Echo • Six Of Crows - Kaz Brekker

26

His body was numb and aching from the temperature of the water, the darkness surrounding them impenetrable. There was nothing but the dull thunder of water and a sense of tumbling.

Survive. Survive. Survive. It was all he could think.

But then, another thought, a desperate one from deep down; don't let go of her.

He could scarcely feel anything but a prickling pain seeping into his very bones, let alone his gloved fingers clutching Mavka's wrist.

They were both pulled and thrown and tossed and he could feel the water fighting to tear them apart; this was not the first time he had clutched desperately onto icy, slippery skin for survival, not the first time he had considered letting the waves take him under so that he could be with his brother - but a voice he had not heard in a while, not Jordie's, but Mavka's - had him holding on tighter.

He had the strange thought that he wanted to live to hear her voice again.

Survive. Hold on.

Perhaps the two of their souls were in far too deep under the murky blackness for any Saint watching over them to take notice.

Because he felt the jolt and then his back hit something hard, and within a fraction of a second - his fingers slipped away from her wrist.

And despite his frantic clawing to try and grab onto her, or something, or anything, the water was too fast and too unforgiving and she was too far gone already.

It was only then did the panic really set in. Funny how the thought of losing hold of Mavka had been infinitely more terrifying than the idea of his lungs filling with water.

Colder than he had ever been, he thought of her hand on his cheek.

His mind had gone jagged at the unknown sensation, mind a riot of confusion. It had been terror and disgust and - in all of that clamour, something louder and more profound had struck him - desire. A wish that lingered still, the hope that she would touch him again.

The hope that he would get to hear her voice again. Soft, honeyed, as rare as streams of sunshine through the Slat windows, for what kind of light could reach them that far down in the Barrel?

The gloves were his one concession to weakness; but when he looked at her, he saw something similar in the way she struggled to speak. Perhaps it was foolish to compare the two, perhaps not, but was it not foolish to crave that which you could not have? Was it greed?

To want to reach out for her hand, to fall asleep with the rare memory of her voice, lilting him into empty dreams rather than tormented nightmares?

Was it greed, now, that kept him going? The want for more?

Or was it selfishness? To live, to come out of this alive so that he could get the chance? The chance to hear her voice again, to see her live.

Bright flashes of memory sparked his mind.

The first time he'd seen Mavka at the Crow Club, a small, skittish thing with flickering eyes - so much like a rabbit in a foxes den - so strangely quiet, alluring, a question to be answered and a puzzle to be cracked. Her hair had been a wavy, short mess around her jaw, recently cut by her own hand, old bruises along the back of her fingers that reached out to shake his gloved one, to accept a partnership, to become one of them in return for her loyalty and skill.

Her constant alertness to danger, skittishness around raised voices and quick movements. The way she flinched when Inej suddenly appeared too close or Jesper stood too tall over her, and the way she appeared as a cornered animal but refused to be anything but.

The haunting crying that had come from the door of her room the first few weeks after joining. Dreams tainted with memories that leaked down her cheeks. Half silenced cries that he ignored, or tried to, for it was strange hearing any semblance of a noise from her.

The first time he had heard her speak. Kaz recalled her perched on the sill of his attic window, sometime late into that first year after he'd brought her into the Dregs.

She had an awful habit of feeding the crows that congregated on the roof.

"You shouldn't make friends with crows." He had told her.

For a brief moment she looked at him, the sun glittering a halo around her messy hair, lining her eyelashes fluttering against her cheek as she closed her eyes and rested her head back.

"Why?"

It had been the barest of whispers, something hushed and soft, nearly carried away by the gentle breeze drifting in from the harbour that scattered curled strands against her cheek, her jaw.

He'd looked up from his desk to answer before realising that she had spoken. Whatever he was about to say vanished on his tongue.

The sun was out for once. Her dark eyes were glittering, a rare smile on her face as she grazed the back of her finger against the neck of the crow sitting beside her leg, peering it's beedy, curious eyes up at her as though it understood something she was trying to convey in her silence.

For a moment, Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world.

Maybe he had gone silent in the hopes she would repeat herself, so he could test his luck, hear her speak again.

When she didn't, he gathered his thoughts, though the only thing he could think to say was:

"They don't have any manners."

She had laughed, then, and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

"You..." Mavka had met his gaze then, mildly surprised to find him already staring, and shook her head. "...don't have any manners either." She whispered, having to pull her gaze away as an uncomfortable heat crawled up her neck and face.

She had this sad ability to shrink in on herself after speaking, as though she was doing something wrong.

The sound had filled him with warmth then, and he clung to that feeling as the baleen dissolved in his mouth to let the water in.

He squinted against the rush of water, hoping to see some semblance of light, or her figure beneath the waves, but she was long gone and the pressure in his chest grew insurmountable.

He needed to tell her... what?

That she was clever and brilliant and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn't pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he began to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near.

Her presence was the gentle comfort of a shadow watching over him. And even when she did her utmost best to be unseen, unheard, he always found that somehow he knew where to look, was always listening.

Now he did not have his shadow with him, too far below the depths of the unforgiving water for light to shine - and as much as he tried to hold on - as much as he may have been a monster and a crooked thing and a demjin, he was also Kaz Brekker.

And Kaz Brekker was only human when it came down to it; unable to stop, he opened his mouth and the water rushed in.