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The Barrel was drowning in sewage water.
The late arrival summer storms had mugged the air of its freshness, leaving behind the unpleasant feeling of sweaty skin and sticky clothes from sudden humid bouts of rain. Muddy roads were inundated by the heavy flooding as layers of filths spilled onto the streets of Ketterdam.
Kaz had took off his gloves the moment he stepped into the office, hands shriveled in the dampness of wet leather. His heavy black coat was drenched thoroughly, and the metallic damp smell of sewage hung unpleasantly in the attic. At least the room was dry, Kaz thought bitterly.
He passed Inej’s room on the way up, half expecting that she was there but the lights were out. His eyes narrowed at the windowpanes as if it could will the Wraith’s return at this instance. He had sent Inej on a scout mission to the Zelver district, gathering information about a council member by trailing to his private mansion from the Exchange. It was one of the jobs that he had made sure she perfected, to memorize every single detail about the wealthy merchants of the city. It would be invaluable materials that proved useful for future blackmails.
Kaz heaved a sigh and switched on the light. Much work still needed to be done. The old man was not exactly the type that would bother himself with the mundane job of balancing the checkbooks. He desperately needed a wash. Instead, Kaz buried himself to the task of checking the Crow’s club's latest expenses for the past month, the paperwork piled up on his desk in dreadfully neat stacks.
They would need to terminate orders for the new kvas; it didn’t sell as well, just as he had predicted. Haskell had insisted that they imported five cargos of the expensive Ravka’s liquor for their exclusive customers, claiming that it would fly off the shelves in a matter of days. But the flavor was too sweet and the texture was too refined for the more experienced palates. He had explained the same thing to Haskell, and the old geezer didn’t heed his advice as usual. The long runners of the club all knew that their more esteemed customers favored the strong local Kerch’s brandy that could knock a lightweight drinker out in one sip.
Sheets of rain slapped harshly against the thick glass panels, washing the room in watery blue as thunders rumbled over the pitch-dark sky. The night was growing old. Inej should have been back an hour ago but he would deal with her tardiness later. Kaz wanted to get a few hours of sleep in before he had to drop by the Crow Club early tomorrow. On nights like these his leg was more unforgiving. The pain haunted the sweat-stained sheets and Jordie’s voice echoed in his restless nightmares. The blackness in the room was too complete, his mind was too loud, and a weak part of him that survived death craved a warmth that didn’t exist.
Kaz switched off the lamp and limped toward his bedroom, dreading a restless night as his fingers deftly unbuttoned the damp shirt when Inej slipped in, soundless like the Wraith he named her after.
His hands stilled.
Inej stopped dead in her tracks.
The only movement in the room was the rhythmic fall of droplets from her drenched hair and clothes that had slowly formed a small puddle on the wooden floor. Kaz was acutely aware of his state of disheveled. Bedraggled hair, rumple shirt halfway unbuttoned, and fingers very much gloveless in the cold air.
Get out. The voice in him snarled.
Everyone knew that level three was off-limited at the Slat. His doors were always locked, especially if he was inside. But Kaz had intentionally left the window unlock when he left earlier. It was becoming a dangerous habit after he discovered that Inej seemed to favor the entrance through his roof more often than not.
He hated surprises.
She liked to push at his boundaries.
“Sorry, I will take my leave.” Inej smoothly said, subtly avoiding her eyes to not stare at his surprisingly smooth hands or the barest glimpse of pale skin beneath his shirt.
She had heard many stories about Kaz’s hands. How he had claws beneath the gloves he always wore. How his flesh was burned with holes and so ruined that you could see right through to the finger bones. How they were covered in poison that could kill with just one touch. For all the rumors, she thought they were quite beautiful. Slender fingers that were naturally made for trickeries and inflicting pains .
The first time that she accidentally snooped in his office without permission, Kaz had snapped. She wasn’t aware of his brutal reputation for physical proximity, merely being there for a short expanse of a few months. Needless to say, Inej had promptly fled, barely hiding the frightened look on her face.
His dark eyes were staring intently at her, gaze hard and calculating. The Wraith was an unfamiliar presence then, an investment that he still doubted whether she was worth the risk. He was on edge that Inej was the only one who had ever managed to catch him off guard back at the Menagerie. He was torn between kicking her out of his room or nonchalantly acting like nothing was out of the ordinary.
“What have you found out about Hanson?” He chose the latter.
Kaz angled his body slightly away from her line of sight and casually twisted out the last of his buttons. He was glad that the light was off before she arrived.
“A man with an extensive knowledge of kinks. Worthy enough to be a regular guest of the Menagerie”, she reported. “A dishonest husband. A disgraceful father. He had a mistress hiding on the top floor of an inn at Zelverstraat. The one with a painted hog head on the sign.”
The innuendo didn’t slide unnoticed. He cast her a raised eyebrow. It was unusual for Inej to willingly mention the brothel’s name.
She shrugged, avoiding his gaze.
“Nothing that I haven’t experienced before.” The facade was mediocre at best. Her body betrayed the truth of what she had witnessed; her hand unconsciously rubbed the mangled skin that was once branded with the peacock tattoo. She would need to try harder if he was ever to be fooled.
A gust of wind blew the window wide open, its metal tracery banged against the wall as the hinges groaned in protest.
He frowned at the noise.
Inej flinched. She turned and slowly hooked the lock in place.
I don’t need a reason, Kaz reminded himself.
The effort was futile.
For the first time in his miserable life, he pitied the corpse of a girl in front of him. Scantly his age, she too carried the scars of a survivor, haunted by the ghost of past sufferings. Despite the similar dark paths that they walked, Inej still kept her pure soul. One that soon would be tainted under his hands.
His soul was a well of ink that drowned in red. She was the blinding light that refused to dim, no matter how hard he tried to suffuse.
Called it guilt. Called it sufferance. Called it a bit of grey in their cruel world of black and white. He was threatened by the feeling of decency that she rubbed off on him.
“The Cup and Crow tattoo,” he knew what was on her mind. “If you don’t want it, you don’t have to.” His voice didn’t carry the usual roughness that he intended to use.
“I thought it was a condition, not a choice”, Inej inquired. Her heart was soaring in a wave of disbelief, the sane part in her knew Kaz was not someone who would offer charities.
“This is your choice. I don’t want to mark you.” Kaz left it at that, turning fully away from her, and limped to his desk.
The wind howled and rattled the locks on the window as if they were being torn loose from the frames.
Something in him unraveled.
Gratitude graced Inej’s features as the corner of her mouth lifted in a beatific smile. Her belly erupted in a flutter of butterflies.
“Thank you. Thank you, Kaz. It means a lot to me”. She clasped her hands as if in prayer, “I won’t forget this.”
His eyes narrowed at the scars on her wrist.
It was hideous.
Inej was not.
Whoever erased it did not know what they were doing. Reliefs flooded her features, her dark eyes twinkled in a light sheen of unshed tears. Thunders rumbled loudly as the tree branches rapped loudly on glass, making his heart hammered out of sync. This situation was becoming more maudlin than he could handle.
He needed a distraction.
It wasn’t the scenario that he had planned for. Still, Kaz rummaged through his top desk drawer, circling a slender object in his right hand. Without warning, he aimed it directly at Inej and threw.
She barely caught the knife. Another inch to the left and it would have impaled her left side, closed to the heart.
Inej threw him a disapproving look. Her smile went from grateful to murderous in a heartbeat. He welcomed the easy return of their routine.
“Always be on your guard, especially on my watch," he chastised.
“A graduation gift, my darling Inej.”
She couldn’t fathom how such a term of endearment could sound so imperious coming from Kaz. Maybe it was the way his mouth crooked in a contemptuous smirk.
He had reared back as the knife landed home, the plane of his torso was visible in front of her eyes as the momentum flew his shirt opened.
Kaz was all lean build and sharp edges, his pale skin marred by the rope of scars littered on his chest. She could almost feel the hard muscles bunching in tandem with the rise and fall of his breath, the dim light from outside gilded the sharp line of his jaw and traced the lines on his clavicle.
Inej drew her eyes up. “Saint’s sake Kaz, don’t do that.”
Inej wasn’t sure what she was asking him not to do. Not calling her nicknames, tossing her sharp objects without warning, or revealing himself like she didn’t have any dignity. She curiously twisted the bone handle in her hand, feeling its weight between her fingers. Its milky color was a stark contrast to the rich brown of her skin.
Guys would throw money on her sheets. Boys would whisper honeyed prayers on her skin. Old men would tell her to make them beg.
The boy that was scowling in front of her gave her a knife.
“I haven’t taken the test yet”. She hoped the darkness could mask the blush that had bloomed on her cheeks.
“Let’s just say I have confidence in my investment”, he grinned smugly. It was not a praise to her talent, but a toast to his narcissistic self.
There were limits, honestly.
Looking at him now made her cheeks feel uncomfortably warm. Her skin was feverish against the suffocating wetness from the rain that clung to her body.
It was infuriating how Kaz was oblivious to his domineering charisma, unfazed by that uninhibited depravity that promised both pain and pleasure. She had experienced her share in the debauchery of men with their overgrown confidence, accustomed to their oppressive nudity, but only he had that indecent beguilement that was treacherously attractive.
Inej wasn’t immune to the girls’ whispers in the silken hallways, their lascivious and lewd discussions about the irresistible temptation of bedding dangerous men. Girls at the Menagerie would kill to pull him under their sheets just for one night, willingly submit to that carnal desire, hoping for a bawdy night.
Kaz was a poisonous blade that they would love to fall prey under, a sacrifice necessary to figure out what would it take to break the mechanics of his restraint.
“And what will be your expectation for me?” She was suddenly aware of the goosebumps that raised on her skin under his nonchalant glare.
Kaz’s eyes flashed threateningly. “Inej, treasure of my heart, it depends on how good are you with following orders”, he taunted.
He had turned off the lights mere moments before she slipped in, but it was enough of a beacon to guide her home. A lighthouse in the raging storm of the city that she hated so much.
Midnight had creeped on silently, wrapped in the soft grey of intimacy and hazy murmurs of sleep. Lightenings tore soundlessly across the sky, undressing Kaz sinful state of indecency and bleaching the tousled of his dark hair. His gaze briefly trailing down her figure before glancing away, the hand tightly gripping the cane betraying what he was feeling. The day she made Kaz Brekker uncomfortable in her presence.
Inej was well aware that she was very much a lynx caught in the headlight of one of the most notorious people in Ketterdam.
She was a prey, not the hunter.
This was where her nightmares usually began.
It shouldn’t have made her breath quicken, but it was galling to admit that she had never made herself quite impervious to the ferocious pull of his gaze or the razor-sharp line of his jaw.
The wind howled in anticipation, its deafening boom of thunders took the air from her lungs and marshaled the frantically beat of her heart. Lightening illumination the open door leading to Kaz’s bedroom, the rusty basin where his gloves rested, and a corner of the neatly made bed.
Kaz threw her challenging gaze, almost daring her to follow as he started toward the door, his gait more pronounced than usual.
Inej gripped the knife in her hand tighter.
She chided herself. There was nothing safe about Kaz. He was ruthless, arrogant, a devil without any dreg of conscience. But she also knew deep down that he would never violate her. Unlike the numerous other faceless men who had made her vanished, and nights blurred into tears within her hollowed soul. They were the real devils.
As such, she couldn’t believe it when Kaz slammed the door in her face and interrupted her thoughts.
Inej was aghast to admit that she was a little… offended.
Disappointed, even.
Her traitorous mind wondered what his touch would feel like when his fingers danced on her skin. A sliver of curiosity curled in her belly.
Idiot. She needed to sleep these preposterous thoughts off. Inej couldn’t help but laugh and took her cue, completely unaware that he hadn’t steeped away from the other side of the door.
Kaz let loose a ragged breath when he heard the door click in place.
He shouldn’t have teased her. He could see Inej’s eyes began to cloud with fear, her body frozen in place. He had spent too much time with her to tell when the Wraith was about to switch from defense to attack.
Something in him burned hot, demanding attention. He was not immune to how the glow of moonlit rain had wrapped Inej in an intoxicating blur, how it glided the waves of her damp hair and cling sinuously to her curves.
He was disgusted that the need he had suppressed for so long was burning uncontrollably to the surface. It teased on the slight frown on her brows and lingered at the hypnotized sway of her hip that made his brain short-circuited.
She was the beam of lightning that slashed unexpectedly across his endless nights. A dangerous hope in the bleak gray sky.
He had made the mistake of catching a glimpse and could not get enough of it. The thrill made his heart raced and his eyes filled with want, searching for another bolt of light that would jolt himself alive, so he could feel that exhilarating sense of living again.
It left him wanting more.
For the first time, Kaz wondered what would have happened if he didn’t close his door.