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What am I doing here? That thought had run through Wylan’s head at least six times a day since he’d met Kaz Brekker.
No mourners, no funerals? Why not just say good luck or be safe?” “We like to keep our expectations low.”
We meet fear, he’d said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.
he’d done it for Kaz too, to show he was willing to do what it took to make things right.
People point guns at each other all the time in Ketterdam. It’s basically a handshake.”
“Inej wouldn’t want—” In the space of a breath, Kaz had shoved Wylan against the tomb wall with his forearm, the crow head of his cane wedged beneath Wylan’s jaw. “Tell me my business again.” Wylan swallowed, parted his lips. “Do it,” said Kaz. “And I’ll cut the tongue from your head and feed it to the first stray cat I find.” “Kaz—” Jesper said cautiously. Kaz ignored him.
“We were lucky to have you there,” said Matthias with a small bow that left Wylan looking pleased and entirely flustered.
“Where do you think the money went?” he repeated. “Guns?” asked Jesper. “Ships?” queried Inej. “Bombs?” suggested Wylan. “Political bribes?” offered Nina. They all looked at Matthias. “This is where you tell us how awful we are,” she whispered. He shrugged. “They all seem like practical choices.”
“A chemical weevil,” said Jesper. “But Wylan still hasn’t named it. My vote is for the Wyvil.” “That’s terrible,” said Wylan. “It’s brilliant.” Jesper winked. “Just like you.” Wylan blushed daylily pink.
Inej blinked at the small glass tube. “Truly?” “Tiny and ferocious,” Jesper said. He winked again. “Just like you.”
“Inej,” Jesper whispered. She leaned forward, peering at Wylan. “Is that scheming face?” “Possibly.”
Why something that would complicate the assault he’d planned on the silos and leave them twice as open to exposure? I couldn’t bear to watch you fall.
he said to no one at all, then realized he was smiling.
So why had he insisted that he accompany her?
This was them at their best, with nothing but the job between them, working together free of complications. He should leave it at that, but he needed to know. “You said Van Eck didn’t hurt you. Tell me the truth.”
Her braid had come uncoiled down her back. He imagined wrapping it around his hand, rubbing his thumb over the pattern of its plaits. And then what? He shoved the thought away.
Kaz was going to have to find a new language of suffering to teach that smug merch son of a bitch.
He could only be who he truly was—a boy who had no comfort to offer. So he would give her what he could.
“I’m going to open Van Eck up,” he said quietly. “I’m going to give him a wound that can’t be sewn shut, that he’ll never recover from. The kind that can’t be healed.”
“He was going to break my legs,” she said, her chin held high, the barest quaver in her voice. “Would you have come for me then, Kaz? When I couldn’t scale a wall or walk a tightrope? When I wasn’t the Wraith anymore?”
“I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”
“Are we married, Matthias?” she said, batting her lashes. He consulted the papers and frowned. “I believe we’re brother and sister.” Jesper ambled over, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Not creepy at all.”
When she emerged from the passage, Jesper doubled over laughing, Kaz’s brows shot up, and even Inej’s lips twitched.
“I don’t care for ice cream.” “Matthias,” Nina said, “I’m not sure we can continue to spend time together.”
“Who decided Alina Starkov was a Saint anyway?”
“Zoya?” Nina gasped as she stared down, trying to catch her breath.
He just couldn’t stand to see Jesper—confident, smiling Jesper—with that lost look on his face,
“Wylan Van Eck, you lied to Kaz Brekker.” Jesper clutched a hand to his chest.
“Wylan … I think your mother’s alive.”
and there, repeated again and again, was the face of a little boy with ruddy curls and bright blue eyes.
“Genya!”
“Your enemies are my enemies, and I will stand with you against any foe—including this accursed drug.”
“But I am grateful every day for that disaster. I needed a cataclysm to shake me from the life I knew. You were an earthquake, a landslide.”
He loved seeing her in Fjerdan clothes, the little woolly vest, the full sweep of her skirts. Her green eyes were bright, her cheeks pink, her lips slightly parted. It was too easy to imagine himself kneeling like a penitent before her, letting his hands slide up the white curves of her calves, pushing those skirts higher, past her knees to the warm skin of her thighs. And the worst part was that he knew how good she would feel.
“I … There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you.”
“I thought drüskelle didn’t eat sweets.” “They’d all be for you,” he said.
Are you jealous?” “All the time.”
“How many rules have you broken since you met me? How many laws? They won’t be the last. Nothing about us will ever be proper,”
She went up on tiptoe, and that easily, her mouth was against his. It was barely a kiss—just a quick, startling press of her lips.
he couldn’t bring himself to worry, because she was in his arms, her lips were parting, her hands were twining around his neck, and sweet Djel, her tongue was in his mouth.
If Matthias could be kissing Nina, feeling her nip at his lip with her clever teeth, feel her body fitted against his own, hear her release that little sigh in the back of her throat, why would he ever bother doing anything else?
But she was smiling, and her eyes sparkled.
“Shameless,” Nina whispered, and he felt his cheeks go red.
Zoya rolled her eyes. “We’re making a deal with a pair of love-struck teenagers.”
I can’t, my love,
The idea of his wolf left alone, howling for Matthias to come and take him home, carved a hollow ache in his chest.
He was just glad she was smiling that way. He picked her up and spun her in the air.
Matthias examined the posters. “One hundred thousand kruge!” He shot a disbelieving glower at Kaz. “You’re hardly worth that.” The hint of a smile tugged at Kaz’s lips. “As the market wills it.” “Tell me about it,” said Jesper. “They’re only offering thirty thousand for me.”
“I know. I just can’t bear the thought of losing you.”
sure that any minute she would wake and stroke his cheek and he would hear her voice say, “What are you doing here, little rabbit?” Instead, he woke to the sound of his father weeping.
