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“Jesper, just because you’re a father now doesn’t mean you have to parent me.” Inej snarked as she, Kaz, Jesper, and Wylan walked back towards the Van Eck mansion from the docks.
Jesper rolled his eyes. “You’ve been out at sea for months, Wraith. Good meals are hard to find aboard a ship.”
“I don’t know,” Wylan bumped his shoulder against Inej’s, a conspiratory smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Seems like a dad to me.”
“Oh, like you’re any better merchling.” Jesper cuffed Wylan on the back of the head, but they were all laughing. Even Kaz smirked. People still ducked back into the shadows when they saw him coming down the Geldstrat, eyeing his cane as though he were about to beat them over the head with it right there in the street.
The Wraith had docked in berth twenty-two a little over an hour ago, and for the first time since they adopted their son Max, a two-year-old Shu boy, Jesper and Wylan had come with Kaz to meet her at the docks. Inej loved being at sea but being back with her friends relieved an ache in her soul that even capturing all the slavers in the world never would.
As they walked, Inej told them about her most recent voyage and the Grisha girl that stopped them on the docks in Ravka. She spoke quickly in Sulli and would only talk to Inej.
Are you the one they call the Wraith? You free slaves?
Her brothers, also Grisha, had been captured by Druskelle and were on a ship bound for Fjerda a few days ahead of them. With speed Inej hadn’t anticipated, the girl had stolen Inej’s wedding ring and threatened to toss it overboard if she didn’t help her. She was a rotten child with a terrible attitude and a penchant for stealing, but she was determined. And when the girl boarded a ship home with her brothers a week later, she had smiled a smile that Inej knew was reserved for the ones she loved. It reminded her so much of Kaz that her heart ached, and she didn’t think she had ever missed him more than she did then.
Eventually, she had managed to get her ring back from the girl - Ada, her name was - and as they pulled away from the harbor in Fjerda, she pulled at it, the chain around her neck threatening to snap. She hardly ever wore it on her finger unless she was in Ketterdam, it was easier to lose it in a fight that way, and while it wasn’t much, it was one of her most cherished possessions.
He had given it to her years ago, in a spurt of bravery she’d never expected from him.
“Kaz,” she whispered breathlessly. “You don’t have to do this.”
He smiled, albeit shakily, and Inej couldn’t tell if it was because he was nervous or if he was about to disappear. “I know, but I want to. I want you, with everything that I am.” He slid the ring onto her finger, gloves off, and gently kissed the back of her hand. “I love you.”
“And I you. Always.”
The ceremony had been small; only Jesper, Wylan, and Nina had been there as witnesses. It was perfect in every way possible.
Her crew had congratulated her when she stepped back aboard the Wraith, making jokes about how they’d never thought anybody would be able to tie the Wraith down. But they were wrong. Throughout her life, she had been trapped in many ways, bound on a slaver ship, imprisoned by Tante Heleen, forever kept in Ketterdam by her contract with the Dregs. But she wasn’t trapped with Kaz. Their marriage didn’t mean that she belonged to him or him to her. It was a promise. That no matter where their paths may take them, they would always find their way back to each other.
They were nearly back to the Van Eck mansion when Inej stopped. She could hear something in the alley to her left, and she crept towards it slowly, ignoring the others as they called after her. This was the nicer part of Ketterdam, but the edges of the alleyways were still covered in garbage, and Inej wrinkled her nose as she picked her way over the piles towards the sound. She could hear the others behind her, weapons drawn, ready for a fight if it came.
It didn’t.
In fact, when Inej discovered the source of the sound, she froze, something she had never done, even when she first started with the Dregs. Lying on the ground, wrapped in a threadbare blanket, was a baby. It couldn’t have been more than a few months old, and its features were distinctly Suli, bronze skin, and dark hair like Inej’s. It didn’t look injured, so gingerly, she bent and picked it up from the ground. Instantly, the infant’s cries stopped.
“Inej, what in Ghezen-” Jesper’s eyes widened as he, Kaz, and Wylan took in the sight. “Oh.”
Kaz was the first to come towards her, but he didn’t reach for the baby. Instead, he unclasped the note pinned to the blanket, his lips moving slightly as he read. When he finished, he passed it to Inej, his expression stormy.
Who could ever love it?
Inej couldn’t speak, so she passed it to Jesper, who bowed his head to Wylan’s and read quietly.
“Do they have a name?” Wylan asked.
Inej deftly untucked the child’s blanket and, after a moment, tucked it back in place. “She and no.”
“Is there anybody to-”
“Yeah, because I’m sure whoever left her here is coming right back,” Jesper snapped and then looked guilty.
“I’m just saying,” Wylan continued. “It doesn’t make sense. Parents don’t just leave their-” The look Kaz leveled him with could have cut down an army. Sometimes it was difficult for Inej to remember that despite everything they had been through together, Wylan had grown up in the better part of Ketterdam. He’d had tutors and safety and shelter that the rest of them hadn’t. In Ketterdam, when you had nothing, you either joined a gang, worked in a pleasure house, or lived on the streets. In any situation, food wasn’t something you so easily came by, and for many, it was easier to leave their children than it was to watch them starve.
“Yes, they can, and they do,” Kaz said.
“The question is, what are we going to do?” Jesper asked, eager to change the subject. “We can’t just leave her here.”
“We won’t.” Kaz’s gaze drifted from the little girl to the darkening sky. “We’ll take her back to the mansion with us and report it to the stadwatch in the morning.” He turned, his gloved hand on Inej’s elbow to steady her as she stepped back over the piles of garbage, and though she didn’t need it, she was grateful. Her insides felt rattled as if they had been put in a jar and shaken. “We should go. It’s nearly dark.”
By the time they made it back to the mansion, the sun had set over the rooftops, and all of the Barrel’s nightcrawlers were creeping out of the buildings, eager to start their nights of deviance. Usually, Kaz would be among them, keen to join Inej at the Crow Club with their friends and catch up after she had been at sea for so long, but as the door to their bedroom closed, and it was just her, Kaz, and the baby, he breathed a sigh of relief. They had decided the baby would sleep in their room for the night, though he wasn’t exactly sure when.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. It’s just been a long day.” The baby had been bathed and fed, and as Inej sat on the edge of their bed, she pressed her lips to her wet curls. “I just don’t understand how people can be blessed with a gift like having a child and then just throw it away.”
“Is that something you want?”
Her eyes snapped up to his, surprised. “I’ve thought about it, but I never thought it was for us. We don’t exactly live a white-picket-fence life.” She laughed, but it sounded incredibly sad. “Besides, I can’t-”
Her hands are trembling when she sets the baby down, and she reaches for her thigh where Sankta Anastasia used to rest, almost subconsciously. She hasn’t told him everything about her time at the Menagerie. Being at sea, stopping people like the woman who enslaved her as a child helped, but some things are too horrible to speak out loud.
The longer she remains silent, the more dread pools in his stomach.
“When I was at the Menagerie,” her voice is shaking, but she continues. “There were contracts, paperwork that I had to sign for Heleen before I could officially work for her. By Kerch law, any procedure she performed on us had to be consensual, but I couldn’t read the language at the time, and she wouldn’t provide a translator, so I didn’t understand what I was signing. Until I met Nina,” She wipes at her eyes. “She told me that most pleasure houses sterilize their girls, so they don’t lose business in case they- In case they get pregnant by a client. It’s easier to make sure they can’t get pregnant at all.” Her hand drifts over her torso, ghosting the jagged scar Kaz knows sits between her hips. He’s seen it before, on the rare occasion when their armor was down long enough to show that much of themselves, but he’s never asked. He never wanted to think about what it might mean, never wanted to believe that Tante Heleen had taken another thing from her.
“Inej,” he whispers. She won’t look at him. He can feel the shame and guilt and sadness that will undoubtedly be there when she turns around, and he clenches his hands into fists. He wants to go out and hit something. Better yet, he wants to find Tante Heleen and kill her himself. But its not his debt to claim. “If you can’t- if we can’t have children, that doesn’t change anything for me.”
I still love you
I still want to spend the rest of my life with you
Her eyes are sparkling. “It should matter, Kaz. You worked so hard to change, and I- I’m the one who can’t give you the life you deserve.”
He quickly stands from his chair, desperate to be across the room with her, to reassure her, but he slows his pace when her eyes widen, just a fraction.
“I didn’t change for that,” he says. “I did it for you.”
Don’t you know Inej? Don’t you know after all these years that I would give anything for you?
He’s close enough to touch her, but he doesn’t. He stands a few feet away, his hand outstretched, and waits until he sees her nod before lacing their fingers together.
“You have already given me everything, my love,” he whispers, twisting the gold band on her finger, identical to the one hidden under his gloves, on and off. It was dinged and nicked after years of following her out to sea, but it shined as brightly as the day Kaz had given it to her. “More than I ever thought was possible. I don’t need all of that to be happy.” Gently, he kissed the back of her hand, a feather-light brush of lips against skin, and was relieved to see that she was smiling. “Besides, there are other ways for us to have a child. Look at Jesper and Wylan.”
Inej stepped closer to him, stretching up to press a brief kiss to his mouth. “I love you.”
“And I you. Always.”
He leaned down to kiss her again but jumped away when the baby gave a screech. Inej laughed, picking her up and bouncing her. Kaz was mildly annoyed about the ruined moment, but it quickly dissipated as he watched his wife. The look on her face was one he had only seen when she’d been out at sea; like she could have stayed there forever.
Kaz had never pictured that life for himself. Any hope he had for a family and a house with a dog and someone to grow old beside had died with Kaz Rietveld, lost on the Reaper’s Barge beneath piles of corpses and darkness and regret.
That was until Inej. The first person who had ever been able to surprise the infamous Kaz Brekker. Not just with her skills as the Wraith, but with her resilience and her unwillingness to give up on her faith, in her Saints and in him, despite everything she had sacrificed for both.
I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker, or I will not have you at all
After Jordie was gone, Kaz swore he would never love anyone like that again, that he would never allow himself to have so much to lose. But he loved Inej. He had always loved her, and if this was what the rest of their lives looked like, he didn’t think he would mind staying like this either