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Kaz was waiting for them inside the crypt. His face was marked as if he'd been fighting, and he had a flask in his hand. At this stage of the game, Jesper found both worrying.

"The Dregs have opted to join us," Kaz said. That explained the face, at least. "Well?" He looked at Jesper, waiting for the report.

"Yeah, you were right. No glass factory, just a country estate." He tried to keep his face clear and guileless, but as usual, Kaz was twenty steps ahead of him.

"Was the boy there? What's his name?"

Neither of them answered.

"Don't pretend otherwise. He renamed the Crow Club the Kaelish Prince, and Pekka would never see himself as anything other than a king." He took a step closer to Jesper, holding him with those unblinking eyes that knew everything. "So. What is the boy's name?"

Jesper didn't want to say, but it was a losing game. Kaz would get it from him eventually. He never had been able to say no to Kaz, not and make it stick. "Alby," he said at last, painfully. "Alby Rollins."

Kaz turned away from him the instant the words were out. Wylan stared up at him in shocked disappointment. "You promised," he whispered. Calling after Kaz, he demanded, "What are you going to do with him?" while Jesper stood there in shame. Mere hours after deciding to be a better man, he had already betrayed his own word because of one look from Kaz Brekker.

"Kaz, he's just a kid," Jesper said loudly, hoping to get through.

He heard Kaz say something, but couldn't make out the words. Wylan could, though. Kaz had said "So was I." So the beginnings of this feud with Pekka lay somewhere in Kaz's childhood. Nothing could be done about that now; they were grown men, who would have to deal with the pain they had lived through. Alby Rollins didn't have to grow up to be one of them.

"Kaz. Kaz?" he said softly. "Alby Rollins can't help who his father is. And you—you can't punish him for that."

Without speaking, Kaz turned his head. He blinked slowly, twice, but nothing changed in the set of his jaw or the look in his eye.

"I won't help with that," Wylan told him.

Kaz's gaze flickered over Wylan, making Wylan wonder exactly how much he knew of what lay behind his concern for Alby Rollins. "You won't have to touch a hair on his head."

From anyone else, the promise might have meant something, but with Kaz Brekker, nothing was the way it sounded. Wylan had learned that much.

Straightening, Kaz looked Wylan in the eye. "But you are going to help me blow up everything Pekka Rollins holds dear."

"You said no more explosions." He couldn't do that again.

"Not that kind. I finally found a weapon to end all of this."

"What weapon?"

"Suffering."

The mists in the cemetery had nothing on Kaz Brekker's eyes for sheer terror. Wylan stumbled back, nearly falling over Jesper in his haste to get out of the crypt and into the comparative safety of the plague graveyard.

Jesper followed him. "Wylan!"

"Don't talk to me! All you had to do was not say the boy's name. You promised you wouldn't."

"He knew already. He always knows."

"Not the name. And he knew he could make you say it. Why did you?" Wylan demanded.

Jesper looked away uncomfortably. "It didn't make any difference."

It hadn't made a difference to the end result, that much was clear. Kaz had already known about the boy, had already made plans for him. But … Jesper telling him the name, that made a difference. If not to Alby, then to Wylan. "Is there anything Kaz Brekker could ask of you that you wouldn't do?" he asked.

"I— it's complicated." Which wasn't a 'yes'. Neither of them missed that.

"It would have to be." Wylan wanted to turn away, to put these people and their problems and their vendettas behind him, but … he was already invested in this man in front of him, already caught by his voice and his eyes and his hands and his smiles. He shouldn't be, but he was.

"I'm sorry," Jesper said.

And he was, Wylan could see that. They had all known, the moment Kaz fixed Jesper with those cold eyes, that he would give up what he knew. It was difficult to be angry with him for something he clearly wasn't entirely in control of. But he couldn't quite get past it that quickly. "I … I have some experiments I need to get back to. I'm sure Kaz will find me when he needs me." And he hurried off.

Jesper watched him go, helplessly, wanting to make it right and knowing the only way to do that would have been to deny Kaz what he wanted—and that he simply could not do.

As Wylan had expected, Kaz appeared in his workshop early the next morning. He had hoped Jesper might be with him, but wasn't surprised that Kaz was alone.

"I won't blow anything up," Wylan warned him. Others may be putty in Kaz Brekker's hands, but Wylan was not willing to be pushed beyond certain limits.

"What I want will not harm anyone—other than the reputation of Pekka Rollins."

"What is it?"

"I need something that mimics firepox. A powder that we can spread easily."

Wylan thought rapidly. He could do it, but there were limitations. "Well, it will look and feel the same, but it wears off after a day or so. But long enough before anyone realizes it's not the real thing."

"How much can you make up by this afternoon?"

"If you can bring me the supplies, as much as you need."

Kaz nearly smiled at that, or as close to it as he appeared to get. "You'll have them before the hour is out."

Wylan spent the morning compounding the mixture, undisturbed. At the appointed time, a few men arrived with Kaz's mark, and they loaded the crates of aerosolized powder into a cart. Wylan went with them, wanting to make sure the concoction went where it needed to go.

When the cart pulled up in front of the Dregs Club, Jesper was waiting there. He smiled hesitantly, Wylan smiled hesitantly, and all seemed right for the moment. Over the course of the night and morning, Wylan had had plenty of time to think, and he had decided that he had to take Jesper for who he was … including the fact that he was firmly under Kaz Brekker's thumb. That might change someday, but certainly not yet. And as long as Alby Rollins remained unharmed, Jesper wasn't wrong—Kaz had already been in possession of all the information he'd needed.

He picked up a crate. Jesper picked up another one and followed him inside.

The club was in the process of being decorated for the holiday. If there was anything the Barrel loved, it was an excuse to revel in its own debauchery. "You know, in most places, Sankt Emerens is just a simple harvest festival. Nothing on this scale."

"Well, in the Barrel, the Patron Saint of Brewers gets the respect he deserves."

"Sankt Emerens drowned in a grain silo trying to drive out rats."

"Any holiday that mixes cold brew with a little light role-play is fine by me," Jesper said. He put the crate down, not gently, and Wylan winced.

"Careful! Break one, and there'll be a particularly uncomfortable role to play for nine to twelve hours."

"Cautionary note taken." He pointed to the crate of poison, and then to the crate of costumes. "Danger … fun." Reaching in, Jesper plucked out a mask and tried it on. "Ah. Hm. Not many people can pull off a beak." He smiled at Wylan, glad that they were back on good terms this morning. Or on good terms for the first time, given his many mistakes since they'd met … again. "Go on. Your turn."

As Wylan hunted for a mask, Jesper picked out a fantastic red hat and put it on.

"Um … Oh, don't forget your gloves." Wylan handed a pair over. It wouldn't do to touch the compound. Retrieving a full-face mask, he tried it on. "Perfect. Covers my whole face."

"I kind of like your face," Jesper said. The words had come out of their own accord, but … they weren't wrong. It was a beautiful face, sensitive and expressive. He'd always thought so, even while he was trying to pretend not to.

Wylan took the mask down, his eyes meeting Jesper's in surprise. Did that mean—was Jesper flirting with him? It felt like flirting. He wanted it to be flirting.

But before he could follow up on that very interesting opening, Inej appeared, in her own costume, and Jesper's eyes moved to her face instead.

"It smells like these haven't been washed since last year," she complained. Which was probably true.

Kaz came past, and Jesper hastily took the hat off. He never liked looking ridiculous in front of Kaz, although he did it often enough. But Kaz wasn't interested in him; he had eyes only for the crates of poison. He looked up at Wylan. "It will mimic it in every way?"

"Mm-hm."

"Good." Kaz looked up at Jesper, who decided it was high time to break the tension that had existed between them since they got back and found their home gone. And maybe to set some new parameters for their relationship going forward. He loved being a Crow. It probably wasn't going too far to say he loved Kaz, in some strange way. But things had changed—between them as well as within Jesper. And it was time to make that clear.

"You're going to say you can't do this without me. Yeah? And that you hate it when we're angry at each other, but sometimes brothers fight. And that when all this is over, you're going to open a tab for me at a club of my choosing, 'cause when Pekka's gone, you're going to take it all. That's what you were going to say."

Kaz stared at him.

Jesper held that cold gaze, waiting, refusing to be put off without an answer. "Yes?"

At last, Kaz said, "There's a cap on the tab. But otherwise yes. To all of that."

It was a moment that had been a very long time coming—a moment in which Jesper demanded the recognition due his place in Kaz's life, and Kaz finally granted it. Jesper could feel the earth shifting beneath his feet as they looked at one another. Whatever complications there had been between them, now they knew where they stood and who they were to each other.

Now Jesper could move on with his life.

He nodded at Kaz. "Then let's go take down the King."