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Inej is not a Saint. She’s killed, murdered, made a thousand mistakes that she’ll never be able to take back. She does not expect to be forgiven. When Kaz calls her his Saint, it feels like a honor that she does not deserve.
Saints have to die, Inej would always counter.
Yet the Dragon Queen is still alive, and hates me as much as ever, would be Kaz’s reply. While he and Ravka’s Queen never did - and likely never will - see eye to eye, Inej supposes he is right - Zoya isn’t dead. If Inej’s suspicions are correct, neither is Sankta Alina.
Inej may not be Grisha, unlike either of them - but a part of her wonders what it would take from her. What can she do, to fix everything she’s done and make it all at least a tiny, little bit okay?
You and I aren’t Saints, Kaz. We’re thieves and we’re criminals, two people who lost too much and hit the bottom. And we took the twisted way out.
Sometimes, this is when Kaz’s hand will brush hers, gloves off - just to remind her that they’re maybe not quite as twisted as she tends to say. But he never argues with her - possibly because he knows she’s right.
He’s not there right now. Inej is alone, nearly, as she looks out over the churning waves and jet black sky, speckled with stars. The Wraith rocks slowly, side to side.
We climbed our way out, Kaz will remind her. You do the right thing, these days. He’ll pause. You always have.
Inej does not know how he can glorify the blood, the bodies she’s left limp on the cobblestone. Even the ones she’s left to be dumped in the harbor. Yet he does, every time.
Self defense, he’ll say. To survive. A pause. To protect me.
And that was the first one. The first one was a headshot, knife right to the skull. They’d dropped dead immediately. That was back when killing was the last thing Inej saw herself doing - w hy would the Saints forgive me? she always asked herself. But she supposes she’d saved Kaz’s life, and she will never bring herself to regret that.
I guess so. Inej doesn’t argue with him. Part of her indulges herself, in letting herself believe.
Because perhaps she’s on her way, her and her crew. They’re making the world just a little bit better as they go.
Now, Inej is not just the Wraith. She is not just a spider. She’s also a ghost, the one who flickers and flashes in and out. Strikes. Then she leaves death, for the twisted - and freedom, for the ones who deserve better - in her wake.
After all, they say ghosts haunt - they plague your dreams, turn them into something worse - but Inej doesn’t see why they can’t make them better.
Dreams were her refuge, at one point. She’d dream of her parents, of when she first learned to walk a tightrope or twirl through the air in the silks. For a moment, she’d forget the hell that she’d be living once she woke up again. Those dreams never lasted long enough - but Inej was thankful, grateful that they had decided to simply exist.
Now, she hopes she’s the one they see in their dreams. She hopes that to those who are lost, those who are afraid and those who are nearly broken - she can lift them off their feet, into the depths of the night and onto the waves of the deep sea. Or, maybe, across a high-wire and into the sky. Whichever they prefer.
I’ll come for you, she wants to say. I promise.
And she may not sink them all. She still has room to improve, places where she fails and where there’s a chance to do one better. But Inej is making progress. She takes progress, sometimes. Because at one point, there was no chance to try. She was falling, with no way to fly - and gravity seemed to keep pulling her down.
Now, Inej feels free. Finally. She has no real ties to Ketterdam - in theory, she may one day leave forever. People speculate that she will stop, eventually, coming back. Kaz knows otherwise. She made him a promise - and never will she leave him, like the rest of his family seemed to have done.
Trust me, she will say. Every time she leaves the dock, every time she sets sail yet again with yet another target - trust me.
And she knows that Kaz trusts her. She also knows that if one day, he finds out that she’s gone - she’s going to have betrayed him, for the first time.
I know. Yet he’ll always trust her, anyways. He’ll let her go.
Inej will promise to come back, and maybe, one day she won’t - but it’s never going to be her choice.
She knows that she may very well die. She knows that there are dozens, hundreds who want her dead, and one day they may very well take her. But she will die free. She’ll die fighting, she’ll die happy. And she’ll die, knowing that she was able to love.
Because her parents always told her that one day, there would be a boy who would know her favorite flower. Her favorite color, her favorite place and her favorite song. Kaz is not that type of person. He knows all of those things, anyways.
But knowing her favorites is not the most important thing. He does not need to know everything about her, and he may never. In fact, she still has a few secrets and he still has a few of his own. But Kaz sees her heart. He sees her fear, he sees every single time she questions and the way she, sometimes, is afraid she’ll never move on. In return, she does the same for him.
There seems to only be one thing that Kaz does not see. He does not see why she tears herself down, why she tells herself that she’s made too many mistakes to be considered good. Maybe Inej is too hard on herself. Maybe she finds it too hard to forgive.
You’re a living Saint, Inej.
She’s not. She knows she’s not. How can she be?
I don’t want to be, is her reply.
Kaz will stare at her, in questioning.
She’ll look up at the sky, and she’ll smile.
Sainthood isn’t for me, Kaz. I think it’s too much of a label, too much to tie me down. I don’t want to be in that box, of somebody good and somebody everyone should aspire to be. She’ll pause. I want to be able to go wherever the wind takes me. I want to be a little more free.
Because Inej spent too much time belonging to somebody else to not cut every string but three that may tie her down. She spent too much time wishing for freedom to be put back into another box.
Are you sure you don’t want me to make you one? Kaz will ask.
Inej will laugh, even if just to see Kaz’s eyes light, just to see him smile. She wants to tell him that he can’t do that. He can’t pick and choose. She doesn’t say it, though.
Instead, she’ll turn to him - and in present day, she’ll turn to the empty spot beside her at the head of her ship - and she’ll smile.
“I’m sure,” she whispers.
I’m sure, she’ll say.
Maybe, one day. Maybe when she’s gone.
But that’s not today.