He is lucky that he has been accommodated at all this time. Not because her mama would not do so for a guest, but because Inej had insisted in her letters prior to this visit that she need not. His luck also extends so far to include Mama’s fond curiosity with the Barrel boss sitting in his mercher black and gloves in their wagon for supper.

“Chili oil?” Baba asks pleasantly, offering the little greasy tin to Kaz with a knowing twinkle in his eye. He winks at Inej conspiratorially over his own meal and she can’t help but grin back at him for his wickedness.

“Ramesh!” Mama scolds with a light slap to his wrist so that he puts the tin back down. “Do not listen to him, Mr. Brekker. Save your Kerch tastebuds.”

At this, Inej finally laughs. “Mama, you are just as mean,” she says in Suli.

“I am only testing your sweetheart, chorī,” Dheeti argues with a sniff. If Kaz is annoyed that the language barrier keeps him out of these secrets, Inej does not look at him to check. Her pinking cheeks are too embarrassing to have the upperhand on him this once. He’d find a way to win whatever game he’d make of this match of shame and she is determined to see him lose. Dheeti scoops an extra spoonful of rice onto Kaz’s plate and asks in heavily accented Kerch, “Good?”

“ 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴. ” — a fitting name for an individual intrepid enough to breach the illusory walls protecting this city from some of the world’s most depraved, for elusive details. The Proprietor of the amusingly titled “ crow club ” had a reputation — not too misleading, from what The Doctor observed from his aesthetic and social composure ; 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵. 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥. 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦.

He appeared practical, fully competent. Crane trusted that if dirty hands knew the information he sought at the asylum was hidden under a guise, he would have acquired it with ease. As luck would have it, this lapse in foresight provided The Good Doctor with opportunity.

“ I’m sure there are many offering your ‘ discreet ’ operation generous sums in exchange for your services. ” The Gambling Hall, in it’s intriguingly crepuscular atmosphere, pulsed with the essence of Gotham’s underground. It’s tenebrous corners suited the mingling of shifty elite and enthused their 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘴. Crane knew the dreg leader seated before him, illuminated by the scant fixtures hanging from the house’s dark ceiling, sat at the epicenter of something greater and far more tasteful than what the iceberg had accomplished.

“ I won’t insult you by doing the same. ” a brief contemptuous - smile pushed beyond Crane’s habitually inscrutable exterior. He placed a beaten manila folder on the table, “ I can offer you information — not just from within arkham. ” His pale eyes dropped to the worn folder and the name printed on its tab in spidery characters : 𝘫 𝘰 𝘦 𝘬 𝘦 𝘳 𝘳 . “ unless I’m mistaken, this file is of interest. ”

With the fog as thick as it is, none could perceive even the prow of the Wraith through its dense draping let alone the two lone figures standing atop the cathead. At Berth 22 in the dark of an early morning, or a very late night depending upon how you kept to the bells striking the hour, it is a ghost ship which drydocks in Fifth Harbor. Its crew had been dismissed long before and its captain too but that she returns now with a guest is no unusual thing. At least not to the gulls, their only witnesses to their dalliances. Whoever minds the port has been paid a handsome sum to no longer mind it for a time.

Inej has a broadsword leveraged at Dirtyhands’ throat. This close she can see the strain of his tendons and the thick bob of his skin above the stiffstarched collar protecting the artery when he swallows. The movement nicks the blade into his flesh and draws a beading strand of blood and all he does is smile for it. Why should he smile? The gulls might think she’s won this dance, but they can’t see the shucking knife that Kaz has pressed to her navel. Inej can feel it when she next inhales.

“Why, Mr. Brekker,” Inej murmurs and she is delighted when he swallows heavily again and that smile fizzles around the edges. Their thighs are pressed flush together. Panic has blown Kaz’s eyes blacker than ever or maybe that’s what he wants her to think. You can never be sure what he wants you to think. “What would the city think of you if they knew you were so romantic? I kill you, you kill me. We go down together.” Now she is the one smiling. “You’ve tried this trick before.”

Lately her perch on the windowsill no longer marks a distance between them. Eventually one or the other swallows that space and keeps close until close is too much for either, for both. Sometimes it’s too close for both. He swallows too much water and she flies out of her body, leaving a vacancy behind her eyes, and ghosts fill the room where their bodies go abandoned. But sometimes it’s not close enough. Kaz has a new color to his eyes, not at all like coffee or tea or things in which you could drown. When she looks at him, his eyes are the Ravkan night sky, unpolluted, dark but where a light shines distantly. It burns.

Kaz closes the distance this time. She is faced away from him and knows his approach, but when he brushes his hand to her hip, it doesn’t matter that his touch is mist. Come here, little lynx, coos a monster in her ear, his greedy hands pinning her at the waist and holding her down from behind.

Inej feels the moment she stiffens, so attuned is she to her body that she knows when she leaves it behind. She floats away, featherlight and floating and farfarfaraway. Kaz is somewhere with the doll she’s left behind wearing her face. Inej is lights out.

“You still have a spider.” Bitterness is warm and wet as blood. When she licks her lips, she swears she tastes it there. Bitterness, blood, mixed together, and she wonders if that is all he ever tastes too. It must be, for Kaz Brekker, because the shape of him is all jagged edges. Chipped pieces. Meant to harm and constructed to wound. She wants to ask. She wants to slam the door in his face. “Lucky you. No need to search for a replacement then.”

He is unreadable. Must we always pretend? But he saved me. But he left me alone. “I can still get over the gates. Nina said I’ll only need one more redressing, but I’m ready. When do you want to go?”

He is dry grass and a vast desert just waiting for a spark. Water would do him no good once the embers catch. She remembers once when she was young how a brushfire had once scorched so far and wide that families were displaced. Her mother and father had taken in a gaggle of children while their parents set out to replace what was lost. It was always like that during childhood. The comings and goings of strangers made for a larger ring of family even as a result of tragedy. Kaz Brekker is capable of just as much destruction, if not far more and far worse.

“Reasonable? You knew that he was lying the entire time.” The he in question is left in waste on the steps of the Crow Club. Kaz wipes a handkerchief over the handle of his cane where blood had smattered upon impact after impact after impact. There is a red drop in the hollow of his cheek and Inej cannot look away from it. That she still finds him beautiful cast in his own transgressions brings her deep shame, Saints forgive her, but she has already accepted this sin of hers. It is as inevitable as his fire.

Inej pokes the toe of her boot against an arm made still. Stiffness will not set in for some time, he is still so freshly down, but she can picture him blue in the face with death. Kaz had been provoking him, but it wasn’t until the man took a step toward his Wraith that he snapped. She feels less bad for her admiration in light of that. “And your disposal plan? I know you have one.”

❝ i've got a proposition for you, though it is less of a proposition and more of an assistance on your part. ❞ says the Saint ( ! ), clean hands brushing against the red - stained smock she wears. another key is inserted to a lock, the door pushed open; an entryway, a staircase leading upwards, is revealed. the lightbulb above performs a comforting show of flickering, as if to tell the vampiristic woman Welcome Home. ❝ in the upper world, of course. someone rich, someone nasty. our kind of prey. ❞