of snakes & crows || kaz brekker

─ 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒗𝒆

┏━━━✦❘༻༺❘✦━━━┓

[12|| chapter twelve]
anything is not everything
but everything is anything

┗━━━✦❘༻༺❘✦━━━┛

━━━━ "YOU DIDN'T LET me save him. I could've saved him."

Kaz looked at Ead as they stalked through the streets back to the Crow Club. "Why would you save him?"

"He was innocent." Ead's words were clipped. "He was an innocent man, Kaz."

"Is anyone innocent?" He retaliated.

"Don't." Ead snapped.

"Don't what?"

"Do that," Ead stopped and so did he. "Turn this into some bullshit 'everyone has evil in them' rant. He was a boy who was forced into a military skiff on someone's orders. He didn't deserve what he got. Tortured, then given false hope, only to be killed in front of a bunch of strangers."

Kaz narrowed his eyes. "Do you hear yourself?"

"You wouldn't understand, Kaz. You have no heart. You care for nothing but money." Ead ran a hand across her face, the red ink of her tattoo drawing Kaz's gaze. "I could have saved him."

         "Yeah?" Kaz took a step closer, which surprised Ead quiet. "And what would you have done then? Gotten yourself killed, that's what. Dreesen's men had guns. You think they would've let you harm him for a prisoner they care nothing for? Don't be stupid. We would've lost the job and your skills."

         Ead felt a hot flush of anger at his words. Her skills. Of course, everything was always about what she could do as a piece in his game on not as a human with a brain and a heart.

Instead of saying anything, she stormed away from him, mixing in with the crowds of tourists leading to the Barrel. Saints, he was such a pain in the ass. More than a pain in the ass. He was the human embodiment of idiotic. Heartless and idiotic and absolutely, ridiculously dense. Selfish and careless. Kaz Brekker was all of those things, but he was mainly a dumb boy trapped inside of a man's body.

Ead didn't believe there was anyone worth saving in the Barrel. She would never think twice about killing someone on Ketterdam soil who deserved it. But Alexei had been young, too frail to be a fighter. A boy who'd been forced to board that skiff and risk his life for Ravka. A soldier just like she used to be.

This was exactly why Eadaz was so against this job. It was already messing with the stitches of her newly knit life. Kaz probably thought her weak and stupid for wanting to save him, but that part of Ead— the one she thought died when she abandoned her country to be selfish— was so deeply carved into the foundation of her soul... it was instinct to want to protect someone from the First Army. She knew they didn't have the advantage she did. She'd fought battles where their casualties almost doubled that of Grisha. She was raised on the notion that she was better than them in the Little Palace, but she never believed it.

         Ead went to the Slat first to pack a bag. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew that it wasn't East Ravka and it wasn't with Kaz. Screw the agreement she had with him. Fuck her alliance with the Dregs. She could travel Kerch, then find passage to Novyi Zem. Them maybe she could have a vacation at the Wandering Isle. Far away from everything she knew.

         A new start sounded dreadful. Impossibly testy and cumbersome, but she was ready to do it if it meant getting as far away from him as humanly possible. Saints, at this point she was ready to swim across the True Sea just to get away from him.