❛ ʻʻ .. it's strange how fate
keeps bringing us together .. 〞
in which a girl who can see a person's fate from the touch of a hand falls for the one boy fearing human touch.
━━ KAZ BREKKER
frenemies to lovers, slowburn
shadow & bone - crooked ki...
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xxxiv. death and deceit – Randvi
THEY emerged from the darkness, soaked, bruised and gasping in the bright light of the moon.
The remnants of the baleen Randvi had popped clustered in sticky globs in the corner of her mouth. Her guards uniform had been soaked through to her skin, frayed in parts leaving stinging scratches lining her body. She shivered, gasping breathlessly and coughing water as she dragged herself to the shallows of the river bank.
Am I dead?
In the distance she could hear the chimes of the Elderclock, around her the crew emerging onto the banks of the river. If she was dead, the afterlife looked eerily similar to Fjerda. Randvi would have liked to believe the afterlife wasn't nearly this cold.
Nina wrapped an arm around her shoulder, a giddy smile playing on her lips. Randvi wondered if Nina was aware her clothes had been torn to shreds, that she was standing barefoot and practically naked. She was happy to be alive, and for once Randvi could share that happiness.
"Where's Kaz?" She gasped out, trying to ring some of the water out of her hair.
Casting a glance over the river, she saw a much younger looking Yul-Bayur than she'd expected, and Matthias. He was dragging a limp body into the shallows of the river bank.
Kaz.
Her heart stopped, and Randvi fell to knees besides his body.
Matthias flipped him onto his back. Immediately Randvi gave his shoulder a firm shake.
"Kaz, Kaz you bastard open your eyes." She begged, desperately feeling for a pulse, praying she could hear him breathing, even if were nothing more than a faint rasp. "Nina he's not breathing!"
She'd barely finished her words when Matthias started pressing down on his chest with more force than needed.
"I. Should. Let. You. Die." He muttered in time with his compressions.
"Stop! You're making it worse."
Seconds later Nina crawled over to kneel besides Kaz's limp body. "She's right, let me help before you crack his sternum." She pressed her fingers to his throat. "His pulse is fading. Get his shirt open."
Randvi helped Matthias tear the drüskelle uniform away. Nina placed one hand on his pale chest, the other pinching his nose as she tried to breath air into his lungs. He was drowning, his skin pale and cold to the touch. He lay unmoving, unbothered by the Fjerdan cold, as though he were corpse.
He looked like her mother had the night she'd died, motionless against the ice, eyes black, as though his soul had already left this world.
He was dying, and there was nothing Randvi could do to save him.
