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“Do you really have a flying ship?” blurted Jesper. “No.” “Oh.” “I have several.” “Take me with you.”
His eyes were the clear, unspoiled blue Jesper remembered—a high mountain lake, an endless Zemeni sky.
This was the kiss he’d been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of Makker’s Wheel.
Nina had a sudden suspicion that Genya had offered to heal Kaz’s bad leg.
“You look very beautiful.” “You mean I look like the enemy.” “Both of those things have always been true.”
For all Kaz knew, Sturmhond might have something he wanted to steal one day.
“I’m not going to let you make yourself a martyr, Jes. If one of us goes down, we all go down.”
Dirtyhands, they called him. Haskell’s rabid dog.
Kaz was older now than Jordie had been when he’d succumbed to the Queen’s Lady Plague.
And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.
“No mourners,” said Pim.
Wylan summoned every bit of bravado he’d learned from Nina, the will he’d learned from Matthias, the focus he’d studied in Kaz, the courage he’d learned from Inej, and the wild, reckless hope he’d learned from Jesper, the belief that no matter the odds, somehow they would win.
In the end, he was not Nina or Matthias or Kaz or Inej or Jesper. He was just Wylan Van Eck. He told them everything.
He sent up a prayer to Djel. Keep her safe while I cannot.
He could not hate this boy. He’d been him.
The plague could not be stopped with guns or money. It could not be reasoned with or prayed away.
She was the Queen of Mourning, and in its depths, she would never drown.
Innocence was a luxury, and Inej did not believe her Saints demanded it.
When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Action and echo, he thought nonsensically as the soldier flipped him over.
“No, I mean the little Kaelish prince.” Rollins stilled. “Fond of sweets, red hair like his father. Doesn’t take very good care of his toys.”
We ended up on the streets and then we died. Both of us in our own way. But only one of us was reborn.”
“I buried your son,” he crooned, savoring the words. “I buried him alive, six feet beneath the earth in a field of rocky soil. I could hear him crying the whole time, begging for his father. Papa, Papa. I’ve never heard a sweeter sound.”
Then slowly, his movements heavy, as if he had to fight every muscle of his body to do it, Rollins went to his knees.
“I also had her stop at the Menagerie.”
Matthias saw the anger there, the rage. He knew it so well. But he was still surprised when he heard the shot.
Nina wondered if she was anxious for Kuwei to survive or if she just hated to fail at anything.
“Thank the Saints,” said Nina. “Thank me,” said Zoya.
“I have been made to protect you. Even in death, I will find a way.”
“Nina,” he said, pressing her hand to his heart. “I am already home.”
And Wylan had heard Kaz tell Jesper to stay.
“I can read to him.” “He has a very soothing baritone,”
“We were all supposed to make it,” said Wylan softly.
“No mourners,” said Jesper, surprised by the ache of tears in his throat. “No funerals,” they all replied softly.
“That’s the right move, Jes.” It was a little like forgiveness.
“How about I push you in the canal and we see if you know how to swim?”
“He doesn’t say goodbye,” Inej said. She kept her eyes on the lights of the canal. Somewhere in the garden, a night bird began to sing. “He just lets go.”
Whenever he sat down to try to get some work done, he’d find his eyes straying to the window ledge.
The seal was pale blue wax, marked with a golden double eagle.
“Ketterdam is made of monsters. I just happen to have the longest teeth.”
“I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving.
“Crows remember human faces. They remember the people who feed them, who are kind to them. And the people who wrong them too.”
“Is my tie straight?”
“That’s the laugh,” he murmured, but she was already setting off down the quay, her feet barely touching the ground.
The lion was gone. In its place was a black-winged crow.
He’d drink to the whole sorry lot of them, but mostly to the poor fools who didn’t know what trouble was coming.
