REAPER ─ kaz brekker

fourteen; the reaper never forgets

Her knives. He was carrying her goddamn knives. 

Van Eck stood just behind her, at her left shoulder. His clothes were changed. How long had it been? He met her eyes in the mirror. "My, my, they did quite the number on you, didn't they?" 

"Bite me," she scoffed. The nasty cut she'd dealt to his cheek was cleaned and bandaged up now. He must not have a Healer dosed up on parem. "You're not even worth my fucking breath." 

Van Eck nodded to the guard that had carried in her knives. He began neatly setting them out on the vanity next to her, lining them up from the smallest to the largest. She spotted the knife she'd stabbed Oomen with. Even in the dim light, she could still see the O-R carved into the hilt. Her eyes darted to the scar at her neck, now just one among many. 

Onyx Reinsing had died that night in the Zelver District. Onyx Vissier would survive this night. 

Onyx Vissier would survive Jan Van Eck. 

"Now, Miss Vissier, our earlier chat was barely beginning. I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you didn't know as much as I believed," Van Eck began, folding his hands neatly in front of himself. "But your reputation  precedes you, as do your talents, and admittedly, I'd be quite stupid to let such a trove of information go to waste like that." 

Onyx raised her uninjured eyebrow. "Are we getting anywhere near the point?" 

"You know where Brekker is keeping Kuwei Yul-Bo," he stated. "You're going to give me a location, or you may suddenly find it rather difficult to utilize your bow." 

Her eyes shot down to her hands, the straps.  They were going to break her fingers, then maybe her arms for good measure. Her stomach lurched. Bile rose up in the back of her throat. She cursed herself for the helpless, panicked feeling that coiled in the pit of her stomach. What was she, without her bow? Without her knives? If her arms and hands were useless,  she couldn't even function as a Squaller. 

Dispensable. 

The word came flooding back in a rush of bloodied memories, in frantic words as she pleaded with Nina, a sea of Fjerdan troops on the quay before them. That seemed like such a long time ago now. It felt as though an eternity had passed since then. Was Nina okay now? Was Matthias still tending to her as faithfully as he was when she'd last seen them together? Of course he was. For all the shit she gave him, Matthias Helvar loved Nina Zenik more than anyone or anything else in this Saints forsaken world. 

"I don't run with the Dregs," she spoke, curling her fingers against the table, silently trying to quell the racing of her heart. "I don't know where their safe houses are.  I don't have a reason to know."  

"Oh, but of course you do. Don't play dumb with me, Miss Vissier." He nodded to the guard again.  "The curved one." 

Her eyes shot to her knives again. They would start with bleeding her dry, then weaken her, then break her fingers and hands and arms. Van Eck wanted to draw this out as long as possible, break her down as quickly and efficiently as he thought possible, then pry for more information and physically break her when she didn't give in. It was such a convoluted game he was playing. 

The pain was searing and immediate, but nothing she hadn't felt before. He started at the bend in her elbow, at the inside of her arm, and sliced downward, opening up a vertical cut that stopped only when the inside portion of her arm was no longer accessible. Onyx gritted her teeth. Blood poured from the wound. It spilled over the table and dripped from the edge, creating a small puddle between her feet. 

She took in a few deep, ragged breaths and met Van Eck's eyes in the mirror. "Do you really think you can do worse to me than I've already experienced?" Her ribs ached when she exhaled a humorless chuckle. " You know fuck all."