✨ DARK PARADISE ✨ Kaz✖️OC.

In the moment we're lost and found

Matthias jogged along beside Kuwei's lifeless body. Two of the stadwatch had hefted the boy onto a stretcher, and they were running as the plague sirens wailed. The medik struggled to keep up.

When they reached the dock, the medik took Kuwei's wrist in his hand. "This is pointless. The bullet have pierced his heart."

To everyone in the church, it appeared that Kuwei Yul-Bo had been shot in the heart and died immediately.

"Here, sir!" called a man in a fishing boat. "We can take you to the hospital."

The medik looked wary. "Has anyone aboard shown signs of infection?"

The fisherman gestured to the very pregnant woman lying at the back of the boat. "No, sir. It's just the two of us, but my wife's about to have a baby. We could use someone like you on board in case we don't make it to the hospital in time."

The medik looked over his shoulder at the panicked people spilling from the doors of the main cathedral. "All right, let's go. Stay here," he said to Matthias.

Matthias said. "I go where he goes."

"There isn't room for all of you," said the fisherman.

The stadwatch officers exchanged furious whispers, then one of them said, "We'll put him on the boat, but then we have to report to our command station. It's protocol."

Kaz had said the officers wouldn't want to be anywhere near a hospital during a plague outbreak, and he was right. They hefted the stretcher onto the boat and were gone.

The pregnant woman let out a terrible moan and Matthias was pleased to see the medik skitter back against the boat's railing. Hopefully the coward would keep well away from Nina and her fake belly.

It was a struggle for Matthias' to keep his eyes from Nina. Her face was aglow, her eyes as blue as the ocean. This was what came from using her power. Unnatural, said the old, determined voice. Beautiful, said the voice that had spoken the night he'd helped Jesper and Kuwei escape Black Veil. It was newer, less certain, but louder than ever before.

Grisha power is a gift. Aeolian had said. The gift chooses you, you do not choose the gift. And somehow Matthias could see it now like never before. He needed to thank the Shu girl, she'd always been patient with Matthias, when everyone else—including Nina, got annoyed with his dogmatic believes.

Matthias nodded to the fisherman and Rotty with his disguise on winked back at him. He poled the boat rapidly down the canal.

As they approached Zentsbridge, there was a huge bottleboat parked beneath it and the hulls scraped as Rotty tried to pass. The bottle man and Rotty broke into a heated argument, and Nina let loose another wail, long and loud enough that Matthias wondered if she was trying to compete with the plague siren.

Matthias gave Nina the barest warning glance. They could fake a pregnancy. They couldn't fake an actual birth. At least he didn't think they could. He wouldn't put anything past Kaz at this point. He makes the impossible, possible.

Using his bulk body he tried his best to block the medik's view of the bottleboat as Kuwei's body was swapped for the corpse they'd stolen from the morgue the night before. As soon as Sturmhond had gotten Genya out of the church, she'd stopped beneath the bridge to tailor the corpse's face and raise its body temperature.