Thank you for reading!

You go off, you save the world, and you come home to … someone else owning your home. In all the time they had worked together, Jesper had never been quite this angry at Kaz Brekker. Okay, so he had signed over the Crow Club in order to save Inej, and okay, Jesper would have done the same thing if he had been consulted … but he had not been consulted, and that was really what burned him. All Kaz would have had to say is that he had traded the deed for Inej's freedom, at any point. But Kaz had never said a word, and now all of Jesper's hats were being held hostage, alone and scared.

And Jesper himself was wanted for the murder of someone who had been alive and well when he'd left Ketterdam, handcuffed in a room where Kaz had just betrayed the Sun Summoner to a very strange, if dashing and handsome, pirate.

Kaz, naturally, had already gotten out of his own cuffs. He was across the room hunting through a desk as Jesper held up his hands. "Any help with these?"

Without turning, Kaz tossed a coin across the room to him.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

This time Kaz did turn, his look imploring Jesper as clearly as any words could do not to be stupid.

So. "You knew."

"About you being a Durast? Your gun misfired in Arken's train. You fixed it without moving."

Blast. He'd been so frustrated—not to mention scared out of his mind—in that moment he hadn't even considered not using his power to fix the gun.

"You repaired my cane with no tools," Kaz went on. "And when you shoot, you never miss. Of course I knew."

Standing up, holding Kaz's gaze, Jesper changed the coin into a key and showed it to him. "Let's leave it at that. Yeah?" He had no intention of telling anyone, not even Kaz, what it had meant to him once to be Grisha, or what it meant to him now. He had to use the power sometimes, but he never did it without a vivid and painful awareness of the price.

"I've no interest in letting others in on your secret."

"But it's so easy to spill the beans on Alina." That had been very unlike the Kaz Brekker Jesper knew.

Kaz ducked his head and moved past Jesper. "He'd already deduced it. He knew the name of the ship that we were coming in on. The best we could do is get our money back."

"And Alina?" Jesper pushed, as Kaz started to barricade the doors. "She's half a day ahead and he's a pirate. We should warn her."

"How? And where do you intend to post a warning? She could be anywhere by now. We have enough on our plate here." As the Stadwatch started banging on the door, Kaz looked pointedly at the handcuffs. "Speaking of, shouldn't you be concentrating?"

Jesper hastily finished unlocking the cuffs and followed Kaz out the window.

Inej found them, in that frankly creepy way she had, and filled them in on everything—how Pekka Rollins had gained ownership of the Crow Club by murdering Tante Heleen, as well as the fact that he now also owned the Menagerie and thus Inej's inedenture. Kaz tried to pay Inej to flee town, to send her away to protect the Sun Summoner—and herself. But she refused to go. "What happens to Saints is fate," she said. "What happens here is up to us."

Jesper waited, watching his boss and his friend, wondering when the attraction that smoldered between them would become openly admitted to … if ever … and what they were going to do now to get their lives back.

Kaz took back the money he had given Inej. "Fine. But stay in the shadows. Both of you," he added, with a backward glance at Jesper. "We reconvene in two bells at the end of Rozenstraat. Look for a workshop around the back."

And he was gone, moving as always surprisingly quickly for a man with a limp and a cane.

Wylan sat cross-legged in front of his flute case. He tried to avoid openly begging for coin, but sometimes when he was down to his last penny, it was necessary. The money already in the case would get him through the next few days, and hopefully someone would give him a job, ask him for a compound or a potion, by then. He was sorry Kaz Brekker hadn't come back—and likely wouldn't now, since he was wanted for murder. The phosphorus bombs Wylan had made for him had been one of the most interesting jobs he'd ever had. More work like that wouldn't be amiss.

Still … it was nice to make money by creating joy, rather than chaos. Much as Wylan loved chemistry, music was where his heart truly lay.

At least, it was nice to make money that way if you got to keep it, Wylan thought, looking up as three pairs of boots stopped menacingly in front of his flute case. He sighed. Maybe half the time he was reduced to playing for coin, he got to keep his earnings. The rest of the time … they went to the Barrel. The tax for living here, freely on his own, he supposed.

He nodded at the owners of the boots, watching as they bent and scooped up the cash and coins that had been left for him during his hours of playing. At least they left him his flute. The times people tried to take his flute in addition to his coins didn't end well for them—he made sure to carry some concealed compounds, just in case.

Resigning himself to another week of light—or no—meals, Wylan packed up the flute and headed for his basement workshop, the one thing no one had yet tried to take from him. Largely because no one wanted it. If anyone did, the pittance he paid for it every week wouldn't be enough to persuade the owner to leave him alone.

As he was unpacking his bag, a voice called his name, and he jumped and turned, surprised and somehow not surprised to see Kaz Brekker standing there in the middle of his workshop.

"You're alive."

"Thanks in part to you."

"Stadwatch are after you," Wylan told him. Which was probably an unnecessary warning—if Stadwatch were after you, usually you knew about it.

"How much phosphorus did you pack into that flash bomb? The escape potion against the Darkling?" Kaz asked abruptly, ignoring Wylan's comment.

"Did you need it? Was it enough?" He wanted to ask more questions, to find out exactly how it had worked and under what conditions, but Kaz appeared to be in no mood for shop talk. If he ever was, which Wylan rather doubted.

"Nearly." The single word came out quietly, a whole world behind it, a world that Wylan had only ever glimpsed, of danger and large deeds and not quite getting out unscathed. He was never sure if he wished he could be part of that world or if he was glad to be missing it. "I need you to make a new package for me," Kaz went on.

Now he remembered why he hadn't been so eager for Kaz Brekker's return—the man scared the living daylights out of him. "Uh … You said that was a one-time thing, not a real step into your world. I was strapped at the time."

"And now?" Kaz asked sharply, looking him over. "When was the last time you ate?"

Wylan had the uncomfortable feeling that he didn't have to answer, that Kaz could have told him down to the minute. In what appeared to be an uncharacteristic nervousness, Kaz put down a bottle he had picked up and reached for another one.

"Don't—don't touch that specific bottle. You'll be itching for days."

Kaz removed his gloved fingers from the vicinity of the stopper. "So. You'll do it?"

"How much?"

"Enough. And while you're working, I'll get you something to eat. I'd prefer if you didn't faint in the middle of the job."

So Wylan made up the bomb to Kaz's specifications, trying not to let his mind move past the task at hand to wonder what it was for, and Kaz went out and brought him back a basket of food. Once Kaz was gone, Wylan ate the first decent meal he'd had in a week, at least, and hoped that he hadn't just signed his life away to possibly the most frightening man he'd ever met.