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Wylan didn’t think he imagined the tension in the rasp of Kaz’s voice. Kaz never yelled the way Wylan’s father did, but Wylan had learned to listen for that low note, that bit of black harmony that crept into Kaz’s tone when things were about to get dangerous. He’d heard it after the fight at the docks when Inej lay bleeding from Oomen’s knife, then when Kaz had learned it was Pekka Rollins who had tried to ambush them, again when they’d been double-crossed by Wylan’s father. He’d heard it loud and clear atop the lighthouse as the clerk screamed for his life. Wylan watched as Kaz set the room
you don’t care about money, Nina dear, call it by its other names.” “Kruge? Scrub? Kaz’s one true love?” “Freedom, security, retribution.” “You can’t put a price on those things.” “No? I bet Jesper can. It’s the price of the lien on his father’s farm.” The sharpshooter looked at the toes of his boots. “What about you, Wylan? Can you put a price on the chance to walk away from Ketterdam and live your own life? And Nina, I suspect you and your Fjerdan may want something more to subsist on than patriotism and longing glances. Inej might have a number in mind too. It’s the price of a future, and
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“Why won’t he just say he wants her back?” “You’ve met Kaz, right?” “But she’s one of us.” Jesper’s brows rose again. “One of us? Does that mean she knows the secret handshake? Does that mean you’re ready to get a tattoo?”
He had often wondered how people survived this city, but it was possible Ketterdam would not survive Kaz Brekker.
“Has anyone noticed this whole city is looking for us, mad at us, or wants to kill us?” “So?” said Kaz. “Well, usually it’s just half the city.”
She did not tell herself she wasn’t afraid. Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. 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.
“No, you’re the man who sits idly by, congratulating yourself on your decency, while the monster eats his fill. At least a monster has teeth and a spine.”
“Even better men can be bested.”
“Do you know what Van Eck’s problem is?” “No honor?” said Matthias. “Rotten parenting skills?” said Nina. “Receding hairline?” offered Jesper. “No,” said Kaz. “Too much to lose. And he gave us a map to what to steal first.”
but poor, pretty, pregnant Alys had just looked up from her sheet music and said, “Is this a play?” “Yes, love,” said Jesper gently, “and you’re the star.”
She could have outpaced him in an instant, but they ran in tandem, matching each other step for step.
But maybe when she had her ship, when she’d brought down the first slaver, the paint would blister from the bricks. The cries of those girls in their mint-colored silks would turn to laughter. They would dance for no one but themselves.
“Sorry about my father.” Inej pulled him into the hug and whispered, “We are not our fathers.”
“You don’t win by running one game,”
“Kaz can pick the locks,” said Wylan. “No,” said Kaz, “I can’t.” “I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words leave your lips,” said Nina. “Say it again, nice and slow.”
“Isn’t that how things are done around here?” asked Wylan. “We all tell Kaz we’re fine and then do something stupid?” “Are we that predictable?” said Inej. Wylan and Matthias said in unison, “Yes.”
“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.”
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fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”
maybe being brave didn’t mean being unafraid.
“Wylan Van Eck, you lied to Kaz Brekker.” Jesper clutched a hand to his chest. “And you got away with it! Do you give lessons?”
And if I ever hear you call yourself a moron again, I’m going to tell Matthias you tried to kiss Nina. With tongue.” Wylan wiped his nose on his sleeve. “He’ll never believe it.” “Then I’ll tell Nina you tried to kiss Matthias. With tongue.”
“Nina, I am with you because you let me be with you. There is no greater honor than to stand by your side.”
“Meeting you was a disaster.” She raised a brow. “Thank you.” Djel, he was terrible at this. He stumbled on, trying to make her understand. “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.” “I,” she said, planting a hand on her hip, “am a delicate flower.” “You aren’t a flower, you’re every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You’re a stampede. You are overwhelming.”
“I flirt with the women too.” “I think you’d flirt with a date palm if it would pay you any attention.” “If I flirted with a plant, you can bet it would stand up and take notice. Are you jealous?” “All the time.” “I’m glad.
“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 said. She tilted her face up to his. So close now it was as if they were already touching. “Not the way we met. Not the life we lead. And not the way we kiss.”
“Shameless,” Nina whispered, and he felt his cheeks go red.
HE IS SO FUCKING CUTE!
“You shouldn’t have sent him to Saint Hilde blind like that. It was cruel.” “It was necessary.” Wylan’s fists were clenched. “Why?” “Because you still didn’t understand what your father really is.” “You could have told me.” “You were angry. Angry wears off. I needed you righteous.”
On the high wire, she was beholden to no one, a creature without past or present, suspended between earth and sky.
“You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are.
We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.”
“You do realize you just led your own little Grisha army?”
What if both things were true? What if Djel worked through these people? Unnatural. The word had come so easily to him, a way to dismiss what he did not understand, to make Nina and her kind less than human. But what if behind the righteousness that drove the drüskelle, there was something less clean or justified? What if it wasn’t even fear or anger but simply envy? What did it mean to aspire to serve Djel, only to see his power in the gifts of another, to know you could never possess those gifts yourself?
To hell with revenge, to hell with his schemes. If Rollins had done something to Inej, Kaz would paint East Stave with his entrails.
Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and the sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.
They valued the things he could do instead of punishing him for the things he couldn’t.
“Kaz,” said Nina. “You may not be glad we’re alive, but we’re glad you’re alive. Come here!”
saw through the glass that was so compelling. “So,” Jesper said, adding sugar to his coffee. “Other than Inej making a new pal, what the hell happened out there?” “Let’s see,” said Nina. “Inej fell twenty stories.” “We put a serious hole in my father’s dining room ceiling,” Wylan offered. “Nina can raise the dead,” said Inej.
She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re better than waffles, Matthias Helvar.” A small smile curled the Fjerdan’s lips. “Let’s not say things we don’t mean, my love.”
“Jesper Llewellyn Fahey?” “Shut up,” said Jesper. “It’s a family name.” Inej made a solemn bow. “Whatever you say, Llewellyn.”
“Do you know the Suli have no words to say ‘I’m sorry’?” “What do you say when you step on someone’s foot?” “I don’t step on people’s feet.” “You know what I mean.” “We say nothing. We know the slight was not deliberate. We live in tight quarters, traveling together. There’s no time to constantly be apologizing for existing. But when someone does wrong, when we make mistakes, we don’t say we’re sorry. We promise to make amends.” “I will.” “Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.”
“There’s a wound in you, and the tables, the dice, the cards—they feel like medicine. They soothe you, put you right for a time. But they’re poison, Jesper. Every time you play, you take another sip. You have to find some other way to heal that part of yourself.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Stop treating your pain like it’s something you imagined. If you see the wound is real, then you can heal it.”
“Are you mad?” “I’d probably be happier if I was,” said Kaz.
“This is the city I bled for. And if Ketterdam has taught me anything, it’s that you can always bleed a little more.”
“The Suli believe that when we do wrong, we give life to our shadows. Every sin makes the shadow stronger, until eventually the shadow is stronger than you.” “If that were true, my shadow would have put Ketterdam in permanent night.”
“You don’t ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it.”
His eyes scanned her face as they always had, closely, hungrily, snatching at the details of her like the thief he was—the even set of her dark brows, the rich brown of her eyes, the upward tilt of her lips. He didn’t deserve peace and he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but if he was going to die today, maybe the one thing he’d earned was the memory of her—brighter than anything he would ever have a right to—to take with him to the other side.
“Look for Dunyasha’s tells.” “What?” “A fighter always has a tell, a sign of an old injury, a dropped shoulder when they’re about to throw a punch.” “Do I have a tell?” “You square your shoulders before you start a move as if you’re about to perform, like you’re waiting for the audience’s attention.” She looked slightly affronted at that. “And what’s yours?” Kaz thought of the moment on Vellgeluk that had nearly cost him everything. “I’m a cripple. That’s my tell. No one’s ever smart enough to look for the others.”
