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Do not stand at my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain,
As you awaken with morning's hush.
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand by my grave, and cry.
I am not there,
I did not die.
Immortality - Clare Harner
***
The thought had been lingering with her for a few weeks now. It was easy to understand where it had come from, with the recent events that had caused such haunting scenarios to plague her mind for the past few weeks.
Winter had just begun in Ketterdam and so had Inej’s stay in the city. This was the time when the sea would be calmest -- no mercher or slaver in their right mind would dare to cross the frozen True Sea during the season, and the few who tried usually ended up at the bottom of the ocean. It was the perfect time for Inej and her crew to lay low, gather information, do repairs on her ship, gather supplies and, of course, allow themselves a little break for the next month or so.
A week had passed since her return and her time had mostly been spent at berth twenty-two, making sure everything that needed to be done was on track. By now, only a few had remained on the ship— the rest had found a place to stay either with their families or friends, or at a boarding house where they could enjoy the pleasures the Barrel would offer.
Her days were consumed dealing with damage control -- keeping track of what needed to be fixed or replaced, barking orders to the crew, getting her hands dirty along with them to make sure everything was taken care of. It was only when the moon hung high and the docks began to welcome the gangs and the lowlifes that she knew it was time to go back to the Slat.
Back to Kaz.
Her days were filled with manual work and gathering intel for her next voyage. Just because she wasn’t at sea, it didn’t mean she would stop altogether. Kaz would always have all the information she might need to hit her next target, and they would spend hours talking about it, just like they would when a con seemed too good to be true, trying to figure out the best way to approach the situation and achieve the results they needed.
But at night, they wouldn’t bring work back to the attic. When she came through his window, the Crow Club’s ledger would be forgotten, her knives would be removed, and all that mattered was the time they spent together making up for the time they’ve been apart. Her nights would be filled with kisses, with the feeling of his skin against hers, with his voice rough as stone telling her about his day and asking about hers, like they had all the time in the world and no worry in their minds.
It was because she was thinking about him that she almost missed the loud conversation drifting between the rows of crates and cargo containers, the same place where she had almost died all those years ago. It always gave her chills whenever she walked by this part of the docks.
“I’m telling you, it was a bloodbath,” one of them said. “I’ve never seen Dirtyhands in action before. It was terrifying.”
“You know they say he took half of his own gang while tied up, right? Almost killed Per Haskell before he fled the city. Whatever you saw, it can’t be worse than that.”
The taller man laughed, taking a sip of his bottle before handing it to his friend. “Never believed that story. But I’m telling you, he can’t be human. Took two bullets and kept fighting like a mad man. Five against one and he won. Fucking terrifying.”
Her heart almost stopped in her chest. Kaz was shot.
Her feet didn't touch the ground until she reached the Slat.
***
Imagining what she would find when she crossed the attic windowsill almost made her hesitate. It wouldn’t be the first, and most likely would not be the last time she’d seen him hurt. Shot, even.
And yet.
The picture before her wasn’t good. It was better than some, worse than others, but not uncommon. Kaz didn’t even glance at her, too focused on trying to remove a bullet from his shoulders with his left hand. It was impossible to ignore the tremors in his hand, the sweat on his body and the blood coming out of his arm. The way his body was slowly shutting down from the pain.
He could have died.
“It’s fine,” he managed to say, wincing as he tried to clean the wound. It didn’t matter whatever she was feeling at that moment. That reaction alone was enough for her to rush to his side and take the needle out of his hand.
"What happened?" she asked, reaching for the alcohol on top of his dresser. A blood covered bullet laid next to it, and Inej tried not to focus on it too much as she cleaned the needle once again. “I’m going to have to touch you for this. Is that alright?”
“It’s fine,” he repeated, doing his best not to move as she checked the wound to make sure there wasn’t anything left inside of him before starting to sew him up. “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Some green Liddies decided they were all it took to take me down in an ambush near the canal.”
“Clearly they’ve come close. Five against one?”
"I'm still breathing, aren't I?" he snapped.
Inej stared at Kaz for a long minute before continuing to close the wound in silence. Part of her knew it wasn’t personal; Kaz was used to dealing with pain in a different way and she knew blowing up at her was a coping mechanism. Just like the anger building up inside of her, trying to mask how terrified she was of the thought of discovering a corpse instead of this.
Losing him had always scared her, even when they were just teenagers. Back then, it meant the loss of the protection that being associated with him brought her. Him, not the Dregs. Tante Heleen wouldn’t dare lay a finger on her when she was his spider, and if he had died at some point, Per Haskell’s name wouldn’t mean anything at all to her or anyone else.
But now, it was different. She had a name of her own, a reputation of her own that didn’t rely anymore on his. She had become dangerous and powerful and the whisper of her name had brought many to their knees. The chance of losing him might bring Inej to hers. It was unthinkable. It would be unbearable.
She was close to finishing closing up his wound when his hand laid on top of hers.
“I am fine,” he said again, much softer. “I was ambushed. I did not see it coming but I handled it. The bullet-- that was a miscalculation. It won’t happen again.”
Inej wasn’t sure about that. She was not naive to think he was untouchable now, but she knew he wouldn’t just say that, make promises he couldn’t keep. Better terrible truths than kind lies.
“Don’t you dare die on me, Kaz Brekker.”
***
“What do you pray for?” he had asked, once, curiosity finally getting the best of him. Religion wasn’t something they had ever discussed before. Not in a serious manner, anyways. When they were younger, Kaz was always trying to put her faith in question, mock her beliefs and do his best to annoy her with his questions and remarks about the truth behind her Saints.
But she always noticed how he watched her say the name of her knives each and every night they were together. Petyr, Alina, Marya, Anastasia, Vladimir, and so many others who had helped Inej protect herself when she was away or even outside his room. More than once she caught his scheming face directed at her, trying to understand, to figure something out, but she never knew what. She’d never asked.
Inej finished her prayer before turning to his direction. “What?”
“You pray every day, when you wake up and before you go to sleep. Sometimes in between, when you’re getting ready for a fight or you’re about to do something important.” His voice was even, rough as stone, and no one would know perhaps the eagerness behind the question. Not from his tone, let alone from his expression. But Inej wasn’t just anyone.
She stood up from the foot of his bed and silently walked over, purposely taking her time to speak again. His eyes followed her all the way to the chair across from his neat desk. At this hour of the day, there wasn’t any more business to be taken care of, at least none urgent enough to make him spend every waking hour on it. The first three buttons of his shirt were undone, the sleeves rolled all the way to his elbows and his hands bare, his fingers ink stained from all the paperwork.
Her eyes lingered on the latter, still fascinated by the sight of his bare pale skin that had been hidden under those gloves for so many years.
“I do.”
“What do you talk about?”
“It’s not a conversation, or at least not one like you’re used to. I pray for many things— some are the same every day, some are not,” she started explaining, unsure how much information he wanted. “They answer me in actions or guide me through my choices.”
He nodded, not convinced by it. Inej had thought many times before how she could tell him more about her religion. It was a thought that frequently happened when she was younger and he had questioned her beliefs. He doesn’t understand, she would think later, in her room, fuming at his harsh words and mocking voice. Kaz wasn’t one who would ever put his trust in something he couldn’t see or read their intentions behind every move, and as hard it was for her in the beginning to understand how someone wouldn’t believe in anything, it was harder for him to understand how someone would .
“When I’m away at sea, I pray for good weather and for the strength of my crew. I pray for them to guide me to the ones who need my help the most. When I’m scared or about to risk my life on a mission, I pray for protection, for them to help me find my way out of whatever trouble I’m in,” she continued when he stayed silent. “I pray for forgiveness and absolution, for all my sins, for all the times my hands were covered in blood. They ask things of me as well.”
“Never something for nothing.”
Inej shook her head. “Not that way. They don’t ask me to do something for their protection, that’s not how faith works. But they challenge me sometimes, and put stones in my way to show me my path.”
“I see,” he said. Inej raised her eyes to his face, expectantly. But he didn’t, not really. She probably knew what crossed his mind. What kind of cruel stone was put in her way for the Saints to show her what her path must be? Was it necessary— all the hurt and pain she was put through as a child— for her to fight in the name of her Saints? And what about him?
Kaz had been even younger than she when everything was taken from him. His father, his home, his brother, his name. She wasn’t sure if he was a believer before all that happened, and he never made any reference of being so, but Inej understood the thought of suffering being the way to a greater good. It wasn’t like that, and she could tell him so, but Inej learned years ago not to waste her breath.
“Most days, I pray for them to help me find my way home safely. I pray for my family, their health and happiness. I pray for Jesper and Wylan. Saints, I pray for Nina, wherever she may be now.” She studied his face closely. “I pray for you.”
Kaz lifted a brow at the revelation.
“You can’t be that surprised. I have been praying for you almost as long as I’ve known you.”
He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, and looked away, avoiding her eyes. It was a funny thing, how awkward and uncomfortable Kaz could get when someone tried to take care of him, especially considering her actual job as his spider was to keep him safe. She reached for his hand, still resting on his desk, and lightly held it with her own, waiting for him to break the silence this time.
“You shouldn’t waste your prayers on me, Inej. There’s nothing you can ask of them you can’t ask of me.”
At that, she raised her brows. “I pray for your health— that includes you eating and sleeping well, which I know are things you don’t do when I’m not here. I pray for your safety, so you won’t get jumped at every corner by a gang trying to take you down. I pray that you’ll always come back to me, unhurt and breathing.”
“I think your Saints have better things to do than stopping me from annoying anyone to a point they’ll get me killed.”
“And yet, here you are, alive and well, right in front of me.”
“I hardly believe that’s their doing.”
“You don’t have to believe anything, Kaz,” she said, holding his hand tighter. “But I do. And that’s enough for me.”
***
It started with a question.
“What happens when you die?” she asked on a cold night, head pressed against his chest, fingers toying with the buttons on his nightshirt.
They’ve had that conversation before, back when they were teenagers with nothing to lose. In the Barrel, you treated death as a given, something that’d happen sooner than later. Few rats would dream of growing old in that place where fights and kills were almost as common as breathing, and the ones that did often were the first to be gone.
Back then, Kaz had a goal in life and one goal only: his revenge. It didn’t matter much what happened next, when it happened, as long as it was after he got what he wanted. If dead, he’d have become another Barrel rat who had fallen to someone younger, better, crueler. His death would be avenged and he would be remembered for a few days until the next one took his place and so on and on.
And Inej, well, she would be just another girl, another nobody who was destroyed by Ketterdam and all its cruelty and inhumanity like millions of others before. Back then she believed her parents had considered her dead already, and wouldn’t that be better, to think she was gone rather than finding out who she was made to be? Who she chose to be to survive?
But now it’s different. They had gained so much and, therefore, had so much more to lose. And what once was a question easily asked, somehow turned out to be ten times harder to bring up when they were safely tucked in bed, holding one another.
Now they were more than a Barrel rat and Spider to one another. Now they were different people, older, bolder – and yet more careful. Yet, death wasn’t a matter of if with them, as it would’ve been with a lovesick couple who wouldn’t face long distance relationships nor put their lives at risk at every given moment.
Even now, each day could be their last. It was the cruelest truth that no kind lies could make better. Kaz was building an empire of his own, running the strongest gang in the Barrel, owning the two most profitable gambling halls in the city. As for Inej, she was doing the same on the sea, fighting tooth and nail to end the misery she had been put through.
Each and every day in danger. Each and every day physically apart. Each and every day closer to death.
But more than that, they were building something else together. They had more to lose because of it, because of their friends, their family, because of each other. There wasn’t anymore Dirtyhands and Wraith between them, just Kaz and Inej.
Once they believed they were each other’s weaknesses, something that had their enemies known about, it’d be an easy path to destroy them. Inej knew Kaz still blamed himself for her kidnapping back when they were teenagers, a mistake that could’ve cost her her life and finally made him lose all sense of humanity inside of him. Oh, how that was the farthest thing from the truth.
Now they knew that their greatest strengths weren’t in their individual skills and abilities, but in the trust and faith in each other like they never had in anything else. They had built something bigger together, weathering storms that not many would even dare to face, each and every time emerging from the chaos battered but unbroken.
Inej knew every corner of Kaz’s past, the good and bad memories, the ones that still haunted him at night, trying to pull him back to the bottom of the canals, trying to take him away from her, but Inej was the anchor that pulled him back to her. She saw the darkness in him but, most of all, she saw the good that flickered within him, the boy she fell in love with in the first place.
And it wasn’t different with her. Inej was more than a killer, than a spider, than the pitiful creature Heleen tried to make of her. Kaz made her stronger, more dangerous and powerful just by believing in her and giving her the tools to show what she was capable of.
What would they be, then, if one was taken away from the other just like that, so easily? It scared her just to ask him the question, as necessary as she believed it to be.
Kaz tensed under her, blinking his eyes open and finding hers with concern.
“What?” he asked, as if he had misunderstood the question.
“What happens when you die?” she repeated, firmly.
“You make sure I’m dead,” he answered simply, as if he had thought about it at length beforehand. It wouldn’t be the wildest idea if he had, Kaz is as pragmatic as they come.
“Is that all?” she asked with no humor in her voice.
“I’m not planning on dying any time soon.”
“Well, if you’re not planning to, then of course it won’t happen,” she said, eyeing the yellow greenish bruises on his cheek. Her hands moved carefully from his chest to his face, fingers brushing the places where he was hurt the most. Kaz flinched at the first touch, but she knew it wasn’t because of her skin. “I can’t help but think you could’ve died that night.”
“I can manage dealing with a few thugs who fancy themselves the next Barrel boss.” Despite his initial reaction, Kaz leaned his head towards her hand, encouraging her to cup his face.
“You were once one of them. Look where you are now and where Pekka Rollins is.”
He paused, watching her more carefully. “What business, Inej?”
“I’m scared,” she admitted, feeling like a little girl running from the monsters under her bed, but it was the smart thing to do. It was stupid to think they were invincible like they once had. Inej worried about him when she was away, unable to keep an eye on him in this wretched city where trouble was in every corner, and she knew he was worried about her too, so far away at sea. How could he come to her if he didn't know where she was? How could she protect him if she wasn't looking over him like she used to? "You could've died."
She could see that Kaz wanted to argue, probably tell her that was not the way he'd go, in a stupid fight with some low rank Liddies, but he stopped himself because he knew that would lead him nowhere. He studied her a while longer, eyes taking in every inch of her face. Finally, he nodded.
"I'll be more careful," he conceded, but his eyes remained firm. "But I meant what I said before. If something happens, if I die, you make sure I'm actually dead. Not a con, not almost dead. Slit my throat, if necessary, but don't send me to the reaper's barge if there's any chance of me being alive."
There was no sarcasm behind it, and she knew he meant every word of it. No matter how many years had gone by, the thought of being stuck between dead bodies still haunted him. That wouldn't happen to him, not if she had any say about it.
So, she asked. "Would you want to go there?"
"What else is there?"
"The farm, maybe. Your home."
Kaz hesitated, considering. Home wasn’t quite the word to describe the farm he grew up on, not anymore. Only a few years ago he had decided to come back with her, see it for the first time since he was a child, and as much as it had looked exactly the same as before, he had told her then, it didn’t feel like home.
They had come back to it a few times ever since, whenever Inej had a long stay in Ketterdam and Kaz was able to take a few days off from the business and his gang. Inej had watched him reminisce about his past, deep in thought some times and utterly miserable in others, unable to keep the ghosts away from him. But she had also watched him light the fireplace for them to sit in front of on a cold night and listened to one or two stories of his childhood in that house, observing him by his parent’s grave near the big plum tree, silent and with the saddest eyes she had ever seen.
It wasn’t home anymore, but perhaps the peace and quiet amongst the tree was good enough.
“Alright,” he said after a moment. “The deal is the deal.”
She nodded, squeezing his hand in hers. Perhaps that would’ve been enough, at least for today, but she couldn’t stop herself. “If… When I’m gone—”
“No.”
“What?”
Before she could look at him properly, Kaz had pulled away from her, pushing his bad leg to the edge of the bed to sit with his back to her. She stayed still, watching him with worry and confusion.
“I won’t be here forever.”
“Don’t,” he said again. “Stop.”
“Kaz.”
“When you’re gone, I won’t be here.”
“You don’t know that,” she said softly, sitting up in the bed.
Years ago, she wouldn’t dare touch him, unsure how he would respond to it, afraid he would flinch away from her, unable to withstand her touch. But now, she could read the clear signs of his distress and that wasn’t it. This wasn’t Kaz trying to take control of his demons, trying to anchor himself and control his mind before it pulled him to hell. It was Kaz trying to avoid facing the truth.
Slowly, Inej leaned forward, pressing her face to his back and embracing him from behind. They stayed like that for a while, breathing in and out, slow and quiet. His bare hand laid on top of hers, tracing her calloused fingers he knew all too well.
“I want a Suli funeral,” she murmured, feeling his body tense once again. But he didn’t pull away this time. “If I go before my parents, you have to tell them, Kaz. They’ll know what to do and I want them to hear it from you, no one else. Promise me.”
He nodded, squeezing her hand in his. It was the best he could do at that moment, and Inej understood that. Kaz's inability to face that possibility didn’t mean he wouldn’t listen to her when necessary. Speaking the hard realities of their lives was always a part of them, especially when that was the last thing they wanted to do and it wouldn’t change now.
She inhaled deeply before pulling away from him. Now that Inej had made him listen, she needed to finish before she lost the nerve. Her fingers curled around his arm and pulled him back to lie beside her.
Now it was her time to cup his cheeks, thumb brushing the small freckles under his eye. Her touch was deep, putting pressure against his skin so he knew she was there, she was alive. Death wasn’t exactly a trigger for him — the Barrel was surrounded by it and his hands had been responsible for more than his share of it as well — but a reminder that they were only humans. Kaz wasn’t the demon people were afraid of and she wasn’t the saint people whispered about.
Under all that, he was just a boy. A man, in reality, but to her he would always be the boy she fell in love with all those years ago, no matter how many years went by or how many gray strands of hair he might have acquired since. A boy who had fears just like any other, and one of them was of losing her. Almost as much as she feared losing him. But he needed to know.
“They will want to bring me back to the caravan, for the arrangements. The Suli don’t bury their bodies. We are travelers, so it doesn’t make sense for us to rest on a piece of land after we’re gone,” she continued. Inej wasn’t sure how much of an explanation he needed in actuality or if it was just nerves that kept her going. She knew how his mind worked, though, always searching for a reason behind an action, leaving no space for him to wonder the what ifs of it all. Maybe this was for both of them.
“They will wrap my body in a white and red cloth and put it on a garland of flowers for the people to say their prayers and goodbyes.” His body was rigid under hers, his breathing hard, but his eyes were clear, focused on her words. “When it’s time, someone will light the funeral pyre, a family member. If a person is married with a living husband or children, it’s them who do it. It’s a way of them letting their loved one go, with no fear of moving on. If a person is unmarried, then it’s the parents or the closest living relative who does it, but it has to be family because we need the blessing of the ones who loved us the most to move on.”
“Some people pray while the body burns, others go home. There isn’t a rule for it, we are allowed to deal with the pain however we choose, but, at the end, the ashes will be put into an urn and the family will spread them wherever they think the person will like, so we can still travel through the wind.”
“Where would you want to go?”
“Where I was happiest when I was alive. Where I was loved and free.”
It’s an answer and it’s not. What she said was true, the Suli were travelers and that meant they belonged everywhere, despite people believing the contrary. There wasn’t one place where people were happy, but there were moments and people they were happy with. That’s where she wanted to be.
“You’ve given this some thought.”
“Yes,” Inej said. She had to, with her line of work, with all the times she thought she was going to die alone. Or maybe she was just scared. Scared of, once again, being nothing but a nobody, someone forgotten, someone who would be taken away from her heritage. Ineh needed someone, him , to know. Just in case. “If my parents are not here to do any of it, I want you to. Not here, in Ketterdam. Anywhere but here.”
“There it is, then. You have it all figured out.”
Inej knew there was nothing Kaz wanted more than to be done with this conversation. But she wasn’t done yet.
“There’s one more thing.” He looked at her, pleading. This next part would be the hardest, Inej was sure of it. Had she died before this conversation, her body lost at sea, killed by a Dime Lion or even because of a disease, none of it would matter. But she wanted to make sure he knew what she expected of him, what she needed of him so she could move on.
When she spoke, her voice was certain.
“I want you to cry for me.”
Kaz snapped his eyes to her, surprised at the request. “What?”
“I want you to cry for me,” Inej repeated, firmly. “I want you to allow yourself to feel my loss, to mourn me. I don’t want you to seek revenge or to repress it like you did with your brother. I just want you to miss me.”
“I can’t make that promise.”
“No armor, Kaz.”
“Inej.”
“I can’t go without knowing you won’t be torturing yourself over this.”
“Perhaps that’s for the best then.”
“Please.”
The room became silent once again, but Inej didn’t falter. Perhaps what she was asking was cruel, and something she knew Kaz didn’t want to go through – if the tables were turned, she wouldn’t either. If she had heard Kaz Brekker had died under someone’s hand, she would want to hunt them down and make them suffer for taking him away from her.
And she knew he would’ve done the same for her, without a question. But the stakes were different for her, and they both knew it. All she wanted was for him to allow himself this piece of humanity when she wasn’t around to remind him of it.
Finally, he nodded. “Alright.”
“Promise me.”
“I’ll cry for you, Inej. I’ll miss you. I’ll burn down this city, so they know my pain. I’ll make sure everyone knows it. That’s my promise.”
It’s not what she’d wanted, not really, but Kaz wouldn’t make a half-hearted promise that he couldn’t keep. For better or for worse, this was the best she would get out of him.
It was enough for now.
***
He found himself praying for her, in the end.
The weight of the loss settled upon him like a heavy cloak. Nothing was amiss, not one single thing that might indicate that it would happen, it just did. Death came as a friend on a spring afternoon at the Rietveld's farm and it took Kaz’s heart along with it.
The world went quiet but for his voice calling out to her, begging for her not to go. Begging for her to stay with him, like he did once before. She didn’t listen to him this time either. There was nothing but the sound of his heart breaking.
The pain didn’t falter on the week of her funeral.
Kaz had kept his promise to her, in every way that he could. Inej had no more family other than their own by now and the ceremony took place in the backyard of their farm. He had stayed with her through it all, the preparations, the prayers, the goodbyes, the fire and ashes.
Neither of his children nor Jesper and Nina, the only other crows still breathing, had the stomach to watch her burn.
“Da.” His oldest had joined him when there was nothing left but ashes on the ground. “You shouldn’t be kneeling, your leg--”
“Leave me be,” he answered, scooping them into a wooden box Inej’s mother had gifted her after they were married. It once stored all Inej’s most valuable possessions. There was no place more fitting for this purpose than this. “She’s still my wife. I will do right by her.”
“But--”
“Do as I say,” he ordered, not even stopping to glance at his daughter. He couldn’t. Kaz knew if he stopped making himself busy he would crumble apart. “If you want to worry about someone, go make sure Jesper isn’t doing anything stupid, like breaking a hip.”
In the week that followed, he found himself consumed by a grief so profound, it felt as though it would suffocate him. And yet, he found no tears to share. Now all that was left of his heart fit inside of a box.
More and more Kaz stayed outside, sitting by himself on the bench under the plum tree his parents were buried by. There, he could watch his children making themselves busy in the house, giving him worried glances through the kitchen window when they thought he wasn’t looking, postponing their leave to make sure he was going to be alright. Alone.
It was of no use. How could he be fine when she was not there? Inej had always been his shadow, protecting him from all the dangers that might come to him; she was his anchor and his lifeline and now she was gone and he was alone.
He knew what she would say to that. You are not alone, Kaz. You still have our family.
Every rational part of his brain knew she would be right. Every day, at the end of the day, their daughters would join him on the bench, watching the sunset and sharing tears they did not dare do in front of their children. It was their moment of grief and he was more than happy to be there for them. To allow himself to worry about their needs instead of his own.
“What’s the point of you?” he asked out loud one day, tired of thinking, of wondering. “All you do is take and take and take, having her beg for forgiveness, for absolution and for what? You took her all the same, like she was nothing. She was everything. Every day she would take some time and pray to you, there was no one more devoted than her, no one more deserving of living than she, and yet you took her instead of me.”
Kaz could see it, clear as day, even now, the way her lips moved as she prayed to them, day after day. He had memorized the way her lashes moved as she closed her eyes and asked for protection, for happiness, for peace. He had never joined her, but as it was a ritual for her to talk to her Saints, it was his to watch her devotion to them.
The way she taught their girls the stories of their Saints, how to pray to them and to always seek their knowledge whenever they were feeling lost. He remembered when his youngest had asked why Kaz never joined them and Inej explained to her how he believed in something different.
Her.
He believed in her. He still did.
And just like that, every memory, every shared moment, every laugh and kiss and whispered promise flooded his mind, like they had just happened. Kaz would never look into her eyes again, would never listen to her laugh, would never feel the warmth of her embrace ever again. All of it would be nothing but a distant dream, a bittersweet echo of a life that no longer existed.
Anger built up in his chest one more time.
“If you were merciful like she believed, you would’ve taken me instead. You would have given our kids their mother to watch over them. She would know what to say, what to do, how to comfort them. She would be enough ,” he said, voice cracking for the first time. “You robbed them of her.”
He paused, eyes roaming his property, noticing all the things that reminded him of her. The wild geraniums in her garden, the green window shutters she had painted when they moved permanently to the farm, their daughters that looked so much like her. Kaz clenched his fists on his cane; the dull pain of his leg was nothing compared to the pain in his heart.
“I should’ve gone first.” There was no hiding anymore, not when the tears threatened to spill out of his eyes. “I am not a strong man, Inej. You once told me to not die on you, but I should’ve told you to not die on me either. My heart can’t take loss like it used to. And I miss you,” he whispered, voice raw with emotion. “I miss you so much it hurts.”
Finally, Kaz was able to keep the last of his promises. And as he wept, the world seemed to stop to listen to his sobs, at last allowing him to mourn her the way she deserved. He cried until there were no tears left to shed, until his lungs begged for air and his heart shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
He’d do everything to be right there with her, no matter where she was now. If she was with her Saints, like she believed, hell, he would do anything to join her, as undeserving as he might be.
“Baba?” a voice said behind him, after a while. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it had seemed enough for the children to have gone inside the house for supper. Kaz wiped the tears from his face before turning to look at the little boy walking towards him. “Why are you crying?”
Barely seven years old, Kaz was still surprised how much his grandson looked like him when he was a child. Long limbs, crooked smile and mussed hair from running around all day. Of all his grandchildren, he was the only boy.
His eyes, though, were the same shade as his mother’s. As his. But they looked like Inej’s, with a kindness that only she was able to give them. Ones that he wouldn’t see anymore but in the eyes of his children and grandchildren.
Perhaps it was the best gift she was able to leave him. To see her through them.
“You should be inside by now,” he answered instead, offering his hand for the boy to join him on the bench. “Your mother will be looking for you.”
The boy grinned in mischief. “I snuck out through the window when she went to the kitchen.”
“Of course you did.”
“Were you crying because of Nani?”
“Yes,” Kaz confessed, looking at his bare hand, at his wedding ring. No armor, he had promised. “I miss her more than anything.”
“I miss her too,” he said, his smile disappearing. “I don’t like to sleep without her telling me stories about heists and adventures. Mama said they’re not true but Nani wouldn’t lie to me.”
At that, Kaz snorted. It was the first time he had since she’d gone. “I’m sure she wouldn’t.”
He thought about Inej and how she would probably say there was no need for his outburst at her Saints. How they listened to him all the same and sent their grandson to him instead, to soothe his pain, even if momentarily.
He’d rather believe that she was responsible for it rather than her Saints.
In the back, they heard a voice call out for the boy. It was dark now, and Kaz should make his way back to the house before either of his daughters came looking for him.
“Come, let’s get inside for supper,” Kaz said, already standing, ignoring his leg protesting. “I’ll tell you some stories of my own when you go to bed.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said, slowly walking back to the house, holding his grandson’s hand. “Had Nani already told you about the spider who crawled sixty storeys of a lit chimney at the Ice Court in Fjerda?”
“What? No,” his grandson gasped. “I wanna know how!”
“Well,” Kaz began, heart a little lighter at the thought of still being able to keep her alive though his grandson. “It all started with thirty million kruge…”