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This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, Inej thought frantically as she hacked away at the sides of the net that had entangled her.
It was supposed to be a simple, albeit unplanned, visit. She hadn’t mentioned anything about returning in the letters she exchanged with Kaz and the others. No one could have known she would be back.
Somehow, someone had.
Inej’s hand unconsciously drifted down to her leg as a familiar receding hairline came into view.
Jan Van Eck looked thinner. Clearly prison hadn’t suited him. He also looked more bald.
Inej made a mental note to tell Wylan to invest in some good hair tonic when she saw him again.
She glared up at her captor defiantly, trying to slow the frantic drumming of her heart.
“I should have broken your legs when I had the chance.”
“And I should have killed you the first time you tried.”
Van Eck smiled in a manner that belied the dark edges of the madness that had overtaken him. Inej suppressed a shudder. There was nothing human left in those eyes, no matter how much they looked like Wylan.
This man was not Wylan.
This man was a monster.
It took Inej a moment to realize that he had resumed speaking.
“I suppose,” he said softly, soft like a panther’s fur is soft, until it springs forward and tears the life from its victim, “ that I could always break your legs even now.”
Inej’s heart stopped. But still, she hid her fear.
“That doesn’t matter. I do not belong to Brekker, or anyone else. My days as the Wraith have long since passed, and I have nothing to fear-nor you anything to gain- should you do so.”
He laughed as if he found her words amusing. “Oh? But he would come for you anyways.”
“He wouldn’t.” The words tasted bitter and cloying on her tongue, but she forced the lie out anyways. “You don’t know him like I do.”
But did Inej truly know him herself? Even now, she sometimes found herself doubting that Kaz would come. And at the moment, his arrival was a painful impossibility. He didn’t know that she had returned. He didn’t know that Van Eck had her.
No Kaz.
No chance of help.
She was on her own.
Inej refused to look away as Van Eck lifted the mallet. She refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream, clenching her teeth until she tasted blood from her bitten tongue.
But her captor didn’t stop until long after her bones had shattered, her resolve crumbling with every blow.
Finally she gave in.
Her throat became hoarse, her voice ragged. And yet, the blows never ceased.
Inej sent a prayer to her Suli saints. She knew that she would not be leaving alive.
Suddenly, there was a shout as Van Eck was flung bodily across the room. She smiled weakly as she caught a glimpse of a silver crow’s head atop a familiar cane. Kaz had found her after all.
Distantly she thought she heard the mercher whimpering in pain. He was lying in a crumpled heap where Kaz had flung him, dazed and unable to move.
She was suddenly aware that Kaz was talking. “-damn it Inej, listen to me! You will not die here like some-” she cut him off with a jagged laugh that immediately dissolved into a coughing fit.
Inej lifted her hand with some difficulty, hesitantly cupping the side of Kaz’s thin face and running a thumb over his too-sharp cheekbones. He didn’t stop her.
She forced herself to move, struggling up onto her elbows so she could look him in the eye, and let all her shields fall.
It was the first time she had seen such vulnerability reflected back.
In that moment, Inej was reminded that he was just a boy, young and pushed to the breaking point. He was vengeful and wary, distancing himself for fear of being hurt.
He was everything she once was.
Inej gave him a lopsided grin, teeth red with her own blood. “You finally took off all your armor.” Her gaze traveled down to his hands, still covered by his ever-present gloves. “Well, almost all of it.”
Kaz dropped his gloves, his breathing rapid and shallow, but refused to lean away from her touch.
“I want you to stay.” His voice was that of the child he had once been, plaintive and desperate as he watched her fade away.
“I know.” Hers was one of terrible finality, acknowledgement of the inevitable.
“No mourners,” Inej said, feeling the bitterness surrounding the familiar phrase.
“No funerals,” Kaz whispered back.
Inej’s tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth. Still, she forced the words out. “I will be with you.”
“How? He took you away.” The words were cold and hard, gaze smoldering with hate that concealed all of the hurt.
“I’m no more dead than anyone.” Inej’s vision was blurring now. But through the haze of incoming darkness, she thought she saw the first hint of tears glittering at the edges of Kaz’s eyes. She reached up to wipe them away, then dropped her hand, strength fading fast.
The last thing she saw was the stricken face of the orphan-boy she had come to know so well.
Then she was gone, fading back out of his life as quietly as she had entered.
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Kaz stood, furiously scrubbing away the tears with the hem of his bloodied sleeve. Once the signs that betrayed his moment of weakness were gone, he slipped his gloves back on. His thin frame trembled as the familiar beginnings of white-hot rage bloomed in his chest.
The Wraith was dead. And someone was going to pay.
In the corner of his eye, Kaz saw Van Eck struggling to rise. He walked over to the fallen mercher, striking him down almost casually. He screamed as his ankles shattered.
That only fueled Kaz’s anger.
“My Wraith would counsel mercy,” he spat, “but thanks to you, she’s not here to plead your case.”
Van Eck let out another whimper as he caught sight of Kaz’s eyes, dead and cold, like the hypnotic gaze of a snake fixed upon a small bird.
Kaz struck him again. He didn’t stop until fragments of shattered bone jutted through the mercher’s skin, gleaming dully in the weak rays of the winter sun that filtered through the window. When his legs were nothing more than a shattered pulp, Kaz plunged his gloved fingers deep into his eye sockets, yanking the ball of now, useless flesh out of Van Eck’s head and letting it dangle limply on his face. His breathing was labored, and the end was near.
It wasn’t long before the mercher’s chest ceased to rise, blood weeping from empty sockets, and oozing from ruptured skin, seeping into the dust.
Kaz stepped back, anger fading. With a last glance at Van Eck, he returned to the prone form of his Wraith, stretched out on the filthy ground.
The sun had set while he was punishing the mercher. The shadows stretched long across the floor. But even so, Inej remained in the light, illuminated by the cold beams of the distant moon.
Men mock the gods until they need them.
That was all too true. For so long, Kaz Brekker had been his own god. But what kind of god was he if he couldn’t bring her back?
He knelt beside Inej once more, painful memories overtaking him.
He was a child once more, on another night, clinging to another body, one that was no less beloved. Corpse-sweet air filled his lungs as bloated cadavers pressed in close, skin sloughing and perfumed with the stink of rot. The dark water was cold, and he could feel himself slipping away, into the icy depths…
He was brought back to the present by the coppery tang of freshly-spilled blood, and the fading warmth of Inej’s red-slicked skin. The chill still lingered.
Her once-bright eyes were dull and clouded. Kaz couldn’t bear to see them, and slid her eyelids closed.
Inej had once told him that there was a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter. But as Kaz looked at her prone body lying upon the festering floor, he felt like he had just done both.
Love was like the sea. And just as the sea wears down the cliffs and turns them to sand; so love wears us down and breaks all defenses.
Kaz had made the mistake of loving, of becoming weak. He would not do so again.
He had loved once, and it was more than enough. There would never be anyone to replace the Wraith. There would never be anyone able to compare to Inej as he had seen her.
A girl forced to grow up too soon but refused to break, as beautiful as she was deadly. A girl who danced with the wind, graceful and elegant, one with the sky and open air like no one else. A girl who was shadowed by her past, and by the blood on her hands.
A girl who was just as scarred as him.
Now she was gone, as quickly as she came. And so was Brekker, only Dirtyhands left behind.
And in the end, there was all the world to blame.