Chapter Text
A fire crackles in the hearth.
Inej knows, because she put it there. She placed the logs methodically—the two biggest parallel to the grate, three smaller ones stacked on top—and added a crumpled newspaper for kindling. She lit the match, careful not to singe her fingertips on its leaping flame, and held it to the pages until the words warped.
She re-read the paper’s headline as it burned.
ANOTHER KILL FOR THE “SANKTA” OF THE SEAS
The byline disappears quickly, but she doesn’t need to read it. She has it memorized.
Savior or demon? Righteous captain or rogue pirate? A look inside the bloody trail and bloodier captain of a vessel called the Wraith.
Savior or demon? Captain or pirate? They are questions she asks herself, sometimes. The masses may have deemed her a Sankta, but she knows all too well that there are closed rooms on the Geldenstraat in which men refer to her instead as a scourge. Rooms in which they toast to her poor health, praying to their industrious god for stormy seas.
She sends prayers to her own gods that those men may someday see the error of their ways.
The fire grows, the newspaper crumbling to ashes.
Warmth licks at her skin, the earthy scent of smoke filling the air. For a long moment, the irregular, teasing sound of wood popping is the only noise in the room.
When she’s satisfied that the fire is catching, she rises to her feet.
“Better?” she asks.
“Much,” Kaz allows.
He’s standing beside her, leaning heavily on his cane as he watches the fire begin to swallow the smallest log. Typically he prefers to be the one lighting it—the one keeping her warm, although he’d never admit that’s why—but tonight, she noticed him struggling to sink into a crouch, his bad knee buckling at an odd angle beneath him. She crossed toward him wordlessly, plucking the paper and matches from his hands before he could utter a word of protest.
“Would you like to sit?” she asks.
“I’m comfortable,” he replies.
She doubts that, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, she looks at his face, lit from below by the nascent firelight. Shadows dance across the hard lines of his face, tracing the planes of his cheekbones, his jawline. There is a flicker of something in his expression— determination? greed? —that disappears before she can decipher its meaning.
He’s filled out in the years since the Ice Court, his shoulders and chest broader, his waistline no longer ravaged by hunger. He’s no bruiser—he never would be, his mind sharper than knives, sharper than diamonds, better and more useful than any physical prowess—but there is still something menacing, something dangerous, in the hard planes of his new figure.
She thinks, as she stares, about sharp things. The bow of her ship slicing through sparkling waters, the fine point of her first mate’s forgery pen. The tone she takes with her crew when they’re behaving badly, reasserting her power with a few cutting words.
Her knives, of course, her truest of loves, named for the Saints that watch over her.
And Kaz.
Always, Kaz.
Her hands float to her waist like airwalkers on the wire, her fingers seeking the coolness of metal. She feels through her vest the slow drag of her first knife from its sheath—the blade’s caress, then a naked emptiness that makes her shiver.
Kaz’s eyes dart down to watch her work. The moment lingers like a held breath, a tense string that's moments from snapping.
“I thought I should get comfortable as well,” she explains.
He inclines his head diplomatically, humming his agreement.
There’s a tiny click as she sets Sankt Petyr down on the mantle. Sankta Alina follows, then Sankta Lizabeta. Before long the flat surface is littered with sharp, sparkling things.
When she’s done, she raises a single brow in invitation.
Kaz’s lips twitch, his eyes glittering. He holds her gaze as he rises to her challenge.
His hands find one another in the space between them, the fingers of his right hand working the button on his left. He’s deft, practiced, and yet she notes a slight tremor—there, and then gone so fast that she thinks she may have dreamed it. He switches sides, focusing on the right hand button, and it becomes clear.
Kaz Brekker is a club owner, a consummate dealer, a master thief. He’s a magician and a pickpocket, a man capable of drawing your attention to the cards in his right hand as his left takes your wallet. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick, a door he couldn’t open, a treasure he couldn’t steal.
And yet here, standing close to her in a firelit room, his hands are shaking.
“May I?”
The words are out before Inej can register them, her body running ahead of her mind. She startles at the sound of her own forwardness, unable to reconcile the low, heavy register of her voice with the way her heartbeat picks up speed.
When he doesn’t immediately answer, she raises her hands to his, hovering them close to where they’re frozen. She waits, unwilling to touch him before he gives his permission.
“Yes,” he says, his voice sounding a little strangled.
She takes his left hand gently in hers, extending a finger to pop open the stubborn button. She looks up toward him, waiting. Ever so slightly, he nods, and she slides her finger beneath his cuff, stroking the soft skin at his wrist.
Beneath it, his pulse skyrockets.
His eyes slam shut as he sucks in a harsh breath, holding it for a few seconds before letting out a long, slow exhale.
Inej counts along in her head.
Inhale for one … two … three, hold for five.
Exhale for one … two … three…
It takes four rounds for his pulse to calm.
It’s five before he opens his eyes.
When he does, there is a new softness there. The edge of panic melts away in the room’s cozy warmth.
The breathing exercise is not new, not anymore. It’s something they tried years ago, one of the only successful methods in their arsenal for fighting the ghosts that plague them. It was hell to impart it—her lover as stubborn as a mule, as ill-tempered as a wet cat—but now even he admits that it helps.
Once again Kaz has faced his demons, and once again he’s won.
Inej inflates with pride.
He nods again, and she hooks her fingers beneath the supple leather of his glove, tugging gently. She repeats the motion on the other side, pausing again with a single finger held to the pulse point in his wrist before pulling at the glove’s fingertips to remove it. She places the gloves on the mantle, where they lay limply next to her knives.
It’s armor, dulled from years of fighting.
She places her hands in his, twining their fingers together. Even after all this time, she relishes the hard-won feeling, relaxing into his faltering touch. Her mind skips forward, barrelling down a well-worn path at a speed that makes her heart jump.
Her traitorous mind wonders: now that he’s gotten past the initial shock of skin-on-skin, will he be able to kiss her? Will he bring a palm to her cheek, his fingers brushing against the soft skin where her jawline meets her throat? Will he hold her body to his, an arm wrapped securely around her back?
She wonders if he will be able to bring her to bed. If they will curl up close and fall asleep, or if he might instead run his fingers gently along the line of her throat, down her chest and stomach until he reaches—
“—nej?”
She blinks, his words swallowed by her lecherous thoughts.
“Can you repeat that?”
He steps closer, the corner of his mouth tilting up. He drops one of her hands, bringing his up to brush a stray tendril of hair away from her face. When he repeats himself, his voice has dropped low.
“What are you thinking of, Inej?”
There is a spark in his eye that tells her he already knows the answer.
Flames ignite in her belly.
“I…”
As she struggles to find the words, his eyes dart toward her open lips, a flush rising high on his cheekbones.
She raises a brow, feeling her own mouth curve up. “What are you thinking of, Kaz?”
He swallows. Steels himself. “I’m thinking that you”—he looks away, his hand tightening around hers—“that you look beautiful. In the firelight.”
He gestures jerkily toward the hearth, the movement stilted.
Years ago, in a dream she once had, complements rolled easily from Kaz’s tongue. It cost him nothing at all to whisper, “I want you.” Nothing at all to add, “So much.”
In reality, his words are as hard-won as his fortune.
And twice as valuable.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “So do you.”
The pink stain on his cheeks deepens as he shakes his head a little, ducking his chin to hide the beginnings of a smile.
She mirrors it, baring teeth. “What,” she asks, “you don’t believe me?”
“Beautiful is not often a word used to describe a Barrel boss.”
“Maybe you’re the only beautiful one.”
“Maybe your eyesight is going.”
Inej narrows her eyes. “Maybe your mirrors are warped.”
“My mirrors are fine.”
“So are my eyes.”
“Maybe it’s your mind, then.” Kaz is fully grinning now, the hand in her hair pulling back to make a fluttering motion around her head. “You’ve finally lost it.”
“Because I find you attractive?”
“I believe the word used was beautiful, Inej. Don’t walk it back now.”
She laughs, tilting her head back.
“That,” he says quietly, gesturing with his chin toward her smile, “is beautiful.”
The air between them goes heavy in an instant.
She takes one small step forward, placing a single palm over Kaz’s heart. Beneath her hand beats a familiar staccato.
His next breath is a shaky exhale, so close that it fans across her lips. One hand hovers above her cheekbone as the other finds her waist.
“May I?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He holds her gaze as his hand finds her waist, then slides to the small of her back. She draws in a breath, their bodies meeting at the hips, waist, chest. Her eyes dart down toward the slash of his mouth, and between them she can feel his heart beating like a stampede of horses, like a company of dancers, like a nearly-caught thief running toward an unlocked door. Its rapid beat is calming, the rhythm of a memorized song.
You’re here, Inej, it reminds her. You’re here.
His hand applies a gentle pressure to the small of her back. She allows herself to be drawn in.
“I want you,” Kaz breathes.
Once, she’d imagined that those words would sound smooth like river pebbles.
The reality is entirely different. The words are not pebbles but jagged rock, their edges perfect for climbing. They scrape against her skin, raising goosebumps in their wake.
His nose brushes hers, his head tilting to accommodate. Her eyes slide shut, and she waits for the soft press of his lips against hers.
The moment drags. Blood rushes in her ears, her body starting to tremble.
Still, she is left waiting.
A thought swims to the forefront of her heavy mind.
Is something wrong?
Is Kaz frozen, unable to bear the thought of more touch? Is he waiting for her, mistaking her stillness for fear?
She wrenches her eyes open, searching for his.
When their gazes meet, she realizes. He’s not frozen. He’s not waiting.
He’s teasing.
His eyes are alight with soft humor, a corner of his mouth twisting up. He’s enjoying how much she wants this, reveling in her reaction to his whispered words.
A thought shoots across her mind like a comet.
I’m going to kiss him.
She knows it with the same certainty that she brings to her air walking, her spying, her faith. She knows it with every beat of her leaping heart. I’m going to kiss him. I’m going to kiss him. I’m going to—
He lets out a low, dark chuckle and the last of her control shatters, her hand wrapping around the back of his neck to pull him close.
He tilts his head forward, and their lips connect.
The kiss ignites like a struck match, flames licking up and down her body. Her hand twists in his lapel, the other tightening around his neck. The arm wrapped around her back goes stiff, an iron bar against her spine. He nearly lifts her off her feet in his enthusiasm, his kisses sharp, hungry, needy.
She tries to keep up, but there’s a desperate edge to his every movement, his lips moving in perfect sync with the jackrabbit beat of his heart. He kisses her like he’s a drowning man and she’s water. Like he’s choking and she’s air. Like he’s … well, Kaz, and she’s kruge or vengeance or even salvation, her body a balm for his soul.
“Kaz,” she pants, hoping to ask him to slow down.
Hearing his own name pulls a moan from somewhere deep in his chest, and the sound of it lights her up from head to toe. She forgets her request, her hands grasping frantically at the starched fabric of his shirt, pulling it free of where it’s tucked into his trousers.
She thinks back to when they first entered this room together, the way he methodically worked the buttons of his jacket and waistcoat, how he let the garments slide languidly from his shoulders. She wishes suddenly that he had removed this garment in the same manner, baring his skin slowly for her to watch.
By the sound of the groan that escapes Kaz’s lips, she suspects he’s having similar thoughts. She wants to pull away and ask him about it, but his hand at her jaw is iron, holding her in place.
“Kaz,” she tries, her voice muffled.
“Inej,” he says into her mouth.
“I can’t—”
Her sentence is cut in half when he surges forward again, sweeping her into another kiss. His teeth pull at her bottom lip, his tongue finding hers. She meets his lips with her own determinedly until she’s dizzy, the tips of her fingers tingling as spots appear in her vision.
“I can’t—” she repeats.
“Can’t?” Kaz asks, pulling back only long enough for the one word. He dives back in quickly, and it’s another few moments before she can reply.
“Breathe.”
He’s off of her in a second.
Her body cries out at the sudden lack of touch, a humiliating whimper falling from her lips.
Kaz stalks across the room, facing away from her. His hands are fists at his sides, his head bowed toward the ground. His shoulders rise and fall with his labored breathing, the only evidence she can find of their recent activities.
“It’s okay,” she says, her own voice still a little breathy at the edges.
He shakes his head, keeping his back toward her. Firelight flickers along the forward pitch of his spine, the angle of it betraying his anxiety. As he steps deeper into shadow, she runs her gaze along his waistband, noting the places where his shirt was pulled loose by her roaming hands.
“It’s okay,” she repeats, this time with more substance in her tone. “I’m okay. It happens.”
She doesn’t understand why he’s torn himself away so completely. She loves his passion, and has told him on more than one occasion. Their exploration of their limits—of one another—is not without issue, the importance of feedback and communication not lost on them. He knows she wants him to show her that he wants her, even when he misses the mark.
So why has this small failure sent him spinning?
Kaz whips toward her, eyes flashing. “Where does it happen, Inej? Where are you pushed until you can’t breathe?” he hisses.
Oh.
A nearly unbearable fondness blooms in her chest.
She takes a step forward, showing him her palms. He eyes her warily, but allows her to take another. Then another. She keeps stepping forward until she’s standing before him on the far side of the room, away from the reach of the firelight.
She speaks more quietly in the dim of the shadows. As though their ghosts can hear her.
“It happens at The Menagerie,” she confirms. Kaz winces, his head turning away from her.
She waits for his eyes to meet hers again before she continues. “But it happens elsewhere, too. In loving marriage beds. In unloving ones. During passionate affairs, and listless ones. In every last corner of the Barrel, and in the most gilded rooms in the Geldrenner. No one can read their lover’s mind. No one can always know how they’re feeling. That’s why we talk about it.”
Kaz shakes his head again, a muscle in his jaw working. She reaches a hand toward him, hovering it above his chest.
“May I?”
He nods, drawing in a deep breath before her palm presses into his shirt.
“You listened to me,” she says. “You couldn’t read my mind, sure, but you listened when I spoke.”
“I didn’t let you speak,” Kaz grumbles.
“Kaz,” Inej chides, bringing a hand to his cheekbone, “I asked you once to show me how much you want me. To shed your armor for me.” She lets her hand drop down, tracing the deliciously sharp lines of his face. Kaz’s eyes drift shut as her fingers drag along his jaw, her thumb reaching out to trace his bottom lip. “You were doing just that.”
Kaz exhales one soft huff of air against the pad of her thumb. “Poorly,” he retorts.
“Almost perfectly,” she whispers, rising to her toes to replace her thumb with her lips.
Their next kiss is softer by a mile. It’s sweet as candy, delicate as glass. She can feel Kaz’s restraint in every movement, and it takes only moments for her to go crazy with the idea that his gentleness is a gift just for her.
She tilts her head, deepening the kiss as her hands return to their prior efforts at his waistband. He pulls away momentarily—a movement she mourns until she realizes he intends to pull his shirt over his head.
She hovers a hand near his stomach, a silent question. Slowly, she moves it up over the ridges of muscle, over his ribcage and chest. She can feel the heat from his skin in the molecules of air between them, a ghostly thread of connection.
Suddenly he returns his mouth to hers, covering her hand with his own and placing it above his heart. She touches him gently, running a finger over his collarbone and down the very center of his chest. It rises and falls with labored breathing as she touches the scarred muscle beneath his ribcage, digging her fingertips into his warm skin and dragging them down until they hang off the edge of his waistband. He groans, his head dropping back, and she feels warmth spill along her spine, her whole body going flushed at the sound of it.
I love you, she wants to say. I have always loved you.
She doesn’t. Instead her hands fly to her vest, fumbling with the buttons. As she disrobes—shucking her vest, then her shirt in an effort to match his state of undress—his hands find her hair, dexterous fingers undoing her braid.
It’s not long until they’re panting again, their bodies pressed tightly against one another. Now, Kaz pauses periodically, allowing her space and time to breathe through the fires raging within. He moves his mouth off hers, ghosting it along the side of her jaw and down the line of her throat. She gasps as his lips close around a pulse point, sucking gently.
She pulls him closer, hands tangling in his hair as she goes a little weak from his ministrations, leaning more weight against—
His knee buckles ever so slightly beneath them, throwing them both off balance.
A gasp tears from him as he pulls his mouth from her throat, blinking in surprise. He glances down toward his leg with a contempt typically reserved for double-dealing merchers or meddling Ravkan royalty.
She cuts in before he can react.
“Bed?”
His eyes snap up toward her, his expression softening as his pupils go wide.
“Bed,” he agrees.
She unties the laces of her pants as she walks across the room, letting them slide down her legs and onto the floor before she climbs atop the sheets. He copies her, leaving them both in their underthings as they sit facing one another.
For a long moment, their breathing is the only sound in the room. Her eyes roam the slope of his shoulders, the ropy muscle of his arms. They trace the rounded edge of his R tattoo, down to the soft dip below his ribcage and jut of his pelvis. His shorts are soft and loose, his interest evident in the way they tent toward the middle.
“What do you want tonight?” Kaz asks finally, his voice tight with desire.
Inej thinks of his warm skin beneath her fingertips, the way he groaned as her fingers hooked onto his waistband. She thinks of a dream she once had, where he’d leaned back against his headboard and groaned just like that.
“I want you to lie back here,” she says, gesturing toward the pillows, “so I can sit on top of you.”
Kaz is quick to obey. He sits back with his spine against the headboard, pillows protecting his lower back. She swings a leg over him, her knees bracketing his hips, and settles down so that the bulge beneath his shorts hits her exactly where she’s sensitive, where wetness is already growing.
They moan in unison, a soft sound that mingles in the air between them.
She starts to work her hips back and forth, feeling a delicious friction building between her legs. Kaz clenches his jaw tight, brows pulling together as his eyes drift shut. He starts to level out his breathing again, holding his inhale before blowing a low, slow exhalation through his nose.
“That’s it,” she finds herself saying. “Let go.”
Kaz Brekker has never let go of anything in his life, but he knows better than to question the order. His expression twists tighter for a split second before going smooth, another shaky exhale blowing past his lips.
His hands find her hips, holding tight. She, in turn, digs her fingernails into his shoulders. Pleasure rises and falls with each rolling movement, their hips meeting over and over as though she is a tide cresting against his shores.
“That’s perfect,” he murmurs, his eyes still closed. Even in the dim lighting his lashes cast shadows across his cheeks, the planes of his face more beautiful than they have the right to be as she writhes against his body.
She tells him. “You’re beautiful.”
He snorts, a single, sharp sound that pierces their pleasurable haze. “Beautiful like a Barrel boss?”
“Exactly,” she agrees, shifting her weight so she’s sitting more fully down on his lap.
The noise that escapes him is high and soft, the furrow reappearing above his brows.
She leans forward and presses her lips to his, capturing the sound in her mouth. She’s hopeless, too far gone to keep the rhythm smooth as he steals her focus with a swipe of his tongue against her teeth.
They stay like that for a long time, moving and moaning and kissing as though their lives depend on it, until Kaz pulls his mouth away suddenly to gasp out a word.
A single fuck punctuates the room’s heavy air.
Inej can’t help the grin that unfurls across her face. “I love it when you swear for me,” she murmurs against his lips.
“I love”—he presses another kiss on her mouth; frantic, needy—”everything”—another—”about you.”
The words hit their mark, sliding down her throat and settling molten in her belly.
Once, Kaz Brekker’s love seemed something too distant to be real. It was foolish, farcical, nothing more than a girlish dream.
Inej has learned a lot since then.
She thinks of his gloves and her knives, resting forgotten on the mantle. I’ll have you without armor, Kaz Brekker, she once said, or I will not have you at all.
“I have you,” she says aloud, her words nonsensical.
Still, he agrees. “You have me.”
The friction builds between them, her mind going hazy with lust. She cradles both hands around the back of his head, her fingers threading through the soft, short hair there. She’s driven mad by the movement, mad by the warmth of his skin and the breathy sounds that he makes beneath her. There’s a metallic thrill pulsing in her blood, radiating out from the places where their bodies meet.
“I need you,” she pants.
Kaz’s eyes blink open. They’re lit from within, crackling like lightning. “Need me to what?”
He knows what she needs. He feels the slick heat between her thighs just as keenly as she does, the fabric of her underclothes damp with her wetness. But he won’t give her anything until she’s been explicit.
She’s too far gone to think of a gentle way to say it.
“I need you to fuck me.”
Kaz’s smile is an almost lazy thing.
There is some awkward jostling as they rush to remove the scraps of clothing that have remained on. Inej climbs off Kaz’s lap to slide her soft cotton undershorts from her legs, joining her trousers on the ground. Kaz wriggles free of his own, tossing them to the far side of the room with more force than necessary, as though he were a bouncer dealing with a particularly stubborn drunk.
Inej says as much as she climbs back onto the bed.
“I thought you liked my passion,” Kaz quips, his voice too breathless to be properly sardonic.
“I think the correct word is enthusiasm,” Inej replies primly.
Kaz barks out a quick laugh. “I’ll show you enthusiasm,” he mutters as he reaches for her waist.
She lets out a high pitched squeal as his arms encircle her, knocking her off balance. He wrestles her to the sheets, his clever hands skating over her ticklish ribs, dancing across her belly and up the sides of her neck.
“Kaz!” she scolds, breathless with laughter.
When they settle she is lying back on the bed, Kaz hovering above her. His smile melts away, leaving something hot and heavy in its wake. She runs a finger along the curve of his elbow, up his bicep and over his shoulder to settle her palm on the side of his neck.
“I love you,” he says plainly.
The words ricochet through her, reverberating in the cavern of her chest. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Before she can reply, he startles, eyes going wide as they flick from his arms to her face, seeming to suddenly realize the way he’s boxing her in. He shifts his weight, preparing to move, but she interrupts him.
“It’s okay,” she says, her hand pressing reassuringly against his neck. “Stay.”
“Inej,” he starts, his tone wary.
“I’m okay.” She brings her other hand to his bicep, fingers encircling the R for Rietveld. “I want this.”
She’s surprised to find that the words are true. It’s the only thing she’d gotten right in her dream: here, with Kaz, there is no sharp stab of fear at her core. No conflating him with the men of the Menagerie, no moment in which her mind disappears to a place high above her body.
Here, with Kaz, she is not afraid. Not anymore. Never again.
She adjusts beneath him so that her legs are hitched around his hips, the head of his cock pressing against her slick entrance.
Kaz’s voice shakes when he speaks. “May I?”
So polite, she thinks. On a different night, she might refuse to answer. She might stay silent, watching until he falls apart for her. She might wait to see what it might take to make Kaz Brekker beg.
Instead, she answers quickly. “Yes.”
His cock slides in, filling her with a swiftness that makes her head spin.
“Is this okay?” Kaz asks.
“Yes,” she gasps. “Yes, yes.”
He pulls back slowly, the head of his cock dragging against a place inside her that makes her gasp. The first few thrusts are unsteady—Kaz getting used to the rhythm, adjusting his weight away from his bad leg and hooking her leg higher along his waistline—and yet they’re still ruinous, sending her spinning.
“So good,” she whines.
His smile is all edges— sharp, she thinks, another perfect, sharp thing—and she wraps her arms around him, nails digging into the scarred skin of his back.
He ducks his head down and she can feel his breath fanning irregularly against her neck, his hair brushing her shoulder.
“Inej,” he says into her collarbone, his voice holding a rare reverence.
“Kaz,” she replies, the name little more than breath.
Pleasure rumbles through her, toes curling as Kaz finds his rhythm. His thrusts are stones thrown into a pool, landing with a splash and sending rippling waves through her long after they’re gone.
“Kaz,” she whines again.
Soon, all she can think is his name. Over and over, stamped into her thoughts like a prayer, beneath her skin like a tattoo. Kaz, she thinks as he goes faster, hits deeper, presses his body impossibly closer. Kaz, Kaz, Kaz.
“Inej,” he replies, and in her name she hears his contentment, his commitment and adoration. She hears the past they’ve endured together, the battles they’ve won to get here. She hears certainty in their future, the knowledge that together they'll tear the world apart to find and defend their happiness.
She hears his love, and she knows that it’s real.
She doesn’t last much longer. A few more devastating thrusts and she’s gone, tilting her head back into the pillows as sparks fly behind closed eyelids. Pleasure pulses through her in waves, tingles zipping up her arched spine and exploding like a firework over her scalp. Distantly she can feel him going taut in her arms as well, pulling himself out of her and reaching down to stroke until he spills hot into his fist. A few drops leak through his fingers and drip onto her stomach, sliding sinuously down the curve of her waist and onto the sheets below.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
“Don’t … apologize,” she says, still catching her breath.
He flashes her a heartfelt smile before leaning down to give her one last long, slow kiss.
They tease one another as they clean up, Inej joking about the grueling search on which they must embark to find his roughly-tossed underwear while he threatens her with another attack on the places she’s ticklish. Eventually they’re comfortable and dry, curled beneath the sheets in soft clothes made for sleep.
Her eyes grow heavy as their conversation veers drowsily from place to place, Kaz filling her in on what she’s missed in Ketterdam as she recounts her victories at sea. There’s a satiated air of relaxation between them now, tension drained and left behind. A yawn pulls at his features just before he finally gives in, succumbing to sleep sometime in the gray hours before dawn.
Inej stays up to watch as his face grows smooth. He looks younger like this, more vulnerable. She tries to memorize every line—the slope of his nose, the way his lips fall open around deep, even breathing—fighting the exhaustion that drags at her eyelids.
Eventually she drifts off, too. Her last thought before letting go is of the morning to come, of waking to Kaz’s shuffling stretches, his eyes blinking open and his face regaining sharpness. She’s eager for it, eager for light to spill from the curtains as night transitions into day, eager for what she and Kaz might accomplish tomorrow. She wishes—with an almost surprising conviction—that she didn’t need to sleep at all, that she could simply skip past it and find herself rested and ready for another day at his side.
After all, reality is much better than her dreams.