The ride to Novokribirsk was silent in all the wrong places. Town through town that they had passed through, the sights became hauntingly familiar. Children out in the streets, bathed in dirt, begging for scraps, for a place to stay for a night. Bones, of animals, of saints, sold to those who wanted to believe in something bigger than themselves. There was no lack. Saints, she reminded herself, don't exist. They're nothing but a fable.
Ravka needed a saint. They needed hope, something to grasp onto like they did the lies they were being sold. The turmoil from Shu Han and Fjerda had beaten them down. Although, it could not compare to the politics that were tearing them from the inside out. Shivani could feel it, this was only the start.
Beside her, Inej dipped her chin in silent prayers as if that might bring food to their plates or if the Fold might magically disappear after all of these grueling years. If it did, she better still be getting paid. This job had cost her too much to leave empty-handed.
"I didn't hire you simply to get us across the Fold." It was Kaz's voice that brashly interrupted Shivani's thoughts. She forced herself to tear her eyes away from the depravities that had occupied her mind for the last couple of hours and to the self-proclaimed Conductor who supposedly could get them across the Fold.
"You're with us because you smuggle Grisha out of the Little Palace and that's our target."
"Sun Summoner," Inej interposed.
"Alleged."
"For their sake, I hope we're just ignorant, Kaz," Shivani muttered it beneath her breath so only he could hear, sparing a fleeting glance back to the corruption and gauntness on the other side of the glass. She only earned a singular nonverbal in response. Something between a hum and a grunt of simultaneous agreement and disinterest.
"They wouldn't keep a fraud in the most secure location in all of Ravka," Inej continued, she was certain, but certainty doesn't make a savior.
Kaz, in his stubbornness, ignored the girl, once more interrogating their living ticket of passage. "You said you have a contact who can get us inside. A Heartrender?"
He exchanged a skeptical glance with the girl at his shoulder. She had shared her suspicions early in the trip and had made him aware of her clear distrust. A member of the second-army deserting their loyalties to Ravka, Kaz? And a Heartrender nonetheless, the Darkling's most-favored order. Shivani told him it would be a set-up, for who she was unsure, but she was secure in the belief that they were walking into something bigger than what they originally had in mind. He might've argued, but unfortunately, she was yet to lead him astray.
"How do I know we can trust her?"
"Nina grew up there," The Conductor began as if was a factor that gave his claims any truth.
Shivani, could not contain the scoff that had risen harshly from her throat. She was quick to shift in her seat, her hands, still faintly painted with stale bruises, gripped onto the edge of its cushion, and her head tipped in a contemptuous manner.
"All of the tested Grisha grew up in the Little Palace, so if that was supposed to make us believe otherwise-" she gestured impudently around herself to Kaz on her right, Inej beside her next to the window, and Jesper across from her who was still contemplating the scene in front of him, "you've failed."
"Nina," the Conductor pressed once more, "is a radical. She thinks Grisha should get to choose if they serve the Crown. She despises involuntary service more than she does Fjerdans."
Shivani hummed almost mockingly, sinking back into her seat, her shoulders remaining tense, a single tell of her unease. Crossing her hands gently in her lap, despite their begging itch to be placed on the comforting edge of her familiar blades, she turned back to him one more time.
"We'll see."
***
Arken, as Inej had insisted was the name of their less-than par company, had led them to an inn on the edge of Novokribirsk. Except, when arriving at the designated room their contact was nowhere to be found and the room was dismantled.
Kaz was watching her again. Watching the facade the Shivani claimed to be herself. She had worn it ever since the night of their departure and that fleeting moment they had shared together on the docks.
He knew what she wanted, to prove that she was holding herself together just fine. But he could see through the cracks in her porcelain despite her nearly flawless performance. It was a shame he knew her that well.
Not because he didn't want to, it was because he did. He wanted to know all of her, feel the brush of her fingertips against his skin, bathe in her poison. It was a shame because he didn't know if he would ever be able to withstand the disease that haunted his mind and his body, separating him from everything worth feeling, worth knowing.
They were worlds apart, their bridge having been burnt long before they met but something in him ached, longing for him to reach further, for her. He wasn't sure if he could.
Shivani had maneuvered herself to the other side of the room, brushing her shoulder against Jesper's. She snatched whatever food he had reached for, gracefully popping into her own mouth.
"Hey!" the Zemini boy whined. "What was that for?"
She was already back to sorting through the Heartrender's belongings when she shrugged and flashed him a smirk that should have looked at home on her lips.
"No eating on the job." Shivani teased.
"But... but, you?"
"Seniority," she flashed a grin over her shoulder, the first time in days that it had reached her eyes.
Kaz could still hear Jesper muttering in the corner the sharpshooter leaned against, grumbling that it wasn't fair that she was older. He would have snapped at him for slacking off if he knew it wouldn't wipe off the small grin that had settled graciously on Shivani's face.
Only moments later, Shivani had appeared at his side, a new crease placed between her brows. His head dipped down to hers as she discreetly placed her discovery in the palm on his gloved hand. The engraved metal wolf that balanced between his fingers flashed against the sun that shone through the open windows.
"Drüskelle," she murmured as he flipped the object with the effortless skill of the twitch of his fingers like the thieving lock pick he was.
"She's probably being held captive, already on her way to Fjerda by now," Shivani told him.
"They had a clear line of attack," Inej spoke from behind the pair, she had been listening.
"Take a look. Make sure there aren't any more surprises," Kaz told Inej before she had covered her face, disappearing out the window and vanishing from view.
"We've lost our way into the Little Palace." Arken sunk onto the bed discouraged for a reason that was unbeknownst to the remaining Crows.
Kaz looked down to find the same pair of eyes that he had met on that rooftop in West Stave those few years before, a new determination set ablaze.
"Not yet. I refuse to give up that easy." She set off, her back to him as she exited the room, sparing a single purposeful nod towards Kaz.
She came here for something, he just didn't know what, but what he did know was the reputation she held as Ketterdam's Blood Fox, his Blood Fox. Kaz was certain, for whatever it was, demise or success, achievement or loss, she wasn't done yet. He should have stopped her when he had the chance, then he wouldn't have had to give her up.
The Crows and Arken had regrouped outside of the inn, Inej dropping down from above. Shivani held back a chuckle as Jesper's large frame flinched into hers at the Suli girl's sudden entrance.
"This seems like a reasonable juncture to abandon this whole Sun Summoner plan," Arken suggested.
"Abandon?" Kaz disliked the idea as much as the girl who had now approached him, standing at his side defiantly.
"We're in this now, and I know what a million kruge means to me. What does it mean to you?"
"Freedom." It had been Inej that spoke up first.
Was that what Shivani would say? It's what she wanted, not from the Menegarie, of course, her agreement with Heleen was still an issue, but freedom from the life she lived before. From her sleepless nights and haunted dreams filled with gaunt faces of those already six feet under. She wanted a chance to start anew, where no one recognized her face and she wouldn't spend her days looking in the mirror seeing the stains branded on the naive girl that shared her reflection.
"Fun. Like, at least for a few months." Shivani shook her head in slight disbelief, she knew Jesper needed that money.
"Retirement," Arken answered.
They had all turned to her. Shivani was fighting herself and Kaz knew it, they all did. Her heavy gaze pleaded with him silently, begging for him to not go searching for a truth he didn't want. A physical pain struck him, imitating the oppressive rush of an infinite sense of dread. The absence of her answer brought an onslaught of fatal uncertainties that he urged voicelessly to abandon his mind. Still, he waited, longing for something she could not give. It was almost humorous, it should have been the other way around.
In a futile attempt to rid the constriction he felt within him, Kaz cleared his throat and continued on the best he felt that he could. By ignoring everything in him that told him to do otherwise.
"Right, so we press on," he turned to Arken, "You get us across the Fold and I'll figure out the rest on the other side."
"Fine. To cross, I'll need twenty pounds of alabaster coal, a peck of Majaloun jurda. Not the kind from Kerch. It's too weak. And...," he glanced to Jesper on his left, "a goat."
"Now, we meet in the dead of night. There's a wreckage of a skiff northwest, on the edge of town. So, who gets what?"
"Inej," Kaz said, "jurda. Shiv and I will get the goat. And Jesper... just the coal, no detours."
***
The town was filled with incessant and indistinct chatter as Kaz and Shivani made their best attempts to weave through the crowds. Neither of them had spoken since they had departed from the inn and even the bustling that had consumed them could not fill in the silence that had overtaken them.
Kaz wanted to tell her something, anything. Just to know that the distraught look on her face was purely his imagination. He longed to unravel that part of her that she hadn't meant to show, he wanted to understand.
The irrepressible thoughts flooded in as she looked at everything but him. There were so many things that he wanted to tell her, that he should have told her. That he was here, that he would stay here by her side despite how hard she would try to shove him away, but the words wouldn't come and something else entirely consumed him instead.
The motion hadn't been smooth, the nerves of anticipation had dominated over his movements. He was aware of the unwell feeling that was spreading through his body as he allowed his arm to brush against hers for the first time, his senses consuming each and every rational thought.
There was no mistaking the shock that took over Shivani's body at that moment. She had flinched against the possibility that maybe this wasn't intentional, that she had overstepped her boundaries, by accidentally wandering too close, lost in her thoughts. Yet, his touch lingered there, against her.
A flush of heat had risen to each of their cheeks and suddenly the silence was not so bad. Every instinct Kaz had was screaming at him to pull away, but the revolting press of another person was something he could fight. He yearned that one day it would not be a battle between his mind and his body and that there could be a chance at not needing the material wall between them.
His arm remained steady against hers as they navigated the crowd together. The nausea was a dull reminder of Jordie's frigidly numb and senseless body that had once kept him afloat, but he wanted this. Kaz didn't know why blood in his veins felt a magnetic pull to hers and he didn't understand when it had become this important to know she was there, but amongst the hesitation of what their future would hold, he needed to know that at that moment she wasn't going anywhere.
Shivani, however, was restraining herself. Her fingers itched for his, to know the ridges of skin before it was too late, to understand why her body fit well next to his. Despite her own needs, she would do no such thing because Kaz deserved to walk this path at whatever speed he needed to in order to reach the end and she would not push him when she knew he was already fighting to withstand the little that he had initiated.
Against her best interests, Shivani allowed her mind to wander. It drifted to places that were only far-off dreams and unrealistic possibilities. For so long she had only allowed herself to believe that she had one choice. That leaving Ketterdam, leaving Kerch, was her best shot at a better life. Shivani was certain that she owed that to herself, for surviving what she did. Staying had never meant much of anything, not until now. Now there was a tether, one she would have to cut off. Being tied to Kaz was not any scenario that she had envisioned and suddenly, she wondered if he was worth staying for.
A/N:
I published this much later than I intended but between my classes and the extra eleven college credits I'm attempting to earn this semester, I am drowning in work. This was a very important chapter for me to write as we begin to watch as Kaz and Shivani are discovering something other than their own struggles. I just love watching these two grow in themselves and I'm so happy to share it with you all.
However, I have a proposition for you all. I love writing fics but have always wanted to write one properly where I finish it all completely before publishing. I would definitely take some time but I am willing to commit. I'm curious as to what you all would want to read. I was thinking anywhere from along the lines of a very dark-themed Draco Malfoy fic or Fred/George Weasley to another Grishaverse fic based around Nikolai Lantsov. Please, please feel free to comment if you have any ideas, I love to hear from you all. Thank you again and don't forget to vote!