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Inej’s childhood was more colourful than most children could imagine in their wildest dreams. There was the canary yellow of the circus tent, the rich evergreen of her family’s caravan, the ponies speckled with dirty white spots among their rusty hair, the ruby and turquoise and violet of the performing silks… the hues were endless, the shades entrancing.

She knew that the Suli lived in colour, but she never realised just how bright life was until she was thrown into the belly of a slaver’s ship. Over the dreadful, dehumanising days that followed, colour drained from the world, quickly at first then slowing to a sluggish leach. It was difficult to tell exactly how fast, of course, because it was so dark in the hold. But after three days at sea, Inej woke to a world that was completely grey.

There was nobody here who was her destiny, and that knowledge was a relief and a repulse. To have found a soulmate on a slaver’s ship would have been – well, if it was the Saints’ will, she would have borne it as best she could. (Years later, she would find out that such a thing happened to Nina. Truly the Saints’ kindnesses were sometimes wrapped in cruelty.) Her father had taught Inej the lore since before she could remember, but it was echoed in every other Suli cousin she had met: “some people are destined for each other, meja ; the Saints cross our paths over and over in our lives with people who will help us live holy lives. Jivan shakti , the life force that animates all things, is sparked by spending honoured time together and with the world. This increases our sight of each other and of the Saints, leading to interconnection with all living beings. If you follow the colour, you’ll find soulmates and purpose.”

The caravan was her family, and her family were her soulmates. She had never thought she would need any others. But the Saints had seen fit to send her here instead.

She closed her eyes and prayed, for there was nothing else to hold onto. After Heleen van Houden bought her false indenture and had her smuggled from the ship to her sham Suli bedroom at the Menagerie, Inej thought that maybe there was a tinge of colour to the grey in Ketterdam.

There were others in this foreign city who would be known to her. The better she got to know them, the more colour she could find, but until then she must pray as best she could in this mocking hellscape. She would find purpose here. She had to, or lose her mind along with her body.

~*~

Kaz used to sleep and wait for the other world to reveal itself to him. It wasn’t unlike his other dreams, except that this world always featured the same people, the same caravans, even though the locations changed. He would go to bed and dream one night of a pile of puppies growing apples; another night, his friend Sanne pushing him into the creek; but only the bronze circus performers remained constant. He would see flashes of their life several nights a week. It was always morning, and he was often eating, or cooking breakfast, or walking a practice tightrope high above the ground. Somehow, here, Kaz knew that evenings were for walking the rope for real, above the crowds.

He had tried to tell Jordie about the dreams before, but Jordie didn’t believe him. For a few years, he had played along, but as Kaz got older, he became impatient. “You should vary your stories,” he told Kaz. “Why is it always morning?”

“Because that’s how they always are,” Kaz insisted.

“And when do these dreams happen?”

Kaz paused, sticking out his bottom lip. “Lots of nights.”

Jordie sighed. “Right. Then why don’t I get them?”

Kaz made an ‘I don’t know’ noise. “Maybe Pa does.”

Their solemn father was frequently petitioned for answers to Kaz’s many questions, any that Jordie couldn’t answer. Usually, his answers did not satisfy Kaz, and today was no different. He sighed as his sons trailed over to where he silently worked on the stovetop, chattering questions as to why Kaz always saw the same place in his dreams but Jordie’s were different.

“Your ma saw another world when she slept, too,” Pa said, not looking down at his boys. They bore her face too closely, Jordie had told Kaz once. It made it difficult for Pa. “Prairie evenings. She used to say they were windows into another soul, family across the world, and Our Lady Domika had blessed her with being able to watch over family far away.”

Jordie had fallen still and silent at such words, but Kaz had tugged on his Pa’s apron. “Do they see us? Does that mean she can see us still?”

Pa blinked down at him before looking away towards the stovetop. “Domika saw fit to take your ma from us. We don’t need any more of her blessings. ”

Of course, it was not many months later that the Goddess of Family saw fit to take the rest of Kaz’s family to her breast too, laughing as her husband Ghezen levered it so that she could steal Pa and Jordie. Kaz hated her just as much as Pa had, even before he woke on Jordie’s cold chest in the depths of fever to a colourless world.

Kaz loathed sleeping, now. He despised the weakness of it: leaving yourself so open to attack, of course, but also the weakness that resulted from vomiting your guts up every morning when your brain expected to be waking up on your brother’s corpse. Sleep tasted of terror and bile. 

He both loathed and adored the snatches of the other life he would occasionally still dream of, the only thing other than his name he still carried with him from his old life as he made his way on the Ketterdam streets. It still seemed so easy out there, for that other family. Could they see what had happened to him? It wasn’t fair.

He had the expectation of fairness beaten out of him with time, but the bittersweet ache over that other world never quite lifted.

~*~

The inexplicable aches and pains had begun the autumn after she turned nine. Inej would wake with a sore jaw, aching knuckles, groaning shins, a tender eye. Sometimes they came upon her during the day. For over a year, she received such blows frequently. On two occasions, they hit her badly enough she nearly tumbled from the high-wire. The second time, she was scared badly enough that she went to cry to her mama and papa about it, begging to be taken to the healer because she must be dying.

They gave each other very serious looks and sat her down, her mother drying her tears and attempting to explain the complex topic in terms Inej could understand.

“Sometimes,” she began, “a pair of soulmates are blessed by the Saints. They are each one half of the blessing so we call them ardh-ashirvaad. ”

“Is that how you and Papa found each other?” Inej asked, tearful, and her mother nodded.

“But they don’t have to be your spouse. They will burst into your life with divine timing to spark awareness of your true purpose.” Ashanti Ghafa knelt before Inej and gave her a brilliant smile. “You may feel echoes of your ardh-ashirvaad ’s life to help lead you to them because your two bodies need to be as one. And when you have found them, well! You will begin a jivan shakti awakening. Over time, as your knowledge of them grows stronger, your bodies and minds will grow more connected, until eventually you are united with each other and the Saints.”

Inej’s eyes were wide, her mind reeling with this new knowledge. “Why does nobody talk about them? How can we find each other?”

“Not everybody is so lucky as to count an ardh-ashirvaad among their soulmates.” Her mother smoothed her hair with a hand. “And it can be difficult to traverse the world looking for one person, Saints-blessed or no.”

Inej thought for a moment. “Is mine in the caravan?”

Ashanti paused, then shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like it from your hurts, meja. Do you dream of them?”

But Inej could not recall dreaming of anything regularly, except maybe circus crowds cheering her name. And, as her mother pointed out, another person would not be seeing crowds chanting Inej from her own spot on the high-wire.

The pains seemed to ease off after a while, anyway. Maybe, Inej thought, her destined was getting stronger; falling less, if they were an acrobat like her, or boxing less, if they went in the ring frequently like her cousin Asha. For several summers, she put it out of her mind entirely.

It was only weeks before she was stolen when Inej experienced the worst phantom pain yet. She was helping clear the tent after the punters had gone home when her right leg simply collapsed beneath her. She let out a cry at the pain lancing through her and had to hobble back to the caravan with her aunt’s help, excused from chores.

The whole caravan knew after that night. It went around like wildfire through scrub that Inej was ardh-ashirvaad, and did anyone know someone who’d broken their leg lately? Inej tried to push through the pain that lingered day after day and avoided the whispers too, but she sometimes had to excuse herself from practice. She tried her best not to let her family down by ducking out of performances, but her parents insisted. Ghafas did not fall, and definitely not in front of audiences. She would not be risked this week.

Under Tante Heleen weeks later, the pains Inej bore were all her own. If her leg or ribs or jaw occasionally echoed another’s hurts, it went unnoticed amongst her own abuse. She tried not to catalogue her own pain, terrified of what someone else might be subjected to from the blows dealt to her body, but she was too consumed with terror for herself to think of her ardh-ashirvaad often. She could only detach her mind from her body and pray that if she wasn’t feeling it in the moment, then neither were they.

~*~

In the months following Kaz’s fall from the bank roof, he came to understand he had not been as well-acquainted with pain as he had thought. He had thought that having one’s fingernails pulled or skin sliced was some of the worst that could happen – he had not been unlucky enough to be subjected to burning or peeling or anyone clever enough to use his revulsion to touch against him.

But this – this was unrelenting. He hadn’t the words to qualify the fierce burning in his leg, the roar of his back and hip, the screech of his ankle and foot. It had been a bad break, the medik told him after she’d set it as best she could, and the damage to his ankle would heal. His knee, on the other hand – she shrugged. “There will be some adjustments needed.”

And that was all that was said on the topic of his new life of pain so engulfing he struggled to think around it. After the mandatory weeks hobbling around on crutches, he began to take weight through the leg and learned the meaning of the term blinding pain . He had to train his brain to remember how to think alongside the constant throbbing, and got down to one crutch before scraping all the remnants of his savings together and had words with a Fabrikator who operated out of the Lid.

Therefore it was many months before Kaz cottoned onto the fact that he was sometimes feeling pain without explanation. A dull ache tucked somewhere in his lower back was the most common one, especially late at night, but other times the stings of slaps and pinches would echo across him too. For weeks, he put it down to his body’s adjustment to the injury and the random pains that would come on him. It was only when he was on his first job with Jesper and the student groaned loudly, breaking their cover and leading to a fistfight, that Kaz finally got an explanation on the walk home, the job a botch.

“I’m sorry,” Jesper beseeched, “please don’t beat me up for that. It was just a really terrible phantom pain. My other half’s getting beaten up somewhere tonight. I hope they give the other person hell for it after that.”

Kaz had dropped the bloody rag he was holding to the trickle from his nose, cold running down his spine. “Your other half?”

“Sure. My anam cara soulmate. You feel their pain and see them in dreams, they get the reverse. All that lovely spirits-blessed stuff.” Jesper had watched Kaz with far too keen of a gaze for Kaz’s liking so he’d raised the rag again with a scowl. “I hear it makes sex excellent, though.”

Kaz looked at him through narrowed eyes, weighing up his options. “Fine. You’re excused this time, but one more fuckup like that and you’re never taking the crow and cup, Fahey.”

“Of course,” Jesper said easily. “But back to that sex thing… we could find out if the rumours are true about how good it is for regular soulmates, you know.”

Kaz thought back to months before, his most recent efforts at trying to condition himself to skin on skin contact again, and felt revulsion flood his stomach. His expression must have been as poisonous as he felt, because Jesper raised his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I thought it was worth a shot, since clearly – I mean, the aura’s there.”

Kaz hadn’t even noticed the colour in the world had risen a little since he had met the unlikely sharpshooter. Jesper was right, though. Kaz scowled at him instead. Things were easier in black and white. He would continue to treat everyone as such. People who brought a little colour were trouble. Imogen was the most recent person he’d noticed, and look where that had got him. 

Kaz actively avoided what little colour might be leaking into his days and he certainly made sure it didn’t grow: he avoided getting to know the Dregs, as a rule. Jesper was the one person to whom he struggled to apply such measures. Despite all of Kaz’s scowls and threats and general ill-treatment of him, Jesper insisted on being friendly and divulging his thoughts and feelings to Kaz anyway. To Kaz’s consternation, the world was growing brighter, particularly when Jesper was around. He tried to ignore it, but it happened anyway.

One night nearly ten months later, when collecting his overpriced information from Tante Heleen, Kaz discovered a most unexpected asset. He had not noticed the brothel bearing a little more colour than usual, but then he did not usually think too much about the beauty of anything so much as their value in relation to it.

But he noticed the colours brightening around him as someone behind him whispered, “I can help you.” He did not say anything in return when he turned to appraise her, but privately Kaz wondered if the corridor had brightened for her too since approaching him. Was this how she thought to help him, a bed-girl for a soulmate?

It did not matter where he had found her. She had skills he could use. And if she bore skin like the family he used to dream about – he pushed the thought from his mind and ignored that detail. It was not relevant. He persuaded Per Haskell to buy the girl’s indenture and put the matter to her in Heleen’s salon the following morning. She revealed she had indeed been an acrobat, and again the dreams he had as a child were pushing at the doors of his reasoning mind, their whispers echoing to shouts across his mind. So what? Kaz hissed at them. The brightening colours as he continued to talk with Inej were proof enough: Kaz had found family from across the globe, a person who would… what? Bring him closer to Ghezen?

Well, the priests were right on that count. With Inej’s skills, he could certainly turn more profit for the Dregs. The god of wealth would be most pleased.

Inej had not been able to sneak up on him since that first time. Rooms always brightened when she was near, and occasionally when they were training together, he thought he felt the echoes of the blows he dealt her through his own constant fog of pain. That recurring late-night pain deep inside him had stopped along with the unexpected blows, and that realisation was the final confirmation for Kaz: Inej was one of his soulmates. Despite all his efforts to rise through the Dregs while knowing them as little as possible, trusting nobody and being beholden to no-one, he had acquired at least two soulmates. There were other potential soulmates among the ranks, too, but two soulmates were already far too many for Kaz. He would have to double down on his efforts to keep his peers at arm’s length, even if knowing so little would make it harder to manipulate them.

~*~

So many people touched her skin at the Menagerie that Inej had sometimes been terrified she would meet a soulmate here and be devastated. Touch was not sacred to the Suli – for whom it was a natural part of living in close quarters, if not encouraged as a way to find soulmates by the flare of colours when you touched for the first time – but it was to the Kerch. Inej almost didn’t believe it when one of the other girls, the Fjerdan Ingrid, told her so; it was supposed to be as sacred to the Kerch as to the Fjerdans, she had whispered in secret, tossing her dyed-blonde hair imperiously. Modesty was a key pillar of worshipping both Djel and Ghezen, and apparently modesty meant not touching others’ skin.

Yet the Menagerie crawled night after night with the godless Kerch who were desperate to do just that, stroke her skin with their own. They would compliment it, consume it, go crazed for it. As time went on and Inej hated her own skin more and more, wishing to shrug it off with the rest of her body for the clients to use when she didn’t want it any more, she had to wonder why none of these lowlifes were concerned about forming a soulmate connection with her and having to explain it away.

After a time, she realised that her clients didn’t expect to find a soulmate at the Menagerie. The girls they visited there were not people, not really – they were objects, things to fuck and be fucked.

She was still a commodity as a member of the Dregs, of course, but not one whose body would be used without her permission or knowledge. It took a lot of time to learn this, to build trust in Kaz Brekker’s law and understand how to use her own strength against others. 

When she met Jesper for the first time, Inej was in the thick of unlearning the trauma of the Menagerie. She shrank from every man she met, especially tall or heavy-set ones. But something about Jesper, when she passed him in crowded rooms or the corridor, calmed her hackle-raising instinct. As Kaz had her practicing always maintaining focus and gathering details, she became aware that rooms with Jesper in were a little brighter for her. He can be trusted, the Saints were whispering. Inej was still too scared to go up to him.

Jesper ended up taking care of that problem himself. A few weeks after she moved into the Slat, he knocked on her door and introduced himself as her Kerch reading and writing tutor. And for the first time in a year, Inej was offered a hand to shake. She was so blindsided by this simple gesture that she could only stare between Jesper’s face and his hand until his smile slipped off and he let his hand drift down.

“I – I’m sorry,” he said, tripping over himself, “I only offered as Kaz said you’re Suli, and I thought in Ravka they’re not such prudes as the Kerch, it’s - ”

Inej lunged forwards to grab his right hand with her own and gave it a good pump. She laughed in delight to see the colours around her brighten, as did Jesper. Her heart gave such a pang for her old life that she was left breathless from the pain for a moment. No, she had not seen such colour for over a year. One more thing the Menagerie had taken from her.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Jesper,” Inej said, and she meant it.

Jesper had brought a slate and chalk with him so they could practice lettering, equipment that was a rare commodity in the caravan. But Inej’s thrill with the slate soon gave way to fatigue at the strange Kerch letters and, in turn, to curiosity. Here, at last, was somebody else who had come from far away and with whom she could compare the strange customs and beliefs the Kerch seemed to hold.  

“Why do they all wear gloves in the streets and never touch each other?” Inej asked, leaning her elbow on the table and her head in her hand. “Even the poor. Do they not want to become closer, more godly?”

Jesper barked a laugh. “The Kerch are weird like that. They’re all afraid of seeing in colour because of what the churches preach. They say that their mother-goddess Domika blesses families and future families with seeing in colour and that sometimes she gives them eyes to family across the globe, but then their preachers praise modesty.” Jesper shook his head and tapped his temple. “It’s all a control game. The merchants’ council just doesn’t want anyone finding soulmates because then they wouldn’t chase profits like it’s their only joy in life.”

“And it controls the rich and the poor from mingling,” Inej said slowly, her mind reeling from it all. She shook her head after a moment. “How cruel. The priests in Ravka also say little about the ardh-ashirvaad, but the Ravkans hold festivals where you can gather to touch each other and try to find your other half.”

“That sounds like what my da taught me about the Kaelish festival of spring!” Jesper sounded delighted, waving his hands around as he explained, and Inej could feel more than see the colours around her intensify. “There’s all sorts of rituals – bonfires, dancing around a maypole, smoking flowers – and if you find your anam cara on that day, your bond is said to be stronger than if forged at any other time. And once you know each other truly, you will always recognise each other and be stronger together than apart. Especially if you consummate the union.”

Inej’s eyebrows shot up, a trickle of panic tightening her limbs. “You have to –? I have never heard of this.”

“It just makes soulmate or anam cara bonds stronger, like any other kind of touch,” Jesper explained easily.

“Oh.” Inej reflected on this for a moment. She didn’t know that she ever wanted to be touched again, not in that way. But she could probably hold hands. Anything else was – she shoved it out of her mind. It didn’t matter anyway. “Are you from the Wandering Isle?”

“No, just my Da. I’m Zemeni.” Jesper flashed her a grin. “The beliefs aren’t so different, though. They both talk about how our purpose as soulmates is to honour the land better, that we’re all in harmony with nature and must live as such.” Jesper shook his head. “I’d been warned at how different Kerch was, but… it’s hard to believe what they’ve done to the land until you see it.”

Inej understood completely. She was beginning to understand why she and Jesper were kindred. “They have no respect for the land. It is like that in the Ravkan cities too.”

Jesper nodded, his countenance brightening again after a second. “What do the Suli teach about dreams? In Novyi Zem it’s said that in dreams, our soul travels to visit the other half , and the information we bring back we must use to unite our souls.”

Inej pulled a face. “I was never taught much about dreams. I’ve not experienced them, so I didn’t ask.”

Jesper pulled a sympathetic face. “I wouldn’t put much stock by it. Maybe your other half is a crap sleeper. Or in a bad time zone.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Inej told him. “I have plenty of purpose here already. Besides, all I’ve ever got from them is a whole lot of pain.”

Jesper’s shoulders relaxed like a weight had been taken from him. “ Right? I don’t know why the spirits think I’ll be guided to my anam cara by being beaten up myself.”

“Because the two bodies should be one, we feel the other’s hurts,” Inej corrected.

Jesper rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “I suppose you’d also tell me that life’s hardships exist to bring us closer together.”

Inej made a noise of dissent. “Bad things don’t happen just because the Saints decree them. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find meaning and purpose anyway.”

Jesper was silent for a long moment, and Inej worried she’d upset him. She gently put a hand out towards him, but had to drop it before she could make contact. Her body was telling her not to touch again. “Jesper?”

He looked up, pinning on a bright smile. “Sorry. Got lost there. Shall we get back to work?”

Inej nodded, and Jesper took the chalk up again to show her the next letter.

~*~

Kaz spent a long time telling himself he didn’t need Inej. She had skills he needed, and she was certainly useful and the best he’d found yet for the job of his spider, but she was replaceable. An investment he was seeing good returns on and no more.

The longer he tried to suspend himself in that lie, the more he hated himself.

Yes, the Dregs had to push themselves for their jobs all the time, and Kaz demanded excellence of everyone, including himself. Yes, he frequently forgot they were just human, with occasional desires to achieve goals other than revenge. But nothing ever quite brought that fact home like Inej’s gasping pain unexpectedly echoing through his gut, or the occasional trickle of joy somewhere behind his sternum.

She must know something . That they were soulmates was obvious; you couldn’t miss the way a room brightened when someone walked in. But the pain, the dreams - did she know that was him?

He still hated the idea of being in the debt of others, trading personal information and touches until you could distinguish shades of green or red in their presence. But he and Inej had a mutual understanding to tread lightly in each other’s pasts. She didn’t try and wheedle friendship out of him the way Jesper did, incessantly. She just stayed at his back, a steady presence he trusted with his life but not his birth name.

One day, sitting on his windowsill in the sunlight, feeding crows, Inej was lit up against the sun. When she laughed, the world turned so colourful for a moment that Kaz was gone. Enchanted. 

He didn’t believe in fate and higher purposes, but he believed he’d fallen on good luck that Inej was the one watching his back. If he had to have another person as a weakness, it was good she was the strongest and most dangerous person he knew.

Others were not so lucky with those Domika had chosen for them. Kaz recruited a young Ravkan heartrender to the Dregs and mostly what he got for his trouble to keep her from Rollins’ clutches was endless petitioning for him to rescue an angry drüskelle from Hellgate. Zenik cried and begged, telling him over and over how they were soulmates of the highest order and she was feeling his pain night after night.

But Matthias Helvar was of little value to Kaz Brekker, and he had more use for a heartrender who was miserable and under his thumb than overjoyed and safely returned to her war-torn country. Until, of course, a thirty million kruge job came up. Everything and anything for the right price. Ghezen would be pleased at his hard work.

For a man supposedly Nina Zenik’s soulmate, Helvar certainly didn’t act like it. Kaz had expected nothing else. He also fully understood that however much Helvar might want to murder Nina, after that initial shock and pain had passed, he would not be able to. Kaz didn’t want to examine how he knew that; he just did. Helvar was an open book, of course, but it was more than that, because this plan was hatched before he’d met the Fjerdan. It wasn’t any quaint feelings of his own about soulmates, but how he saw them interact with each other, as though the bond was sacred, precious, hopeful. Even when it was found in a soldier in the trench opposite yours.

Such dogged devotion to the idea of soulmates was just another lever that Kaz could make work for him. If he had bought into such veneration, it would have made Jesper’s betrayal all the more painful.

Not that the resulting fire-fight wasn’t painful enough as it was. Kaz had half-expected the fight on the docks so chartered a backup Ferolind , but he hadn’t expected the Gulls as well as the Tips in the ambush. He hadn’t expected that while Inej cleared a path for her comrades to get to safety, she would be on the receiving end of Oomen’s sadism. And through her, so was Kaz.

The pain that ripped through his side was worse than any phantom pain he’d experienced before; it nearly knocked him to the floor. The ferocity of his rage was inconceivable as he hunted down the Tips and hauled Inej down from the top of the shipping containers where she had been so insensible to him that she’d nearly managed to end her pain. When he landed and ran with her body in his arms, the pain of his leg re-fracturing was just another dissonance in the discordant orchestra of pain his body was playing. Fury took centre stage, and after he abandoned Inej with Nina he tried to mend them the only way he knew how: extracting retribution from Oomen.

And once again, it all came back to Rollins.

Kaz spent the hours and days that followed standing on the deck and staring out to sea, waiting to feel something, anything, to alert him to Inej’s wakefulness. He could feel the ache of her healing stab wound, but the world had not yet turned grey. Why was it still so colourful? It felt wrong that it should be so bright when death hovered so near, but at the same time, it was the promise that she could live.

And live she did. It was a slow clawing back to health, and Kaz couldn’t face seeing her so close to death even as she moved further away from it. He already woke from enough nightmares where Jordie’s body was Inej’s, he didn’t need even more realistic details to add into his terrors.  

They both struggled on their week’s trudge through the snow, their sibling aches waxing and waning with the exertions of the days. Kaz knew Inej was angry at him, but his disappointment, resentment and anticipation were all too heavy to add her righteous anger to as well. So they trudged on, wounded animals reluctantly co-dependent.

The panic in the prison cart was terrible. An overwhelming, exhausting drowning in the worst attack he’d had in a very long time. Could Inej feel it? he wondered afterwards. She felt his physical pain, so why not this too? But he would not be able to find out from simply observing her; she knew him too well to have missed the panic even without any inner cues.

Every time he had to let her out of sight it felt dangerously stupid, and getting locked in prison deliberately – well, it wasn’t the ballsiest move they’d ever pulled, but it wasn’t quite an everyday endeavour either. He tried to concentrate purely on the job and avoid letting himself get distracted, but even once he’d put Inej out of mind, he couldn’t resist Pekka and the threat of having his revenge exacted by some efficient Fjerdan with a rope or sword. The only thing that brought him back on track was the bells – the bells and the pain in his feet.

It took a little time, as ever, to become aware of the new pain over the constant roar of his knee in the messy escape back down the floors of the Ice Court’s prison, but when it did, oh , his feet burned. The incinerator shaft – Helvar must have messed up the plan somehow. How would Inej make the climb? He hoped he would know if all was lost, but the bells were ringing - the plan was shot to hell.

They all met again on the roof, relief making the colours pulse strangely in Kaz’s vision. His mind knitted together a new plan that could save them all, just about.

And it was only when Inej stood on the embassy roof, glowing with purpose even as the blistered soles of her feet burned, that Kaz finally realised that he needed her. He needed her, and she no longer needed him.

~*~

It took a long time for Inej to accept that while Kaz Brekker was her ardh-ashirvaad, her one true soulmate, her other half, she could not waste her life on fulfilling his purpose.

She suspected he knew something about what they meant to each other. It was always hard to tell with those cool, masked expressions and his cutting words, but she thought she sometimes caught a twitch of pain from him when she took a bad hit in training or shinned herself when climbing a tricky building above him on a job. But if the Kerch were as repressed in their understanding of soulmates and half-blessings as Jesper had suggested, then it may well be that Kaz didn’t fully understand what he was experiencing. He liked to present a persona that knew everything, but Inej had now spent long enough protecting his back to begin understanding just how much of his monstrousness was shadow play and his apparent omniscience was bullshit built on whispers. 

He remembered his intrinsic mercy when suited him, and other times blamed it on her. Inej understood this: she didn’t want to believe that her own violence could stem from what was already in her, so antithetical to what the Saints preached, and instead liked to ascribe it to Kaz. How much of her violence would have festered in her anyway without the trauma he had experienced bleeding into her half of the spirit?

She didn’t know. She tried to accept her destiny from the Saints to soften this man’s jagged edges, but it was hard. Kaz rejected all forms of intimacy, of human contact. It was only when she was deep in despair for Nina’s coming parem withdrawal that the heartrender informed her that Kaz wasn’t immune to her. His heart and his breathing never failed to show what his expression wouldn’t: he wanted her. Nina’s confession knocked all the breath from her. All this time, Inej had been searching for a sign, and he couldn’t have just said something?

It was only with the strength from this that Inej could stand with him on deck and lay out her plans for her future. A ship, and slavers to hunt. A purpose.

And still he did not demand anything of her, acknowledge anything of what lay between them or what they might achieve together, until she went to walk away.

“Stay,” he implored. “Stay in Ketterdam. Stay with me.”

Colour pulsed around him, brightening with the vulnerability of the moment. She would be thinking about this for a long time, Inej thought. But it had been too long that she had been hiding in Kaz Brekker’s shadows, waiting for scraps of love. The heart is an arrow: it demands aim to land true. The true bond between ardh-ashirvaad could not emerge where it was not accepted. “What would be the point?”

“I want you to stay. I want you to … I want you.”

But how would he have her? He wore his fighting face, yet contentment was not something that could be fought for. There would be no jivan shakti awakening while he still viewed the bond as a weakness. As they argued, he turned towards the sea, still too ashamed to open his vulnerabilities to her.

“I cannot stay just for a soulmate, Kaz,” she told him, though her chest was tight. “Even if you are my ardh-ashirvaad. I need more. I will have you without armour, or I will not have you at all.”

He did not turn around. She silently willed for him to say something, to give her a reason to stay.

Inej could not, would not, wait forever for him to decide whether he deemed himself worthy. She walked away.

~*~

Kaz had experienced the world bleaching of colour before. It had made him more than a little mad to lose Jordie. It made him just as feral to lose Inej.

He had better tools this time, as well as a possibility – no, a need – to get her back. Even if he’d possessed all his torture tools at nine years old, he wouldn’t have been able to retrieve his brother from Death’s unkind grasp.

Van Eck, on the other hand, was a dead man walking. Kaz swore he would make the mercher experience ten times over all the helplessness and rage that he had experienced watching Inej being stolen away.

He didn’t experience any shockwaves of pain that might indicate Inej’s torture at Van Eck’s hands, but Kaz couldn’t trust that he had simply failed to notice it around the constant ebb and flow of his own pain. All he could trust in was his own plans, built on the predictability of human nature and the constant levers of greed and self-importance.

The steadily brightening colours as he approached the Goedmedbridge with Alys should not be trusted. His traitorous heart sped up to feel Inej so close, even without seeing her; he would not listen to it. His own foolishness had got Inej captured once; he would not let such a lapse in judgement occur again.

The plan worked. Alys’ infernal singing was finally over and Inej was back with the Crows and Kaz couldn’t let himself look at her properly for fear he’d never stop again.

He had promised himself he wouldn’t let himself need Inej again. That he couldn’t stand needing her, because the ripping away of the colour was simply unconscionable for a third time. He would rather live all his life in black and white so he didn’t have to do this again.

He was a liar. He was trying and failing to protect himself from more hurt. He had let his carefully-built armour down, just a little, and he had spent a week regretting it, swearing they could go back to the way things were . But there she was, stiff and closed off from him, and it wasn’t because of what Van Eck had done; it was what Kaz had done, building every small cruelty and coldness into his treatment of her. He had tried so hard to keep Inej at arm’s length, and for what? Here they were anyway, destined to fall together.

So he swore to her. “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.”

She didn’t need to give him assurances that she would do the same for him. In that moment, he knew she would.

He couldn’t risk losing her again, so he begged for her to use a net. He stopped breathing when he felt pain slicing through her from Dunyasha’s blades. And he was reminded that he could never keep Inej safe. There was nowhere truly safe in the world , and even if there was, it would not be safe for her. Safe was a prison, now. Inej would rather hold knives than lay them down, and Kaz understood. This was why she could not stay in Ketterdam with him.

So in the bathroom at the Geldrenner, he gave her what she deserved. What she had always deserved, her birthright: freedom. So much sweeter than safety.

“I don’t want you beholden to Per Haskell. Or me,” he told her. A half-truth, and even as she clutched the contract to her body, Inej’s brows creased. 

“Any more beholden than we can help, you mean.”

“Yes.” It was the first admission he’d ever made that they were soulmates. Inej met his gaze, her dark eyes steady. For a moment, it did not seem like such a terrible thing to be a little seen by her. 

“You know that distance won’t make it easier,” Inej told him, her voice reserved. Kaz swallowed.

“Is that what… ardh-ashirvaad means? Soulmate?” he asked, voice carefully-controlled calm. He convinced neither of them.

Inej hummed. “Not quite. It means ‘half-blessing’.” She carefully fixed her eyes on the purpose of cutting up towels for bandages while she explained. “It’s the name we give to the two people blessed by the Saints to be each other’s… other half. Their divine purpose. They are destined to meet over and over in their many lives.”

Kaz blinked, assimilating this into his own schema. “And these half-blessings, are they different from other soulmates?”

Inej placed down the shears but kept her face turned from him when she said, “Yes.” She paused, then added: “Feeling the other’s pain. Seeing their dreams, sometimes. The more we get to know each other, the more we talk and touch, the more awareness we gain of the other person. The bodies remember that the souls should be one.”

Kaz’s head span. Nobody had told him this, but – hadn’t he known, on some level? He didn’t believe in Saints’ blessings, divine intervention. But he could believe he was blessed to have Inej, in whatever capacity.

Yet knowing she was specifically bound to him above everyone else – Kaz’s body simultaneously roared in approval at having her tied to him, and cried out that he should be the one still imprisoning her. “I won’t be the one to tether you to Ketterdam,” he told her, words a rasp. “Not for anyone’s divine plan.”

Inej swallowed. “And what will you do, if you make it back from the Slat? If the auction goes as planned and we manage this feat?”

“Then you get your ship and your future.”

“And you?”

It was like sparring, he thought. A fight for vulnerability, for Inej to prove to him that there was someone worth being tied to, worth drawing out from beneath the layers of protection he wore. He wanted to lay it down. He was terrified to.

She closed her eyes and revealed one of the hurts she carried, and Kaz felt the pain himself. A phantom pain, but not quite: simply pain because he hated her being hurt. “Go on, ” Inej whispered. Finish the story.

Pushing through pain was Kaz’s speciality. He leaned forward so his head hovered between Inej’s chin and shoulder and breathed there for a moment. They were shallow breaths, and the waters were rising high around him, but an energy pulsed in him – between them. If he could finish this, he might have something to cling to in the hours where he lay awake, despair pulling him under.

Kaz brushed a kiss over Inej’s neck, and the world exploded with brightness.

He jerked back in shock at the light and the wave of panic, but the wash of white light was already fading. There was no denying the brighter colours left behind, brighter than Kaz had ever seen, but all he could do was stare at Inej in shock, trying to push down the sensations of clammy skin on his. She let out a little laugh, her eyes roving over the white and gold bathroom. Kaz couldn’t tear himself from staring at the gold flecks in her eyes, the way the light caught on her hair. Had there always been a coppery sheen to her hair? Or was that simply reflecting the bathroom?

“What was that?” he asked, still a little breathless with the waters lapping around his shoulders.

“It must be because we’re ardh-ashirvaad, ” she breathed. “We’ve never touched before. Skin to skin.” She frowned a little, straightening and bending her right knee. “Are you – Kaz, your leg. I can feel it again.”

He grunted. There was no use denying the terrible ache, not if she was now more privy than ever to the painful limitations of his body. He should have rested before he went to the Slat, to face down the gang he had built up and who he still believed could be persuaded back to his side.

This had been a mistake. Kaz had intended on coming here to free her, and instead he’d just built a stronger tie to her. He was more curse than blessing. He couldn’t even touch another human without feeling the touch of the dead on his skin. She wanted him without armour. He didn’t know if he could give it.

He demanded that she didn’t follow him, but he was too weak to turn her back when she did. The colours stayed bright, brighter than he’d ever known, all the way to the Slat.

He would have to make this quick and brutal, for both their sakes.

~*~

So touch wasn’t easy for him. It wasn’t easy for her, either. But they had managed it anyway. Maybe they could try again, in the future. She wasn’t scared of being tied to Kaz any more, not if he wanted to offer her freedom anyway. The simple fact that she didn’t feel like she had to come back to him made her want to more.

But really, it had been so long since she had last felt she had any chance of walking away from Kaz Brekker. It had never been a choice, not really. Financially, then emotionally, she had been all his. She still was. But she didn’t want to exist only as someone else’s any longer, even when that someone else was the boy who had freed her, over and over. She had to free herself now. And he needed to free himself.

The primary obstacle to freedom was not insignificant: an entire city’s worth of hungry criminals and angry merchers out for their blood. Everyone was out for their pound of Dregs flesh, Inej knew. She hoped they would be able to roll with the punches.

First there was the pain of the Slat beating, but Kaz emerged victorious. She had expected nothing less. Anticipation of the blows helped her to absorb them, the phantom pains stronger now than they had been before the kiss, their jivan shakti awakening. 

Elsewhere, Wylan was pretending to break under Anika’s fists. Now it was Inej’s turn. She would meet her shadow on the rooftops, the final knight that needed toppling while Kaz and the others took the queen beneath her feet.

Dunyasha was good, but she was not better than Inej on her home turf. Not when she had Kaz’s words of advice at her back and a lifetime of training for just such a moment. The other girl would not be able to best her when Inej’s destined purpose lay so close within reach, she thought. It gave her strength and swiftness beyond anything she normally accessed. But, Inej thought, if Dunyasha was her shadow, then maybe she had been destined to challenge Inej, giving her the chance to prove she had more potential than she had destroyed with her violence and her mistakes.

Kaz would have scoffed and told Inej that Dunyasha was just another opportunist attempting to seize power, but he wouldn’t have been able to deny that Inej fought spectacularly that day. Even with the stinging of the dust in her eyes, she moved like water. Dunyasha was a foolish captain caught in her storm. She could not hold out against divine acts such as this forever.

After Dunyasha fell, Inej slipped back into the Church of Barter to take care of another threat. 

Seeing Kaz up against Pekka was… truly something else. In her panic over Pekka’s child, she once again slipped back into that role of distrusting Kaz, the ghost of his unending fury towards the gang boss scaring her enough that she forgot that of course, of course , Kaz would never hurt children. And she learned more about his past from him breaking Rollins than she had ever got out of him before. The light slowly brightened in the room as the two traded threats and details, the ghost of Kaz’s emotions becoming a shade heavier in her chest. As they escaped to the sound of the plague sirens, Inej couldn’t help but feel grateful for this: for Kaz finally letting him see a little more of who he was, who he had been. The reason for all of the years of terror, of building the monster. The present and the past which had built it.

She didn’t even notice her colours dimming again slightly. Just another painful thing she should have done, could have done. It wouldn’t have saved Matthias. But still, it hurt. Badly.

She, like the others, had thought they would all make it. They had made it through so many disastrous jobs and terrible circumstances together. Why was this one any different? The one that finally went right?

She couldn’t even help Nina through her heartbreak; the heartrender was bound for Ravka before the grief had barely had a chance to sink in. Inej’s heart broke for her. To be pulled away from her whole support system, all her other soulmates, could not be healthy. But Nina had insisted: Ravka needed her. She needed a purpose now, to feel she was being useful if she could not love and be loved. Inej understood, and she respected Nina, but she wished she could be there to get Nina through this longest night with bad shanties and hand-holding.

Inej threw herself into preparing for her own purpose too, hiding the grief. She was reunited with her parents thanks to Kaz, and Ketterdam’s colours shone so brightly she could almost convince herself she was thirteen and performing with the caravan again. There were so many difficult things to share with her parents, so many hugs to give and receive. They were perfect house-guests of Wylan and Jesper. Inej’s heart was happy to see her two friends so happy together. She wanted that joy for them.

In her worst moments, she craved that ease for herself, aching with the knowledge it would never be that easy. She could never treat hand-holding or kissing with the simplicity that they could. That had been stolen from her.

But each victory with Kaz would mean more to both of them than anyone else could imagine. Holding his hand on the dock as she unknowingly watched her parents’ ship dock and he promised to help her hunt slavers was as close to perfection as she had ever known.  

They managed to hold hands twice more before she left on her maiden voyage. The Wraith was to begin her piracy career with a clean sheet: while Inej learned the ropes from Specht, they would simply transport a shipment of mead from Ketterdam to Os Kervo. No piracy until they docked in Ravka. Inej would get more time with her parents this way too. She looked forward to finally making some happy memories on a ship to begin chasing away the weight of chains, of stitches and of parem.

Kaz was unfailingly polite with her parents, if somewhat awkward and liable to grimacing. It had been so long, Inej realised, as she felt his trickle of anxiety, since he had needed to impress anyone via simple charm for no ulterior motive. Although she was sure he would argue he had the ulterior motive, she thought ruefully, of trying to gain their trust so he could woo their daughter. Not that Kaz would say woo. He would probably try to dress it up as cunningly gaining her trust for… well, he’d have a reason.

He had clever words for her the day she boarded her ship – the ship he’d gifted her – for Os Kervo. “I’ve invested in The Wraith , so take care of her, won’t you? Treat her better than I could.”

Inej shook her head with a smile and gently moved to clasp his hand. Just for a couple of seconds. Kaz trembled under her touch, but he kept those dark eyes on hers and she felt the trust and affection of them both swell within her. Then she released him, feeling a trickle of his panic and relief and disappointment within her. It was hard to work out where Kaz’s emotions ended and hers began, sometimes. Especially as they just seemed to get a little louder with every touch between them. How far would the echoes reach, Inej wondered? She would get the chance to find out.

“The Wraith belongs on the sea,” Inej said with finality. “But she will always return to Ketterdam.”

Kaz held her gaze for another few moments before turning away and slowly walking back down the gangplank. She supposed he had never been one for goodbyes. But she could still feel all the emotions in him as he stood at berth twenty-two and watched her set sail for the first time.

They would get more used to this, Inej swore to herself. Touch may never be easy for either of them, but it could get better. They would practice. And in the meantime, she had a higher purpose to attend to.

One that started with learning how to sail a sloop.

~*~

Inej was as good as her word: she sailed all over the True Sea in her first two years as captain of The Wraith , but she always came back to Ketterdam sooner or later. Usually that wasn’t soon enough for Kaz. They wrote carefully coded letters, missives light on detail and even lighter on emotions. But with each visit, each carefully practiced touch, his body became more sensitive to phantom pains, fears and joys from Inej.

Sometimes, as she learned from past mistakes, she deviated from her plans and Kaz’s letters went unanswered for weeks or she was late to dock in Fifth Harbour. It never failed to fill him with concern. Kaz tried to suppress such feelings, because they were simply not useful and a terrible distraction to boot. Jesper and Wylan frequently told him it was normal to miss her – healthy, in fact – but Kaz found it difficult to give himself permission to feel anything much besides rage or satisfaction without Inej around. She was the best at drawing out the better parts of him.

One such episode occurred not long after his nineteenth birthday. Inej had been due to arrive in Ketterdan in time for the final days of Nachtspel and his birthday, two occasions Kaz was usually bitter about celebrating – they typically evoked painful memories of his childhood, and he preferred to give the Dregs the time off they desired and get stone-cold drunk alone at the Slat. But Jesper and Wylan had managed to persuade him to join their celebrations for the last couple of years; Kaz had agreed on the promise there would be more food than he could eat and also meringues.

It was only Inej who knew about his birthday. She had been gently poking to find out, and with some time to reflect and prepare, Kaz had been able to tell her. She treated the secret with due reverence, aware that there was a bigger meaning than just knowing what date was written on his birth certificate. (It was, of course, not correct on most of the paperwork in Ketterdam, on account of losing track of the calendar while he lived on the streets and being pinched multiple times during that period. But the municipal building of his childhood village in the south of Kerch remembered.)

Of course, Inej still encouraged him to share the information with Jesper and Wylan. And Kaz had been hoping to this year. With her there too, it would have been easy.

But the week of Nachtspel, including his birthday two days before the final night, passed without her appearing, and so Kaz found himself dressing and leaving for Jesper and Wylan’s feast with a decidedly more sour attitude than Inej would have liked from him. His last hope was that she might have docked that morning – his spiders were elsewhere for the holidays and so unable to tell him – and gone straight to the Geldstraat to wash up, as she often did. She did not routinely stay in Kaz’s bed as they both struggled at the thought of another in their space in the night, but the possibility that in the future they might often do so was a cherished spark of hope that he nursed in his heart.

It was not to be. Agnes answered the door to Kaz, quickly shouldered aside by Jesper who beamed down at Kaz and thrust a spring of fir and berries at him for his buttonhole. It was a tradition Kaz had spurned, fully expecting Jesper to provide him with a better corsage than he could hope to create himself. Besides, he couldn’t deprive himself of the Nachtspel gift of failing their expectations once again.

“ Ghezegend Nachtspel, Mr Brekker!” Jesper cried, wide smile stretching across his face. Kaz just nodded back, trying his best not to grimace.

“I don’t suppose Inej…?”

Jesper’s face dropped and he gently shook his head. “I’m sorry, Kaz.”

Kaz pushed his way over the threshold and past Jesper, ignoring the platitude. He could almost hear Jesper rolling his eyes behind his back. “When did you last hear from her?”

“A few weeks ago,” Kaz said distractedly, pulling off his hat and coat to hand to the waiting Agnes. “She said she’d be here. I mean, I can feel she’s fine, but – ” he realised what he had said wrong as soon as he spotted Jesper’s satisfied smirk. He was clearly trying to restrain himself, but Kaz internally cursed anyway.

“ Anam cara! I knew it.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s been what, nearly five years since she and I first discussed it, and she’s never given me a damn hint that it might have been you all along!” Jesper crowed. Kaz only let out a long-suffering sigh. “This is a way better Nachtspel gift than the priceless Zemeni art that mysteriously appeared in the middle of the parlour in the early hours of the morning,” Jesper told him gleefully. “I don’t suppose you know who might have been able to get past our advanced security system to do so?”

“No idea whatsoever,” Kaz deadpanned, following Jesper around into said parlour where Wylan was sitting with Marya, murmuring together. They looked up as Kaz and Jesper entered, identical smiles warming their faces.

“ Ghezegend Nachtspel, Marya and Wylan,” Kaz said, a little stiffly. They repeated it back to him and Wylan stood up, kindly ignoring Jesper nearly vibrating with excitement behind Kaz.

“Thank you for your gifts,” Wylan said, a little bemused. “I’m sure that the blackmail on Van Verent will come in very useful. And the jar will suit… well, somewhere, I’m sure.”

“It’s probably got a fancier name. Maybe Jesper’s art history covered it,” Kaz supplied. Wylan snorted softly, looking over his shoulder at Jesper, who Kaz could tell was gesticulating wildly. Kaz resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I think Jesper’s desperate to share the fact that he’s finally realised Inej is my half-blessing.”

“Is that what she calls it?” Wylan looked interestedly between Kaz and Jesper. “I’ve always found it strange we – the Kerch – don’t have a word for such soulmates. I don’t know about you, Kaz, but I was never introduced to the idea until Jesper.”

Kaz shook his head. He let the unspoken words settle between them: that it was Inej who had shown him.

There was so much she always showed him, so much he always admired about her, revered about her. He was so blessed to be chosen by her. She would be disappointed if he behaved badly at this celebration with the Van Ecks and Jesper. So he endeavoured to be at least slightly amicable. It still felt alien to Kaz, but he was trying. Hadn’t they promised they would try?

It was nonetheless a relief when he finally arrived back at the Slat late that night, his head spinning from Wylan’s array of excellent wine, clutching a basket of his gifts: a Fabrikated puzzle-box from Jesper, explosives from Wylan, and a tea service from Marya that he suspected was for Inej’s benefit. Kaz tried in general not to let himself become too intoxicated lest it muddle Inej’s reasoning at sea, but today was surely an exception: she was too kind-hearted to let her Kerch crew work hard over the final night of Nachtspel. Besides, she and the Ravkans would celebrate the Feast of Sankt Nikolai in three days. Would she stop there to celebrate?

Kaz’s dreams were muddled from the drink, but as he often did, he dreamed of Inej. She was on the Wraith , and there was a sense of relief and exhaustion in her chest, with intention too. He didn’t understand what for, but it was there nonetheless.

Kaz woke early the next morning and spent most of the day battling a terrible hangover while messing with Jesper’s puzzle box and picks in his bed. Traditionally, this was the day for giving thanks to Ghezen and helping the needy, but Kaz felt that he honoured Ghezen every day by pursuing profit, and helped the needy by attempting to dismantle the unjust indenture laws year-round, to say nothing of his  robbing the nobles of the city. Of course, Inej would have laughed at him and argued that made him about as devout as a shoe, but on this she was wrong. Kaz was performing such acts of service for the true object of his worship and she was not a profit-god.

He finally ventured out in the late afternoon to find hot food, hoping that some hutspot would soak up the last of his hangover. Being nauseous on top of the regular aches made him very ill-tempered. He was in luck: the Old New Inn was open, just down the street. Kaz stayed and ate his fill before trudging back up to the Slat through the sleet, his mind idly turning over work he could begin tonight.

The colours had brightened over the last few days so slowly that he hadn’t noticed. But the moment he arrived on the top floor of the Slat, leg aching from the cold weather, Kaz knew: Inej was here.

He paused for a breath before letting himself in. Sure enough, lounging in his desk chair wearing her wide-brimmed hat and the soggiest of oilskin cloaks, was Inej. His blessing. She grinned at him, her smile wide and easy.

“Did I surprise you?”

“You’re dripping over the desk,” was all Kaz said. Inej swung her legs off the desk and stamped them on the floor before doffing her cloak and hat as Kaz did the same. He was too tidy to have left out any papers for her to drip on.

After they were suitably stripped of wet outdoor clothing, Inej held out her hands. Kaz shucked off his gloves, tucking them into his waistcoat pocket, and took her hands in his. The relief at touching her again, having her here, gently warmed him and he stepped closer so there were scant inches between their chests. Kaz gently leant down until his forehead could rest against hers and his eyes closed. He breathed in the scent of her: musty ship, sea spray, hair oil. Contentment swelled within him and Inej let out a gentle sigh. 

“I missed you,” Kaz said quietly, barely a whisper of sound. It was hard to get the words out. There had been so many false starts over the years since he began practicing opening up to Inej.

“I missed you too,” Inej said, smiling up at him, still standing very close by. He was feeling lighter just being so close to her. “Thank you for telling me.”

“The hangover’s weakened me,” Kaz grumbled, resulting in a lovely laugh from Inej. He pulled away a little and dropped one of Inej’s hands, towing her gently into his bedroom. He sat on the edge of his mattress, letting out a breath at the relief to get off his leg. There was such a strange solace to share these little hurts and reliefs with someone else.

Inej sat close by for a moment before flopping backwards. Kaz joined her, rolling so they were nose-to-nose, their hands still clasped between them. She was so beautiful it made his breath catch, air becoming heavy in his lungs.

“I’m sorry I was late,” Inej whispered. “We got caught in terrible winter storms.”

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Kaz whispered back. “I’m glad you’re here now.”

“Me too.” Inej moved a little towards him, her lips a hair’s breadth from his. Kaz waited a second, evaluating, before closing that final distance to kiss her properly.

It was a dangerous game, kissing. So intoxicating, filling him with urges of all the things he wanted to do for and with Inej, starting with a hand gently on her waist or her face. But at any time his skin might suddenly decide a particular sensation was too much alike to flesh pressing in on him. Lips were soft, and so had been something they only tried after many months of careful touches on wrists, ankles, elbows, shoulders; bone felt less like bloat.

Kaz tried to put such things at the back of his mind while kissing Inej, successfully losing himself for a moment or two, but the remnants of his hangover-induced anxiety pulled at him, dredging up grasping hands. He pressed a little harder, desperate not to lose this fight so early, but it was Inej who pulled back first. Kaz immediately froze. “Are you okay?”

“I – hm.” She sat up, folding an ankle under her knee. Kaz rolled onto his back, propped on his elbows. “When your panic rises, it makes me worry.”

“I’m sorry.” Kaz winced, cursing himself again. Inej shook her head.

“Never be. I really liked that, what we could do.”

“Me too.”

She held herself tensely, biting her lip, leaning forward on the edge of the bed, hands tucked under thighs. Kaz paused to examine his – their – feelings and found trepidation so he nodded to encourage her.

“I had an idea,” Inej breathed. “While I was at sea.”

Kaz tried to resist the urge to frown, to look anything less than receptive to this idea. He sat up. He could feel her nerves, her excitement, after all. He leaned back a little, waiting for her to explain, but instead Inej rolled up her shirtsleeves, pushing the material past her forearms.

Now Kaz did frown, unclear what she was doing. Inej flicked her gaze up to him and murmured, “Tell me to stop. Whenever you need.” It always bore repeating. Kaz nodded, still in the dark as to what she was going to try and accomplish. Inej’s gaze dropped to her hands and she slowly brought her right hand to hover over her forearm. With a firm sweep, she dragged her fingers gently, deliberately up her arm.

Kaz’s eyes widened as his own forearm echoed with the touch, and he automatically tensed, mind searching for clues that his body might interpret it as a threat, ignoring Inej’s eyes on him, but – nothing. He let out a breath, and Inej smiled before doing the same movement again.

This time, Kaz could let himself enjoy it. He was experiencing the sensations of touching and being touched, without skin to interpret the feeling as anything other than pleasure. He felt like champagne bubbles were beneath his skin as Inej took a deep breath and trailed her hand upward this time, tracing her shoulder and collarbone. It was over her shirt but the sensations were mirrored in his skin anyway. Her hand brushed below her neck, coming to a stop by curling into a light fist over her breastbone.

Kaz was breathing a little faster than normal as he held Inej’s gaze and tried the same. He started by pushing up his shirtsleeves like she had, but at the look in Inej’s eyes when she saw his exposed forearms, decided to double down on the cards he’d been dealt – he shouldered off his suspenders and unbuttoned his shirt, leaving it gaping. Inej’s eyes hungrily tracked the movement, and the press of her knee against his had never felt so blazingly obvious.

Kaz swallowed before beginning his own trail of touch, fearful it would feel nothing like what Inej had done for him. He needn’t have worried. As he dragged his fingers up his own arm, across the front of his neck, it felt soft and pleasurable. He changed angle, pushing his hand up his neck to cup his face, fingers spread so his eyelashes brushed his fingertips when he blinked, and Inej’s head fell back with a sigh.

He wasn’t used to this – a body that could be pleasing, sensuous. Part of his mind was still obsessing about when this might melt to harbour water, but he knew by now to try and not focus on it, lest it summon the panic.

The sparks that they had created were catching fire now, turning his limbs molten and stoking a fire deep in his belly. Kaz stroked fingers along the bottom of his ribs, fully focused on Inej, how she shifted and made little sighs under the touch. He wanted to feel this effect magnified back again; he wanted to touch her for real.

Kaz carefully lifted a hand and ran his fingers gently over Inej’s plait, revelling in the sensation of it as she stroked her – their – arms. Her hair was so beautiful that it took his breath away. He wanted to run his hands through it. He wanted to hold her.

Desire pulsed through him so strongly for a moment that Inej froze, Kaz following her a second later. He slowly drew his hand away, his eyes frantically searching her face.

“I’m sorry, Inej – I’m sorry, I didn’t mean – ” Kaz was scrambling for words, stricken with fear over what he might have done to Inej and her sense of safety with his carelessness.

“I was just taken by surprise, Kaz,” Inej said gently, but he noticed her voice shaking a little. He shook his head adamantly.

“I’m sorry. You should never have to feel that. I never want to make you feel like – ”

“Like you want me?” Her words were light, maybe teasing. She peered up at him, her expression soft, but Kaz thought her eyes were a little haunted.

Kaz swallowed, a wave of nauseous guilt drowning all the happy sparks of feeling they’d generated moments before. “Like I’m another of those men who – who – at the Menagerie.” He dropped his gaze to his lap, clenching his jaw and swearing up and down that he wouldn’t let this happen again.

“Kaz. Look at me.” Two fingers beneath his chin pressed firmly, guiding his face towards her. Kaz was a little surprised that the water stayed quiet at the touch, but the press of her fingers had been firm and quick. Maybe he’d been able to anticipate it better because it was Inej. Her face was clear and strong, willing him to listen. “You are nothing like them. In any way. You gave me knives and freedom and – ” she blew out a breath before admitting, “and I want you too.”

Kaz’s heart stuttered, then thrummed faster than he’d ever known. It felt impossible that she, Inej , the epitome of everything blessed and good and right in this world, would want to use her body for the same thing that had once hurt her so – with him, maybe, eventually. He hardly dared hope that she might want to reclaim her desire in any way.

Inej gave a gentle laugh, pressing her hand to her chest. “Oh, I can feel your heart.” As her laughter petered out, she fixed him with her gaze again. “Kaz, I can’t promise I won’t get scared. That it won’t take years and years, or that I’ll not have to ask you to stop. But do you know why I had the idea to do – this, this phantom touching, in the first place?” He shook his head. “It’s because I felt your desire from across the ocean.” Kaz’s eyes widened in horror, but she rushed on: “it was so alien at first, but – not for long. It became my own, it inspired me in turn, and I’ve been able to at least start thinking about these things again. I never thought I’d want to, but I think I might want again some day.”

Kaz just about wanted to sink through the floor. How could he ever take himself in hand again, on the nights when he missed Inej most fiercely of all? He couldn’t say he’d ever derived much pleasure from it, not like their touches just now; but it released the gnawing need.

“It won’t happen again,” he swore. 

“I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I want – pleasure, and release, for both of us. I want to touch you like this…” she trailed fingers from her knees up her toned thigh and Kaz’s arousal rose in him again. “And like this…” she placed her hand on his knee, and the warmth and sensation of it caused his breath to hitch near-painfully. He wanted her so much . “…and more,” she whispered, leaning close enough to him for her breath to brush his throat.

“Inej,” he confessed, breath uneven, “I have never wanted anyone to have to share this body’s needs and pains. But in all my selfishness, I am glad to share this with you.”

She brought her arms up and Kaz gently folded her into a hug. It was a practiced gesture that had yet to stop making him feel strange, like he might need to wail like a child or burn down the whole city to protect Inej. They had worked so hard to be able to have this, and it was one of his favourite things in all the world. His body and spirit seemed to hum in delight to have Inej in his arms once again, his heart calming and limbs relaxing. 

They had worked for weeks, separated by cold months, to be able to do this. Trying and trying, failures and progress mounting, their panic worsening before it got better. It was not easy. But oh, how it had been worth it, to feel Inej’s cheek against his chest. When she was exhausted and aching from walking the unforgiving and unyielding ground, Inej had several times fallen asleep on Kaz’s chest. She told him his breathing reminded her of the ocean, and she would return to him as surely as she did the True Sea.

She would always leave him, but she would always come back. She would always be his, and she could never be.

That which had driven them together also caused them to need to break apart. But as long as she always came back, that would be blessing enough. She was Kaz’s new family, found from across the globe, along with their other friends. He was starting to be able to accept them as such.

~*~

They soldiered on together, and life went something like this: their work only became more brutal and dangerous and meaningful, and it felt easier than ever before because with each moment, they knew the other was watching from afar.

Sometimes, of course, it was worse feeling the other’s pain and being able to access their mind without being able to help. The sense of hopelessness Kaz got when Inej was in a bad fight, or that Inej felt when Kaz had a bad panic episode, made their physical distance very frustrating at times. At its worst, when the other person was feeling despair, Kaz and Inej each believed that being connected was worse than not knowing, because being unable to help the other person was so painful. They were each strong and able to handle themselves, but still, the desire to help, to comfort and know , remained.

Eventually, Kaz sometimes mused, once he’d blackmailed the Kerch merchant council into shape, he’d board The Wraith and they’d not be parted again. He even wrote Inej a letter saying so on one particularly bleak occasion when her despair threatened to drown him in the depths too and he needed to pull them both out. He described the ways they would take down slavers across the continents – allowing a little pillaging for fun – and the places they would see, and the sense of calm that overtook him bled into her too.

The brightness in the world waxed and waned as Inej sailed away from and then back to Kaz. When she saw her family or Kaz, she was always struck by how bright life was again, and how she must always straddle multiple worlds. The only way to make her constant travel bearable over years was the knowledge that this way, she fulfilled her destiny. She felt honoured to do so. With Kaz working to gain intelligence and change legislation, as well as slowly improving life for those in the Barrel, together they could make the world brighter for all the lost and stolen.

And they would always come back together, the two halves of a blessing. Of that they were each certain.