debt, she reminds him of Jesper.
Which reminds him of Inej.
After Jordie, after joining the Crow Club, after the Ice Court, Kaz had assumed he'd never be that boy again; in fact, he loathed the concept. He would never be so naïve again. Trusting. Caring. Never. He sent everyone away to insure that.
(He trusted five traumatized children with his life, and even harder, he trusted Inej with his shame.
His shame.)
Roeder stalks up to the table, pretending to sit for a game; he slides the bundle in with his payment to play. Kaz slips it easily into his back pocket, like a machine.
Is this it for you?
For a while after Inej first left on the Wraith, he had tried going without gloves. At first, he felt as though he could choke the life from Jakob Hertzoon's face with bare fingers, and relish in it. He tugs the gloves as he waits the bar, seering the leather to his pale skin.
Geryn brushes passed him with the cheque for a client. Kaz's eyes slam shut. His teeth grate, shaving off layers like saw dust.
Is this it for you? Inej will never stay. He could never make her. He gave her a ship to get away.
He shuffles the cards, at ease in gloved hands.
Rietveld has no place for blood stains and dead men. Brekker has no time for Nina, or Jesper, or Wylan, no time for Inej Ghafa. Is this it? No. He wants more. He wants…
He wants.
He'd made time for them, bought himself a wraith, made 'investments'.
Kaz cringes at the word. Rietveld. Brekker. What would Jordie think, if he saw what Kaz was? Arrogant, 'smarter than the game' Jordie?
His brow hardens as he swipes the cards, flipping another.
All Kaz knows as he deals the cards and gathers the kruge, is that this wasn't what he wanted. His father died. Then, his brother died. Matthias.
He'll spend his life angry. If he stays here, angry, and vengeful, Pekka Rollins will never be enough, but nothing ever is with a lever like greed.
Take the empire. Burn it.
Anger, vengeance, grudges. He's tired.
Is this it? No.
This is not it. Take the empire, burn it. His hands stiffen as the burr of cards rattles the counter, idea forming in his mind.
He deals.
Taking a gambler's money, Kaz watches for traffickers. If he is going to sit here in the rot of the barrel, he's taking others with him as he burns it down. This little club.
He'll expand it. The Wraith will burn those who walk through his doors.
Heleen. He'll burn that bitch. Her partners, the ships they own: he'll get that information by cutting out tongues, ripping out eyes.
With bloody hands, he'll give it all to Inej.
..
(Sitting back in port 22, Kaz will watch as Inej Ghafa vaporizes the ocean into mist.)
..
Inej used to sit atop her father's shoulders.
Now, under the night, in Ravkan fields, she clutches his hand as her mother picks geraniums.
They are coloured by dancing lords in the sky. "Sankta Alina has blessed us tonight, meja," Papa chuckles, squeezing her hand. His hold has not changed in the years of her absence.
She loves that.
Inej stares to the sky, to the ceruleans, limes, pinks and bloody purples. Ravkan skies glowed like Kerch's never could. It's overfilled with fog and lies. These skies occupy her dreams on her darkest days, ribbons of auroras.
She tightens her grip on his palm.
"Yes, Papa."
Her mother glanced over at them, flower in hand; her gaze sticks to Papa as she tucks it behind her beautiful ears.
Inej always wanted to grow up and be like her mama. She still does. To love like her, and trust like her, even through all of her pain. Her mother smiles so much, crow's feet rest in the corners of her eyes.
Inej's parents grew up in the prejudices of Ravka; their lives weren't easy.
"Your mama loves geraniums." Her father kisses Inej's clasped hand, readying to tell a story, one she has heard again and again. She grins sweetly.
"I know, Papa."
He chuckles at himself. Parents had tendencies, telling the same tales again and again. "You like knives more than flowers." He glances at her, love, pride in his eyes, fear too. He fears she will just… vanish again. "Knives and ships." Tenderness fills his eyes with the sea of colours.
He knows though, beyond his fear, of her mission. He knows why she has her ship.
(She can imagine her mother pestering him: "Don't push her about that boy!" He'd ask why, ignorant, and her mother would tell him.)
He would cry. He would pray.
Papa would sob, and Inej is glad she had been across the sea when he'd learned, instead of witnessing it, being ashamed of it.
Ashamed, like it was her fault: her heart hardens.
It will never be her fault. She was stolen, a child.
"It doesn't count, meja," he starts, making her trip. Inej doesn't fall. The sky, her mother, geraniums, it's all irrelevant. "Mati en sheva yelu." This action will have no echo.
Her knees collapse as she tumbles. He catches her.
She whispers, "It does, Papa." His lithe chest trembles. Her mother calls out in worry. "It is part of me."
Some actions deserve to leave echoes. The actions of men have left echoes on her. Her actions have left echoes. Kaz has left an echo on her life, and so has Heleen, and Nina, and Jesper, Wylan. Matthias.
Her parents too.
Her mother kneels next to them and his arms open to add her to the hug.
He sobs into her hair, holding them so tight. Tighter. Tighter. "I love all echoes of you," he says. "All and every and-"
His speach breaks, splitting into crackles. It is a babble.
"Loves," her mother spills, tears sticking to Inej, soothing her heart. "You are my loves," she turns to her daughter, "and you are home." Her heart begins to cry, squeeze so painfully she chokes on every answer. Her father's tears are worse.
It counts.
Every second of her life counts. Especially these ones, wrapped in so much love she'd be happy if it all ended now.
Geraniums whisper in the winds, her mother's very favourite.
. .
His cane is swift. It cracks bones.
In an alley, Anika at his back, Kaz swings. Her pistols pop off. They cut off a trafficking station, this one rising in Fifth Harbour, like wrung water from a rag.
That was five minutes ago, when the fight had ended. Four bodies resided, strewn all over the cobble. Anika leans against a brick wall.
Their is only one alive and he lays on the ground in a bloody, heaving mess.
Kaz shatters an elbow, and the scream is fucking harmonic. He swings and swings, hitting this final survivor in the limbs again and again, because it won't kill him.
His sobs have become incoherent.
Kaz will beat this man to death, and he will relish in it.
Blood on his lips, it tastes metallic, like vengeance. Kaz murders this man, and once he is murdered, he continues to swing. He makes bloodied chaos of a corpse. The weighted head slices the air, smacking the mush of the scumbag's empty skull. The bricks are slicked with red. For his girl.
He imagines Inej: aged twelve, skinny and chained, terrified as she prayed to her saints. Saints who never fucking answered. Heave. Swing. (She'd disagree, he knows. Doesn't care. Swings again.)
She was twelve, and men like this grabbed her: stole her.
He sees Jordie; he sees himself. But he sees her the most. Sees every hand that's ever taken a piece of her: so many hands that her pieces are scattered across Ketterdam, Kerch, maybe even the continent.
Thwack. Wind up. Swing. Satisfaction.
Midnight blood gushes on his leather shoes, his grip tightening on the cane. Is this it for you? Thwack! He's okay with this being it for him, if this—thwack—keeps all of the Inej's in the world out of the Menageries.
The murdered man is nothing but unrecognizable, unresponsive, grinded sludge by the time Anika calls his name.
He heaves, blood-stained, bone-drenched. He can taste the blood in his teeth.
She would've hated this. Kaz knows she isn't there, is unaware, but Inej is always in his shadows and he knows she would not be proud of what he's just done. They are to stop the atrocities, not beat the violators to death. But she'd also relish in it, because she was born in the barrel too.
On his sleeve, he wipes his coppery-tasting mouth, and he grins down at the pool of red destruction. His mouth drips.
Saints, she would hate this.
(He swings one more time, for good measure.)
..
As Kaz murders men, Inej watches her papa and mama perform.
They are a well-tuned machine. Once a triumvirate, turned a pair, balancing precariously on the idea that there was a third—once.
Her. She was that third.
Inej is in the crowd, and far above, her parents dance on a wire.
Try the wire, he'd suggested the very first time she came home. She'd taken the highest wire. No net. Not once had she lost her balance. Her papa had been so nervous.
She was better than before she'd disappeared.
Her parents hadn't understood how, or chose to ignore it, still in denial.
No longer. Now they know.
For as much as she dreamed, and prayed, and cried, for as much as her parents had done the same: all parties know the truth. They know who she is, and that is not a Suli acrobat. Not that girl she was the day she chose to sleep in.
Her parents are proud up there without her. Her heart soars at that. They dance, swirling, weight shifting, their hands all that binds them. Inej is their daughter.
And she is vigilante of the slaves.
Men beg, gods bow, and the sea splits for her, swallowing ships at her command.
Given nothing, Inej demands something of this world.
..
His baby, meja, watches from the stands. The calloused hands of his beloved tether him in the sky, but he feels his girl, his Inej.
Saints, he is so proud of her, so scared.
His wife dances on nothing.
.
..
And as Kaz murders men, Inej murders monsters.
She prefers the term, because that is how she sees them. They are not just men, or women, or some she can't figure. Evil all the same; she does not care for their life stories, or who they must feed. Their loved ones must find food somewhere other than this.
Because there are children beneath the decks.
This ship's route was tipped to her by Kaz during their intel exchanges biweekly.
She pursues them, and they will fall.
The Wraith sneaks into its mist. She leaps across the port and stabs with Sankt Petyr. The slaver bows into the ocean, an anchor for nothing.
She murmurs a prayer.
She kills another.
..
"You can't stop them all," he'd told her one night on the docks, their bare feet dangling in the waters, and her anger was immense, immediate, "save them all."
"I know."
He'd kicked water at her lightly, the same water he'd stared at like it could kill him. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I didn't want you to be disappointed."
She kicks water back at him, and his lips slight in the corner.
(The man who called her an investment.)
..
There are so many.
All in tatters, chains, packed together like cattle. The ship sways, and the salt stings her eyes.
These children's lips are cracked. They have been starved. They are dehydrated. They have not been given space to relieve themselves.
So they stand and sit and sleep in their waste.
A boy is there, Shu, maybe seven years old. His golden eyes are afraid. He prays like she's never seen his people do. He reminds her of Kuwei. You can't save them all.
There is a girl, with one gold eye, a blue one too. Just the kind of exotic Heleen would've killed for.
Another, a Suli girl, the next Lynx.
Like every ship, Inej asks names and finds homes. She returns the children to their families.
The girl of eyes gold-and-blue: her mother had sold her off. A heartbreaking commonality, and with fire in her eyes, she decides to stay.
Some always stay, their families dead, or awful.
You can't save them all.
But she can save Asta, the girl with the eyes, who ends up being a grisha, something she'd hidden from her Fjerdan mother who had nothing to her name. Who sold her.
Inej can save her.
She can save Od, the Shu boy of prayers. She can save these people, children.
Inej was them, once, just waiting for someone to save her.
..
Jesper laughs as he slaps an ace of hearts into the middle of the table.
Inej glances furtively at Wylan, her partner across the oval table. He has a terrible poker face, but his knack for the strategy exceeds any of theirs.
Inej is the opposite.
She plays the eight of hearts, zoning out again to skim from the fireplace to the bookshelves—ones she could see Van Eck purchasing to hurt Wylan as a boy—they remained untouched.
The door opens.
Inej has her knives, Jesper his pistols. Nina's bone shards dance in her fingers, but it's only Kaz.
It's Kaz.
In an impeccable dress shirt, shoulder straps the perfect pressure.
He's late.
Shocked silent, they disarm themselves; he hikes up his cane in his gloved hand. Kaz saunters in without a word, limping slightly, like it is normal, like it hasn't been nearly two years since he has spoken to Nina. They all watch as he drags a chair over, next to Wylan. The floor screeches.
He sits, cane resting against the table. Even the dust freezes in place.
Inej watches his jaw click. Grind.
Nina hums. Wylan shrugs awkwardly. Jesper shuffles the cards.
The game begins, five chairs filled, like it's completely normal. The sixth is empty against the wall. The air is thicker: it's been so long since he's seen them. But Kaz sits through it stone-faced. Inej stares.
Jesper breaks first, a slight burst, a giggle really, and in a second him and Nina are guffawing. Jesper splays the cards out before the barrel boss. "Freshie deals first," he says, like it was some schoolyard game.
The cards are swift and nimble in his gloved hands.
"So, Kaz," Nina sighs, tapping her fingers on the table. He tenses. The cards stop, not a sliver out of place: not a mistake in sight. His eyes stick to them, watching the counting. Nina holds out her hand. "Toffee?"
"No."
After a moment, Wylan asks, "Can I have it?" Nina raises a brow, tossing chocolate at him. He catches it with a smile. Jesper kicks at his leg, and the toffee plops onto the table.
Laughs break out again, and Inej's mouth perks up, but her focus is elsewhere.
Kaz releases a breath full of pressure. She sees how—through Nina and Jesper's chuckles, and Wylan's sputtering—he tugs his gloves up his wrist. His gaze meets hers across the oak table, then flickers down in shame.
You're trying, she wants to say.
When she said she wanted him without armour, she didn't mean: touch me. She meant: Let me know you. She is not an investment. She is a person. Love me, she meant. Let me love you.
He deals the cards.
..
When Nina calls for a break, Kaz is the first to his feet.
He pushes through the balcony doors like he's pushing an ocean from his way. The suffocation breaks to air of cold freedom, brisk on his lungs even through the smoke of Ketterdam skies. Kaz slouches, leaning against the balcony rail with his cane in hand.
Breathe.
He is fine. He is alive. He thinks over the words he has prepared for Inej. Wind tickles his wild hair, and his skin prickles, signifying her presence. He knows she's there. His chance, right here and now.
The same shame that ate him whenever he even thought of her lodges its way into his throat.
She is the asphyxiation in his eardrums.
She settles in next to him, like debris drifting on the True Sea.
"You came," she murmurs, leaning her back against the rail. He hunches over his forearms, immediate answers feeding him. Can't leave an opportunity unchecked. I have a few jobs-There's an empire to build and burn.
Lastly, I wanted to.
None of these answers come. "I did," is what he settles on.
There is silence for a minute, then, two—he stares up at the yellow moon—three minutes. Four. "They're waiting." Her tone is a breath. He checks over his shoulder to see Wylan, Jesper, and Nina distorted through the window. Refraction shifts three people into four. The silhouette of a soldier of ice, of hate-filled-love.
Inej drifts toward the door and his panic is so sudden.
He had minutes, over six-hundred seconds to say something, a single word, yet he waited until the very last one. The night is silent, hauntingly peaceful for Ketterdam.
(He's had years.)
An empire. Burn it.
"I was a farmer's son," he bursts, voice so out of control. Off script. Immediately.
Burn it.
He's burning something. He's burning up.
(His father claps him on the shoulder, and Jordie whispers in his ear.) Kaz's organs cease rhythm, every one of them. Tell her. I had a whole monologue memorized, but Inej has always had a way of stomping on his control with the barest touch of her tippy toes. He risks a glance at her.
"I didn't come to the city to be this."
A cripple. A mob boss. A monster. Since the night he ran, things have been strained. Her gaze is soft now, forgiving. He wonders if she loves to torture herself too, with the shadows.
"Our friends are waiting," she says.
His organs stutter, an engine, before roaring to life, roaring in pain. He stares at her, eyes hard and hurt at her dismissal.
Kaz limps passed Inej, slipping through the glass door, with as much pride as he could manage. Inside is warmer, and his gloves stay on. Their laughter is raucous, making his ears bleeding. He's staying. He can stay.
Inej slides in behind him, shutting the door: their words, those minutes, an illusion.
Wylan opts out so they can play Kaiser, choosing to paint instead.
Kaz knew Wylan liked to paint. He's watched them enough. He knew Jesper had gone nearly two years without gambling.
He hadn't known why Wylan painted though, the care on his face as he watches his mother. Jesper'd been practicing, excelling as a Durast, yet refused to truly learn. Kaz hadn't known that. He didn't know Inej was good at cards, and could read him like a Suli proverb.
Knew Nina had been undercover for the Ravkan crown in Fjerda. Her time there had changed her; that, he had not known.
He hadn't known what his… his friends had been doing for years.
Friends.
Kaz has always liked to know things—destroy challenges—and there is one thing he knows, and knows darkly, in a way that won't let him go. It had taken them eleven months to send him an invite, and thirteen more months for him to arrive, but there had always been six chairs.
One chair, Kaz hadn't filled by choice, and the other because it's occupant was dead.
He knows that.
"Nina," Inej says after the grandfather clock indicates two bells.
"I know, I know." Nina rises.
Jesper pushes back from the table, chair scraping. He casually slings Nina into a hug. Everyone begins to do the same: to say goodbye.
Kaz sits in his chair, ankles feeling slick with rising waters. Rigid.
Nina pulls Wylan in for a hug too, and suddenly, the water is at his knees. Harsh words bite at him, commanding him to bite at his friend. The boys hug Inej, and Kaz's longing presses hard on his lungs. He drowns in that chair.
Nina doesn't even try it with Kaz. She looks at him and he holds her stare.
She turns away.
A blast of relief soothes him, and a sting of hurt. She didn't even try it. Kaz grinds his teeth, thinking about every cruel thing he's said; he brought this to his doorstep.
I am not even worth enough to try, the thought invades. He shoves it away.
Words are thick on his tongue, normal people's words, but they refuse to pass his teeth. Pushing to his feet, pulling out of the harbour, cane in hand, he asks, "Same time next month?"
"Yes," Nina answers, giving him a wide smile.
But Kaz Brekker is already leaving, dragging Kaz Rietveld by the ankles. Rietveld's hand is outstretched in agony, nails clawing the floor boards. His lungs squeeze as he reaches the door.
"Are you coming?" That's Jesper.
"So eager," Kaz grinds out, twisting the doorknob. Now. He has to go, now.
"I hope you do," Wylan adds bravely.
Kaz bit his tongue to hold in the scathing remark—he tastes blood—and the door snicks behind him. He is left nothing except cold Ketterdam streets, but at least he can breathe.
But with each breath, Kaz is more and more aware that he failed.
There were words he wanted to say, to Inej, to them all, but they hadn't come out. And the little he had managed to spill, Inej had clogged, shattered his momentum before he had any. His cane thwacks the stone, oxygen rubbery in his mouth.
Next month, he promises himself. Next month.
..
The water that night tastes like salt, but Inej is so used to it, she doesn't even notice. Her hands rest on the helm as the wake splits, mist spraying on deck as the pale moon reflects off every surface and each small drip on Nina's face.
"What did you say to him?" Nina half-shouts. Inej tilts toward her.
"Hm?" she shouts back.
"That was not Kaz Brekker," Nina clarifies, leaning closer. Inej clenches her fingers on the wheel.
"It was Kaz." The wind steals her words, but Nina hears them.
It was Kaz trying his best, pushing his limits, stitching the bullet holes with thread and spiderwebs.
"He showed up," Nina says.
"Yes."
They shift into calmer waters almost seamlessly as Nina stares out into the True Sea, distant and present; warm.
"Matthias would've loved to see him," the grisha tucks soaked brown hair behind her ear, "'demjin is trying to be worthy of a goddess,' he'd tell me." Nina presses her palms into the rail.
Inej knows who she found in Fjerda, who she leaves behind for these visits every month; Hanne Brum. She had found a murderer, and let him go.
Inej doesn't know if she could've.
The Wraith carves a wake, and as Nina's hair sprays, her grief flies. A small, lovely smile graces her plump lips as she remembers.
It has been years, and she still loves him.
Inej recalls how Matthias came to save her from Van Eck, how he'd held Nina in her time of destruction with parem. Inej watched them hold each other, and she smiled, in the face of something she could barely grasp.
Djel, she prays, twisting the helm, Let the ice forgive, just once.
"Matthias would've loved," Inej repeats as they break the wake.
..
"Stay, tonight," he says, and regrets it.
It's the first visit she's granted him personally in two months. Last time she saw him, he was walking away from a card game.
It is the same downhill spiral. This month, he'd promised himself, but he skipped this month.
She had come to check on him, and he told her he simply wasn't up for it.
That was a good enough answer, it seems, because then they chatted about nothing for an hour. She shared her latest skirmish, and how she had received the scabbed-over slash on her brow; he thinks it will scar. Their walls fiddling, gates opening until he said that dreadful "stay".
Now, Inej shifts from foot to foot across the desk, and he swallows.
"I can't," his heart drops, face stoic. "We're to leave tonight," she says. He hates himself for sitting straighter. Though she's stalled him twice now, Inej pauses before him.
Her hands reach for his. They stop halfway over the desk.
Choice.
A second's hesitation, three heartbeats; then, he meets her there, reaching over a cavern he verges on falling into.
The first time he's touched her in months.
Fingertips tips. Palms. Scars. Scars. Scars. Delicate is all her hands are, deft for murder. The perfect shape for praying. Her skin is soft and calloused, overwhelming and overbearing and so not nearly enough pressure.
Those dreams flash in his mind.
The ones he always hides from—of skin on skin—hides from, yet treasures; he dreams of her laugh, her love, and her staying. Kisses are whispers on his cheeks, his shoulders, a memory.
She trusted him enough, loved herself enough: to let him touch her.
He still marvels at that fact.
(He had barely touched the inside of her elbow that night on the Wraith, but it felt so far, so irrevocable.)
Inej squeezes his clammy fingers, dragging him back. He blinks up at her, catching the cut on her brow, and he longs to run a thumb over it, assess the damage, to go further. Her hair is loosely braided, wisping near her temple. What if he tucks it behind her ear? He wishes to be fucking normal.
Normal boys don't need to think before they take someone's hand.
Normal boys don't resort to violent words when they become uncomfortable. Normal boys don't call girls they love investments.
Love. His soul grows could as he realizes he is everything he promised to never be after he used his brother's body as a raft. Love.
He meets her eyes, her calm strength.
She never let her heart leave her behind, not after she was stolen, and then each of her pieces stolen after that. Her heart was there and bleeding and she survived.
His fear quiets under the pride in her gaze; proud of him. Her eyes—brown, solid, soft—they say: "I know you are broken, and you are better for it," she blinks, lashes beautifully thick, "and so am I."
He can love her, and he might burn down the world for her.
For the first time in so many years, Kaz doesn't feel like burning her touch away. He feels like he's in his skin, not some corpse his soul has chosen that night on the barge. It's not just because of her either. He wants this change, and he wants to be good enough for her. He wants to feel.
Still, she leaves that night, slipping out the window.
..
Next month comes too fast, and his nerves still don't simmer.
A storm is set to roll in over the True Sea into Government District. Kaz could tell because, lounging at the bar, he heard Rotty and Specht discussing how the air had a metallic shock to it. Many of the customers complained about the grey skies, in fact.
Crows don't stop the game for petty things like weather, she tells him from his window just before they're set to go.
He lifts his brows in conversation, ripping his gaze away from her. Years passed, Kaz honed himself into calculations and control. It disappears, a power she's always had with him.
"Stay," he pleads, "stay for Vaarvell Onzea."
Vaarvell Onzea. The celebration, glorifying the week the Shadow Fold perished. Many trade routes re-emerged for the Kerch that day, (and he'd taken advantage of it.)
So stay.
"Kaz-" she murmurs; she pulls away. "We should go."
He pushes to his feet, rolling up his dress shirt's sleeves, heart aching. He hikes his cane, grinning, to force away that boiling shame. "Don't stay for me."
She pauses. "What if I want to?"
He nearly trips, insecurity soothed in a statement. Of course she's afraid. He holds her stare.
"Tell me when it's too much."
..
Game night is fun, but when it ends, the storm is raging.
Thunder, lightning, thick splats of downpour. The rain taps the huge windows of the Van Eck estate. "We need to wait it out," Nina says as Inej stares out the window. She thinks of her crew. They're smart enough to hole up somewhere, Inej reminds herself.
"I'll be fine," Kaz says, shrugging on his jacket.
"Brekker," Nina flops on the couch, "sit down."
"We have enough spare rooms for everyone," says Wylan, carrying wood to the fireplace in a bundle half his size.
"Not quite," says Jesper, turning to Wylan, arms lanky and languid, his thumbs in his belt loops. "Looks like we'll have to share…"
Wylan pauses, meeting Jesper's eye with a comically blank stare. "We've been dating for three years."
The three break into laughter, Jesper flopping on the couch next to Nina.
It doesn't take long for Nina to pass out on the couch. Jesper nearly follows, but Wylan pulls him to his feet by his wrists.
Inej sits, peering out the window as Wylan drags Jesper away.
The Wraith is docked; it's fine.
Warmth resonates from the amber coals lighting up the room. It's in need, so—as the rain patters the window, a million fingertips upon the glass—Inej hauls a log, dropping it on the orangey remnants.
Sparks shoot up, flames rejuvenated.
Thank you, they say to her, and she smiles.
Thunder strikes, sending a chill down her spine. She looks to Kaz, whose back is to her, his gloved hand pulling a thick-spined book from the wall of shelves. It sits heavy in his grasp.
Inej's heart can't take him sometimes.
His body is lithe, skin as pale as his shirts. It bears scars over packed bunches of muscle, and today, he's not wearing that stupid hat that makes him look like an old merch. His hair is set in chaotic order. A disarray he only allows when comfortable. Disarray he lets Nina chide.
Because he's given his trust.
(Patter patter. Her heart or the rain?)
She sets her shoulders as he grabs another book.
Nina's snores lightly and pages flutter.
Stay. That look on his face when he'd asked, her hands in his. Stay.
Maybe it's her turn to try again, because even though he'd left her behind so many times, and said things one never should, he is trying. Saints, her bar is so low.
Rising to her feet, she takes quiet steps, reaching the door he slammed in her face. His shoulder blades. His back. His taut shirt.
Where to start? I care. She could say, I love you. Definitely not there.
She knocks on the door:
"You called him Jordie."
He locks it. She watches the hinges rust.
"And I called you beautiful. We all say things." She nearly retreats. He tenses. The latch clicks open, and the door swings wide. "That- that wasn't what I meant. Or it- but..."
He's scared, and that gives him no right to his cruelty.
But she loves him.
"I'm sorry," he says. No right. It's true, but she forgives him.
Kaz doesn't see her honesty as something to corrupt, like it's some sort of virtue that needs marring. Abusing kindness like hers is too common.
Not him. She sees how he looks at the kind, the true. He admires them.
His shoulders dip. "This isn't what we wanted." His voice is gravel. Chilled. "Our father died. We came to Ketterdam to make something of it." It comes out so dead. He's forcing himself. Again. Her teeth grit.
"Kaz-"
"I suppose we made something," he laughs, "a dead boy, and a boy who reeks of death."
"Kaz, stop."
He does as commanded. Everything stops. He stops talking, stops breathing.
"You aren't ready," she murmurs, a foot away from him. "Don't force it."
He is silent, shoulders to her; then he shoves the book back in its place, gently turning. The fire lights his eyes like tea.
She sucks in breath, because he's trying so hard.
Kaz just spilled his life so awkwardly, like the details of trauma determined how much she loved him: every detail a layer of cement saying she wasn't just his investment.
That he's sorry.
His sharing only damages him further, makes him relive in those moments endlessly. She can see it in his eyes, what it is. Something he can never escape. He's drowning in it.
She just needs him, not his past, or his regrets. She needs his consent, and his try.
Just him.
"We went too fast," he says, stilted, guarded..
On the ship, that night, they touched. They kissed.
"That boy," her father had said, "there's something there, something broken." Kaz forces himself, every second he's near anyone, and never more than that night especially—all that contact, and intimacy, to have a man beneath her—they both forced themselves.
Because how else is what they feel for each other supposed to work?
Are they supposed to flirt like Jesper and Wylan? Supposed to touch like Matthias and Nina had?
The fire crackles, and the rain fidgets.
"Then we slow down," she murmurs. "And we walk, and maybe we never cross the finish line the world dictates we need to."
He turns, and whatever smoke had smothered around her scatters: she can see him. He lifts a hand to her face. He caresses her cheek, a thumb of leather reaches her brow.
He caresses the scar there, and his touch reminds her of the knife she'd nearly taken to the head.
For the first time—since ever truly—Inej closes her eyes, and trusts it's him. She doesn't have to force the memories away with his hand.
Her Saints grant her reprieve this once.
He slowly leans forward, much taller than her. I trust him. I know him. His warm lips press between her brows, the wrinkle there stiffening sweetly. She counts the patter on the windows uselessly, lifting her hand to envelop his. I love him.
His kiss shifts, directly on the brow, on her scar. Warmth tingles. Looms.
She trusts him in every way, (even with her fear because he is not bargaining for stolen time between her legs. He will never sell her, and though he bought her, he'd demanded, "you are no one's, Inej Ghafa," not even part of the Dregs.)
He is asking for her soul, and trading his.
A kind truth: I love him.
..
He feels those waters gathering around them, mocking the rain.
"You are worried about the ship," he says in the wake of their touch.
"I'm sorr-" His lips press against her brow. "i'm not trying to run away from you."
He knows what she was afraid of: he feels it every day. (This is fine.) "Want to slip away with me, Wraith?" (He's fine.) (Jordie's eyes were brown.)
She lifts her gaze, and pulls back; her eyes are damp, lip quivering. There is no sunlight, and still she glows, and maybe it's the fire, but he knows it's just his eyes.
They are broken for her.
She reaches her hand between them, lowering her brows. It presses into his chest. His glove-guarded hands clench.
Take them off.
He flexes his fingers, pulling adhered leather taut. Take them off.
So he does. They slip off deftly, and when he puts his hand in hers, she squeezes.
..
This is insane.
It's her mind's chant. The rain beats down on them, a cripple and a ghost, as they take off into the wet, dark caverns of Ketterdam.
Her feet are frozen through, blocks of ice up to her ankles.
She hardly feels the cold.
She thinks he might have laughed, a crackle in smoker's lungs. He's never smoked though she knows; something is wrong with his vocal chords.
He laughs through it.
Kaz tugs her through a puddle and maybe they can be those kids at the university, staying out too late.
They aren't.
Though they both know he is slow by comparison, she still lets him drag her. Fingers numb, heart loud, and skin slick in the most uncomfortable way, she's content to follow.
She focuses on the warmth of his bare palm.
..
All is fine with the Wraith. It's tied down as best it could be, shaking on the water. Holding his hand on the docks, Inej turns to Kaz; his features are black and white and soaked in the night.
"Take me home," she says.
He has her hand, her heart, he has it all,
(a good thief leaves something behind.
his soul, he left his soul and his trust.)
..
This shirt is black too, and has elbow length sleeves, and is soft.
It smells of waffles, gunpowder, wolves, chloride, blood like the other had. (It doesn't but sentimentality does things to her.)
It reaches her knees, and facing him again, Inej holds her head high, like it wears a crown, like a crowd will watch her walk the wire. Her hair is so damp she gathers it in a bun on her head as thunder rumbles through the Slat.
It is so late, three bells, maybe four?
She watches his gaze catch her neck. Inej's shutter is of fear and of confidence. She is strong and beautiful. She is a Wraith and a pirate and she is tearing apart the world.
She is Inej Ghafa, and she will walk the wire.
And he is Kaz, and he will walk behind her, and when he falls, she will hold catch him and hold on. Again. They try again. They lay in bed, and they breathe through the rain on the window, alive, alive. She will try with him forever. To stay alive.
There is nothing between them, and they aren't touching. A brick wall? Miles or inches? It doesn't show matter, because even if she never holds him, she still loves him.
They've traded hearts, after all, broken, and complete.
..
Read rule of wolves. Sobbed. Didn't keep Nina's appearance change because when I started this I hadn't picked up KoS so it wouldn't fit.
Oh, and the show drops today. My timing is immaculate.
Oh there'll probably be one more chapter .