and when i break (it's in a million pieces) - a kanej fic

Part 13

Present day:

Inej rowed to Black Veil a little after dawn.

Her sleek little rowboat was named The Ferolind II and she couldn't deny the fact that she'd chosen the boat for just that reason alone. She liked the light burn in her arms as she pulled against the Ketterdam current. It centered her.

After a while, with the sun slowly rising in the sky, Inej docked on the island. She jumped off the bow and pulled the boat up onto the sandy shore. Dragging it behind the same large rock that she did every time she came, Inej made her way towards the white willow tree.

If possible, the tree was even larger these days. Its hulking branches made a whispering sound as they brushed against each other in the light breeze. Inej had discovered, even in those first few nights after the others had rescued her from Van Eck, that the island had a song to it. It had a voice. She could still pick it out, even now -- the way the water crashed against the rocks, the tumble of wind through the tombs, the whisper of the willow tree. It was an odd juxtaposition of life and death, a bubble of primordial beauty scattered with tombstones and mausoleums.

Inej skirted around those as she walked.

They'd buried him in the only part of the island that even moderately escaped the white marble masses, and Inej had never been more grateful for this single, secluded place.

Grass had grown over the fresh dirt, and vines snaked along the ground in a twisting carpet, yet somehow they'd left the plot untouched. Perhaps that was Kaz's way of cursing the island from the beyond.

Smiling a little to herself, Inej sat down beside the gravestone.

It was nearly as perfect as the day they'd buried him, a little more weathered after the years, and there was a small patch of moss growing up on one side. Unsheathing Sankta Petyr, her first blade -- the one that Kaz had given her --from her forearm, Inej began to lightly scrape at the moss. She worked until it was all gone, and the stone was once more untouched.

Slipping her knife back into her sleeve, Inej traced the engraving of his name on the stone with the tip of her finger.

Kaz Brekker.

She placed the bouquet of red geraniums she'd brought at the base. She brought them every time.

Raising her hand to the breast pocket of her cloak, she felt the familiar outline of the letter. Drawing it out, she gazed at it for a long time. The black wax was still perfectly molded into the crow and cup even as the paper had grown tired from years of the letter's overuse.

She'd opened the letter on the third night, the night after her ring had come off. Since then, she'd read and reread the letter over a hundred times.

She unfolded it, and sitting beside his gravestone, the first breath of morning air brushing her cheeks, Inej once more began to read.

Inej,

If you're reading this, then I'm sorry. We both know why you would've received this letter, and if you don't, you do now.

I wasn't always good to you, Inej. I was rarely good to you, especially in those first few years we worked together. I was growing to love you then, and I didn't know what to do with myself.

Love had no place in our world. It couldn't.

But the first time I met you, I hadn't heard you, hadn't seen you. You'd appeared beside me and offered a deal, and like any proper thief, I changed the terms.

If I'm honest, which I rarely am, I thought you might run. I had already learned the price of blind trust and knew you had too.

But you were always so good.