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Besides, old women must know something, or they wouldn’t live to gather wrinkles and yell from their front stoops.
“I like it when men beg,” she said. “But this isn’t the time for it.”
“This whole ‘shoot me’ thing is starting to concern me.”
He’d heard other members of the gang say she moved like a cat, but he suspected cats would sit attentively at her feet to learn her methods.
They leaned against each other like tipsy friends gathered at a bar, tilting at drowsy angles.
Inej moved aside a bucket full of cleaning supplies that she’d placed there precisely because she knew no one in the Slat would ever touch it.
Nina dug her fingernails into her palms. That condescending tone made Kaz so slappable.
Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you’ll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won’t matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.
“Great. This is just like shooting clay pigeons, but they make a different sound when you hit one.”
He shouldn’t be this shaken up by a dock brawl, even a shoot-out, but he was. Something inside him felt frayed and raw. It was the same feeling he’d had as a boy, in those first desperate days after Jordie’s death.
Nina thought of the look on his face when he’d set Inej down on the table. He was the same Kaz—cold, rude, impossible—but beneath all that anger, she thought she’d seen something else, too. Or maybe she was just a romantic.
He was struggling to keep his teeth from chattering, and they would need each other’s warmth to get through the night.
classic
She’d been the one to wake him from his stupor in the cart. Her voice had brought him back from the dark; it had been the tether he gripped and used to drag himself back to some semblance of sanity.
“Well, we’ve managed to get ourselves locked into the most secure prison in the world. We’re either geniuses or the dumbest sons of bitches to ever breathe air.”
“What is he doing?” asked Matthias. “Performing an ancient Zemeni ritual,” Kaz said. “Really?” “No.”
She had her aim now, her heart had direction, and though it hurt to know that path led away from him, she could endure it.
Then he cupped her face in his hands. “Jer molle pe oonet. Enel mörd je nej afva trohem verret.” Nina swallowed hard. She remembered those words and what they truly meant. I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath. It was the vow of the drüskelle to Fjerda. And now it was Matthias’ promise to her.
He’d looked up from his desk to answer, but whatever he’d been about to say had vanished on his tongue. The sun was out for once, and Inej had turned her face to it. Her eyes were shut, her oil-black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The harbor wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world.
She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.
He needed to tell her … what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn’t pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he’d begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near. He needed to thank her for his new hat.
Her silks were feathers, and she was free.
