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Kuwei spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. “It’s safer there. For Grisha. For me. I don’t want to hide. I want to train.”
“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.”
“Do you know what Van Eck’s problem is?” “No honor?” said Matthias. “Rotten parenting skills?” said Nina. “Receding hairline?” offered Jesper.
“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.”
“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.”
My mother is Ketterdam. She birthed me in the harbor. And my father is profit. I honor him daily.
“She knows what he did to her. She knows he had no right to take her money, her life.” Van Eck, she’d said. She was not Marya Hendriks, she was Marya Van Eck, a wife and mother stripped of her name and her fortune.
She would have her ship and he would have his city.
“Pick up the pace,” Kaz said, eyeing his watch. “If I spill a single drop of this, it will burn straight through the floor onto my father’s dinner guests.” “Take your time.”
You cannot fear death and be its true emissary.
“I was born without fear,” Dunyasha continued with a happy chuckle. “My parents thought I would drown because I crawled into the sea as a baby, laughing.”
But I ask no money for the lives I take. They are the jewels I wear. They are my glory in this world and will bring me honor in the next.
Our work is death and it is holy.
“I think she may be my shadow.” “Pretty solid shadow if she can throw knives.” “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.” “Maybe,” Inej said, turning her dark gaze to his. “Or maybe you’re someone else’s shadow.”
He knew exactly what he intended to leave behind when he was gone. Damage.
“That was a warning,” said Dunyasha. She perched on the scrollwork of one of the spires thirty feet from Inej, her ivory hood raised around her face, bright as new snow beneath the afternoon sun. “I will look you in the eye when I send you to your death.” Inej reached for her knives. Her shadow demanded an answer.
She was the Queen of Mourning, and in its depths, she would never drown.
“Your spirit brings me pleasure, Wraith. I can’t remember the last time anyone drew first blood on me.”
“Are you going to run all the way back to the caravan, Wraith? You know it’s only a matter of time before this ends and justice is done.” “Justice?” “You are a murderer and a thief. I was chosen to rid this world of people like you. A criminal may pay my wages, but I have never taken an innocent life.”
“I will give my new knife a handle from your shinbone. It will be your honor to serve me in death.” “I will never serve you,” said Inej.
“The blood you spill is the blood of kings,” seethed Dunyasha. “You are not fit for such a gift.”
But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
“There is no shame in meeting a worthy opponent. It means there is more to learn, a welcome reminder to pursue humility.”
But perhaps the Saints had chosen Dunyasha as their vessel. Despite Inej’s prayers and penance, maybe judgment had come at last. I am not sorry, she realized. She had chosen to live freely as a killer rather than die quietly as a slave, and she could not regret that. She would go to her Saints with a ready spirit and hope they would receive her.
“I told you, Wraith. I am fearless. My blood flows with the strength of every queen and conqueror who came before me.”
She was a queen without mercy, a figure carved in ivory and amber.
“Go home to Ravka, Nina. Be free, as you were meant to be. Be a warrior, as you always have been. Just save some mercy for my people. There has to be a Fjerda worth saving. Promise me.” “I promise.” The words were more sob than sound. “I have been made to protect you. Even in death, I will find a way.” He clasped her hand tighter. “Bury me so I can go to Djel. Bury me so I can take root and follow the water north.” “I promise, Matthias. I’ll take you home.” “Nina,” he said, pressing her hand to his heart. “I am already home.”
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They were twin souls, soldiers destined to fight for different sides, to find each other and lose each other too quickly. She would not keep him here. Not like this.
After all their mad escapes and close calls, he’d started to believe the six of them were somehow charmed, that his guns, Kaz’s brains, Nina’s wit, Inej’s talent, Wylan’s ingenuity, and Matthias’ strength had made them somehow untouchable.
