Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

“I do like you,” he said angrily.

“I’m Matthias.” “Nina,” she said, taking it. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

to those long days on the ice when they’d managed to be Nina and Matthias instead of Grisha and witchhunter.

“Stop,” he said softly.

I saved her life. We saved each other.

I was willing to betray everything I believed in for the sake of her safety.

As he fastened it around her throat, Nina met his eyes over her shoulder, and the look they exchanged could have melted miles of northern ice. Matthias moved away hurriedly. Inej almost laughed. So that was all it took to send the drüskelle scurrying and bring the boy back.

Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the bastard of the Barrel and the deadliest boy in Ketterdam, fainted.

Together, they drifted, Jordie’s distended body acting as a raft. Kaz kept kicking, trying not to think of his brother, of the taut, bloated feel of Jordie’s flesh beneath his hands; he tried not to think of anything but the rhythm of his legs moving through the sea.

Better it should be her.

Though he’d trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with this shame.

He felt a twinge in his chest, and with a disturbing jolt, he realized it was panic. 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.

the hopeful farm boy who picked the worst possible person to care about, who searched for signs in things that he knew deep down meant nothing—

“Stop being dense. You’re cuter when you’re smart.”

“What is he doing?” asked Matthias. “Performing an ancient Zemeni ritual,” Kaz said. “Really?” “No.”

“If I didn’t think these might be crawling with disease, I would kiss them and then you.”

Or because despite all good sense and better intentions, she’d let herself feel something for the bastard of the Barrel?

Kaz’s mouth had quirked slightly at that. “Then you can steal my secrets, too.”

“If it were a trick, I’d promise you safety. I’d offer you happiness. I don’t know if that exists in the Barrel, but you’ll find none of it with me.”

The heart is an arrow.

She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above.

Rietveld, his family name, was abandoned, cut away like a rotten limb.

A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.

What bound them together? Greed? Desperation?

Kaz snagged her wrist. “Inej.” His gloved thumb moved over her pulse, traced the top of the feather tattoo.

She reached up and touched his cheek.

this was the first time she had touched him skin to skin, without the barrier of gloves or coat or shirtsleeve.

He stayed still, but she saw a tremor pass through him, as if he were waging a war with himself.

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.

“I wonder what Matthias would have to say about that outfit.” “He wouldn’t approve.” “He doesn’t approve of anything about you. But when you laugh, he perks up like a tulip in fresh water.”

and with Nina, always Nina.

“I feel sorry for you, Brekker. There is nothing sacred in your life.”

Matthias thought as he bent to the task. Trickery is not my native tongue, but I may learn to speak it yet.

“Just girls?” Jesper restrained a grin. “No. Not just girls.”

I was lured, though, thought Matthias. And it wasn’t just her beauty.

And yet, after everything they’d been through, he was not surprised by the pain he felt at seeing it come to pass.

But he’d given what was left of his broken heart to the cause. A false cause. A lie.

She’d shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe more vividly human than anyone he’d ever known.

“The life you live, the hate you feel—it’s poison. I can drink it no longer.”

She ran to him, and he swept her up in his arms.

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.

A boy not much younger than she was, caught up in a war he hadn’t chosen for himself. A survivor.

He thought of Inej’s hand on his cheek. His mind had gone jagged at the sensation, a riot of confusion. It had been terror and disgust and—in all of that clamor—desire, a wish that lingered still, the hope that she would touch him again.

There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.

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.

Kaz forced him to remember Jordie’s name. But all he could think of was Inej. She had to live. She had to have made it out of the Ice Court. And if she hadn’t, then he had to live to rescue her.