Cross the Seas

|Chapter 1| - Inej

The deck of the Wraith wasn't nearly as suffocating as its cockpit had been. Or maybe that was just the part of her wanting to be free since Ketterdam. As she straightened, pulling her hands back from the rail, she looked up to the pink sky and its beautiful hues in the sunset now. Even exhaling in this ship had been a problem once, but she had summoned the nerve to run it now. Just as she had when she had decided she even wanted this ship. Like she had when she was climbing.

Specht still managed most of the errands but the ship still hadn't coped up like it was supposed to. Not like she imagined it to, several months ago when she had decided to muster the courage to sail and hunt slavers. When she was climbing that hellion of a shaft.

Climb Inej, climb, she still couldn't shake off the fear and the part of her that longed for nothing more than her quarters in the Slat.

But she had no flicker of a doubt that she wanted to do it, and no discomfort or failure would obstruct her will to stop another fourteen year-old girl from becoming a Suli lynx and suffering at the hands of men who should one day be rotting in the deepest hells she could hope. In a crooked and twisted way, it was her revenge on this cruel world.

Shaking these thoughts off like she had done a million times before, she headed to Specht's quarters.

"That's it. We are leaving the Kerch borders now," she announced in her calm voice, but a casual one, there being none more than her and Specht on this ship, after all. She had tried to recruit more members, more supporters of this cause, but it turned out people were as blind as the pigeons of Ketterdam – no one would identify a girl barely of age to drink as a potent reformer to end slave trade. So she had to manage with only the little faith she had placed in her.

And Kaz. And Nina. And Jesper, and Wylan, She thought, but most importantly, the trust her parents had placed in her.

She had told them two months ago, about it all — about Ketterdam, the darkness lurking within its governance, trade and its alleys. And how she was one of the many shadows the Stadwatch and the Saints would damn for the atrocious things she had said, and done. She had told them about the Ice Court, about her kidnapping and her escape, and how their very crazy and unintelligible team, if that's what she could call it, had managed to disrupt Kerch and almost the entire world into a chaos.

But she hadn't told them about her heart, with scars and unyielding strength, reminiscing of a Barrel boy with a crow cane and leather gloves and fancy merch suits who knew about her favorite flowers.

Shrug it off, it was a mistake, or so she had told herself.

The most surprising thing they had done was not her Mama clamping her mouth to sob or her Papa's eyes of horrid disbelief as she narrated about her times. It was their forgiveness. She knew she didn't deserve it. But she still missed those patient and nurturing hands that embraced her and the seemingly unforgettable words.

We forgive you, Inej, because we know the person behind the knives and hoods. It isn't a spy and a killer. It is a Ghafa and our beloved girl who went through it all and still has the honesty to tell us, she had stamped them on her heart ever since they were spoken.

Those were peaceful days, lasting for about a month after she had landed them onto the Ravkan port and spent long nights staring at her family caravan, as if she couldn't have enough of it. She had drowned in that nostalgia and she would have, if not for remembering her words again and again in her dreams.

Climb Inej, climb.

So she had. She had climbed up her fears and started patrolling the Kerch borders first, undoubtedly sure to catch the supplies of brothels like the Menagerie.