#it all started with the soc duology and it's been lovely to be able to track my progress as i improve and keep drawing these characters

[fayrism]

inej in the sun is so near and dear to me

[ID: an illustration of Inej sitting in the window of the Slat, hair blowing in the wind and sun shining on her, lighting her hair gold. Her posture is relaxed and her facial expression is joyful and peaceful. In the background can be seen two ships, one flying the Kerch flag of three flying fishes, another backlit by the morning sun. Six crows can be seen at various points in the illustration, one perched at Inej's feet and the rest flying towards her. wave designs are located behind Inej and on the bottom left. End ID]

im very happy with this, i think the fairytale illustration vibes really came through

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Hey!! What do you think about the recurring joke in the SOC duology, of Kaz asking a question, everyone giving answers, and usually a quip at the end? Do you think there's significance in it, or is it just a fun way to show the crows' dynamic?

Sorry if this is a stupid question.

Rule one: there are no stupid questions.

Although these conversations might seem like a relatively surface level aspect of the novels, I think that their significance is in the very way they teach us about the Crows dynamic and tell us so much about the characters. The duology’s biggest success comes from the intense vibrancy of its characters, and it’s these types of conversations that not only help us understand who they are and how they interact with each other, but also that make us laugh and therefore care about the characters all the more. Take the parallel from soc to ck about Matthias’ character development - in six of crows Kaz asks the group what the easiest way to steal a man’s wallet is, and the replies consist of “gun to the back” from Jesper, “knife to the throat” from Inej, and “poison in his cup” from Nina, before Matthias cuts them off and says “you’re all horrible” then in crooked kingdom Kaz asks where the group think he spent the money Pekka gave them for the sale of the Crow Club and 5th harbour, getting “guns” and “ships” amongst his answers and after a pause Nina says to Matthias “this is the part where you tell us how awful we are” but he simply replies “they all seem like practical choices”. This tells us so much about the characters and how they think!!! In the first instance, we don’t yet know the characters very well, so it’s important that we begin to associate the guns with Jesper and the knives with Inej, as well as understand that Nina works with subtle but violent tactics. We learn from this brief interaction that they’ve reached a point in their lives where murder or threatening murder is the easiest way out in every option, and we’ve also arguably learned that they are eager to please Kaz because they are all instantly searching for the answer that will impress him even though he’s sure to just continue on and explain his own thought anyway. We also have no response from Wylan, if I remember correctly at least, which shows the time it takes for him to mesh with the group and his heightened anxiety at the start of the first book. In the Crooked Kingdom interaction, we have a clear transition in Inej’s character from the association of her and knives to the association of her and her dream, a ship and crew of her own, and I’m pretty sure Wylan does reply in that one so it shows his personal progression and how he’s been able to mesh with the group and because more comfortable in his own skin. Matthias’ character development between the two is more obvious and openly commented on in the conversation, but what’s also interesting is that Kaz is there both times with a genuine answer and explanation. Even though he never seems the last to enjoy a joke or quip, when he’s discussing his plans Kaz almost entirely loses the ability to think beyond the job; everything is entirely black and white and categorised by whether it’s relevant, which means it’s what he’s saying, or inessential, meaning what the others are saying.

And what’s possible even more interesting is that you can see this in almost every one of these interactions Leigh Bardugo loves to include (and we love her for, of course). For example, in one of my favourites of these little formulas Kaz asks the group if they know what Van Eck’s biggest problem is. The responses are “no honour” (Matthias), “rotten parenting skills” (Nina), and “receding hairline” (Jesper). This never fails to make me smile; Matthias’ is so quintessentially himself, everything he values and such good summary of why he would be so willing to support anyone, even these thugs and thieves, against Van Eck, Nina’s showcases her dark humour and protective nature, her hatred for Van Eck is sourced far more in his treatment of Wylan and Inej than anything else, and Jesper’s is funny, witty, a genuine ongoing joke (such as Nina thinking that Wylan may need to invest in a hood tonic when she meets Van Eck) and just emphasises his sharp-wit as well as showing growth beyond the desperate need to impress Kaz that he harboured for so long before he properly got to know Wylan. But Kaz’s reply is simply returning to the job, stating that Van Eck’s problem is that he has “too much to lose” and that he revealed exactly how to destroy him by bragging about Alys and their unborn child.

I hope this made sense, it can be hard to tell whether I’ve actually translated my thoughts into the right words haha. Thanks so much for your question!!

[stromuprisahat]

What changes would you give to the Six of Crow duology, to fit it into a continuity where Darklina reunited and ruled Ravka? Honestly, aside from Nina's backstory, and a few other little tweaks, I don't think the duology would have huge changes. After all, Darklina can't change society that fast. I also think Nikolai Zoya and Genya could have appeared just as well. Simply Nikolai wouldn't be the king, but that wouldn't stop him from working with/for Darklina. And honestly, I've always found it a bit stupid that the king of Ravka goes on the road himself with two grisha when he has his own country to take care of.

Well yes, Nina wouldn't be on the road, but there's very little Grisha after the war, so we can get her some speeded-up training outside of Little Palace. Not abroad, maybe some station nearer the borders, where she'd be able to practice her linguistic skills talking to refugees, or interrogating captives.

Suli was best for missions in the northwest. Shu meant you’d be stuck translating diplomatic papers.

Shadow and Bone- Chapter 9

As you said, even a couple of powerful Grisha won't make their enemies behave in a day. Raids are to be expected. She could've been captured on Ravkan soil.

When drüskelle almost killed Alina on her way from Kribirsk to Os Alta, Matthias could be in a group infiltrating Ravka near Ulensk for example. It's both near Fjerda and the (remains of the) Fold, but then again, unexpected shenanigans would have to ensure to get them to Ketterdam.

West Ravka would be an easier choice then. They're likely to be unhappy about re-connection with their poorer, differently-thinking sibling. Show had openly admitted Westerners are selling Grisha to their enemies. Nina could be among them, except this time she'd still be a hormonal teenager with unfinished education.

KoS MCs would be more complicated.

Genya is still a traitor, and Aleksander's hardly the forgiving type. A veeeery big AU I've been thinking about for a while would be faking her change of heart to double-cross Alina. Picture a politically-shrewd spy, bleaching her own face for years to help overthrow her rapist... only for the Coup to go to hell.

A new variable appears, putting a greater value on her own peace and quiet than necassary change, and force failed to make her co-oparate. Loyalists boarded ship captained by a suspicious character, likely with agenda of his own... so the spy comes up with a sneaky strategy as the plan B, should it be necessary. When it becomes obvious Alina will slip through their fingers once again, an order comes to "stop her".

... and once everything's ready to take the throne, the Darkling with his forces secures the capital and plants his spy once again. Alina has a knack for escaping after all and who would have suspected mutilated girl, cowering in shadows?

That's one way to give Genya the recognition she deserves. Enter Evgenia Safina, the spymaster and/or ruthless, cunning delegate she should have become.

Zoya doesn't have much to offer, but quite a beef with the Darkling. He'll be always the one, who "killed" her aunt. And she's still just a replacable Squaller. If I were the Darkling, I'd use her as deterrent example. Public trial and fitting punishment.

Nikolai... well, the wisest course of action would be killing him off too. He's a possible competitor for the Throne, and he IS ambitious by himself, not merely in love with Ravka like we're told by the narrative.

Even discredited, there would be those preferring a bastard with a crown to the Saint-enslaving Satan.

It's true Sturmhond was useful to Ravka once, and could be so again, but how would we ensure that's what he'll remain?

And honestly, I've always found it a bit stupid that the king of Ravka goes on the road himself with two grisha when he has his own country to take care of.

That's to show he's a man of people! The boring kingly stuff's being done by itself!

Back to the start- SoC plot could remain almost the same, although it would offer a new storyline about how is Ravka trying to deal with the threat of parem. Or a mention here and there. Or nothing at all, if we're sticking with Crows-only POV and all their info would be Kaz's deductions and hearsay.

The Ravkan delegates in CK would simply be lead by Genya (See: above), so Wylan would get his face back, and the rest was mostly about collecting points for "well-known character appearance" anyway.

[jazzythursday]

5 + 6 <3

5. Any character you didn't expect to like as much as you did? Similarly, is there any character that didn't end up liking as much as you thought you would?

Matthias was one I didn’t expect to like that much just because I watched the show first and while I wouldn’t say he’s not likable in the show (because Callahan is wonderful and I love him as Matthias) we just don’t get much time with him where we get to see his personality outside of life or death danger danger Will Robinson style situations, not to mention a SINGLE ensemble Crows scene with him in it. Going into the duology, I didn’t expect him to be so caring or observant or funny, but he IS and I love it. It’s a real shame we may never get to see the spin off, because from what I’ve heard the writers had a LOT planned to show off those sides of him more.

6. Are there any aspects of a character or plot that you wished had been delved into more in the duology?

This is hard because the duology feels so FULL to me? There are lots of things I’d love to see explored more, but at the same time I don’t feel like anything in particular is missing from the books as they are.

I’d love to know more about Jesper’s relationship to Zemani and Kealish culture actually. We know he doesn’t speak Kealish and grew up exclusively in Novyi Zem so I’m assuming he doesn’t have much connection to his father’s side, but there must be some things he’s picked up, and then what about his mother’s family? His upbringing in Novyi Zem? What was it like adjusting to living in Ketterdam compared to his life there? These are things I wonder about all the time lol but at least there’s always fanfic to fill the gaps.

Also curious about Wylan and Jesper’s life once they move into the mansion and start running the Van Eck business (but honestly who isn’t curious abt that?). I’d love to know more about Wylan’s feelings towards his inheritance and whether or not he actually wants it or just feels obligated. I also wish we’d been able to get more time with them as an established couple in the books, because they’re just at the start of their relationship when ck ends. We get all this lead up to them getting together only to leave them right after, and maybe for some that’s enough of a pay off but personally I think plots revolving around characters in an established relationship are the BEST. Like, SHOW ME THE REST. Give me the intimate details, the decent into domesticity, the learning each other inside and out.

Not to keep bringing up the show (I can’t help it) but that’s actually one of my favorite things about show wesper. We get to see how they function once already IN a relationship AND as part of the larger plot, which is really all I could ever ask for (besides the rest of the story arc in the spin off where we get to see established relationship wesper go through the duology plots while navigating their relationship and how it affects them. Netflix watch out I am crawling up your walls I am watching you ominously while you sleep I am plotting revenge I am SO MAD)

Soc ask meme

[light-yaers]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💖

oooo how fun! thank you for this mack! <3

going back, from 5 to 1...

5) brekker's ghost

Four years since their infamous Ice Court robbery; four years since Kaz had waved goodbye to Inej--

The Wraith is finally back in Ketterdam, but she didn't come just to feed the crows.

this fic means an awful lot to me! it was after i read the six of crows for the first time, and that duology is now my favourite of all time. i have a soc tattoo because of how much they effected me lmao. writing this fic was such a cathartic thing. it's my take on the kaz and inej of the future. i'm very proud of it.

4) her father's revolver series

You're thrown into the world of the Shelby's at the age of 20, with nothing but your paints and your will.

What ensues is the next few years of your life knowing that Tommy Shelby lives within you forevermore.

i still remember so vividly when i decided to say fuck it and start writing this. before this i'd never delved into x reader. i knew the stigma around it, but i also just didn't care. this was such an amazing thing for me to write. it still makes me incredibly happy and proud to this day, and is the longest fic/series i've ever written at just over 90k words (that is now going to be heavily beaten).

3) adjournment

Life wasn't easy growing up with a chess Grandmaster as a father; it's even more difficult when you find out you could be better than him at his own game.

Benny helps you realise that potential.

the fastest fic i've ever written. this was the first time i kept to any sort of schedule. i posted a chapter a day for two weeks, until the fic was finished. i wrote this 45k word long fic in 16 days. i cried while writing sad scenes. and to this day it's my most popular fic online! (almost at 200k reads on wattpad... wtf) this fic means a lot to me.

2) no saints

Working on Nevarro hadn't offered you much in the way of human contact.

That all changes when an unlikely deal is struck between you and the Mandalorian.

the fic that started me on this entire journey of expanding to other places on the internet. without it, i wouldn't be on this hellsite with all of you! i'm so grateful that it's brought me here. i know it's far from finished-- it's sort of only just begun really-- but i know i'll travel back to it soon. this fic was also the first time i ever wrote smut. and look where that's got me. amazing.

1) sweet escape

Being a Resistance newbie was always going to have its challenges, but you’d never expected them in the form of Poe Dameron; Black Leader, heart-throb of the fucking Resistance; being your bunkmate from day one.

You realise he isn’t someone you want to indulge in early on, but the more you treat him coldly, the more he latches onto you.

my longest singular fic to date. the fic that made me truly think i'm a decent writer. the fic that makes me the most proud of myself. sweet escape means more to me than i think anyone will understand. without it, heidi and lynx wouldn't exist as oc's in my mind. without it, i wouldn't have been able to grow this fanbase here. it's my baby. end of. and i know how it ends, which is even more crazy. there are only 4 chapters left. i just need to write them. wait for me.

special mentions go to right where you left me, the hating game and fools in the darkness! more of my babies that i'm proud of <3

[triptuckers]

Apple Trees - Jesper Fahey (Our Future 3/3)

Request: yes! “ Aight bestie, you know the drill, we got married, can we give him his twins now? 👀” Pairing:  Jesper Fahey x reader Summary:  after marrying jesper, you now live outside the city with your twins Warnings: slight spoilers for people who haven’t read the soc duology (and I guess people who have only watched the show) Word count:  1.2K A/N: after “our future” and “twirl for me”, here’s another part!! thank you for requesting this, and enjoy reading! 

Though you’d spent the majority of your life in Ketterdam, part of you is glad to settle down. It’s nice to be able to wake up and start the morning in peace. Some days you missed the chaotic buzzing energy of the Slat, and the city itself, which is why you still visit Ketterdam a lot.

After all, you’ve still got a lot of friends in the city. And both you and Jesper weren’t able to stay away from the city that had been your home for so long. But when you found out you were pregnant a few years back, you decided to move away.

Ketterdam simply wasn’t the kind of city you’d raise your kids in. So you bought a small farmhouse just outside the city, to start your family. It’s a good life.

Like promised, Jesper planted all of your favourite flowers in the garden, along with some apple trees. Outside the city, the houses aren’t packed together, so you could do whatever you want in the area that surrounded your home. 

There was no rush in the mornings, no dangerous jobs and no late nights. In the life you lived outside of Ketterdam, every morning was peaceful, quiet and filled with love.

You’re laying next to Jesper, gladly cuddling into his side as he softly strokes your bare arm. The two of you are enjoying some alone time before the day starts. You’re softly talking to each other, when your peaceful morning is rudely interrupted. 

The door to your room opens, and you hear running footsteps. A few moments later, two figures launch themselves on top of you, knocking the air out of your lungs. 

Apparently, your twin girls Ava and Mae had decided you could use an early start of the day.

The room fills with laughter as Jesper tickles them while smiling brightly. They laugh and try to push him away but he’s way too strong for them. The girls are quick to hide behind you.

‘Good morning to you two.’ you say over your shoulder. 

Two pairs of happy eyes look at you, messy curls falling around their face. You’re still grateful they inherited Jesper’s curls. They hide behind your shoulders when Jesper moves to tickle them again. 

Ava and Mae squeal and push themselves off the bed, dodging Jesper. After winking at them, Jesper moves to lay next to you instead, wrapping his arms around you.

Mae sticks out her tongue and makes a sound, pointing at you and Jesper. If it would be anyone else, you’d be slightly annoyed. But it’s your girl, so you don’t mind.

‘You’re the one who interrupted morning cuddles, your breakfast is going to have to wait.’ you say.

‘But I’m hungry!’ says Mae.

You turn to look at Jesper. ‘Evening cuddles, then?’ you say.

Jesper kisses your cheek. ‘Evening cuddles it is.’ he says. ‘And maybe a bit more.’ he winks at you.

You laugh and playfully slap his arm. Just as you want to respond to him, you hear Ava.

‘What’s a bit more?’ she asks. 

Your eyes widen and you push Jesper off of you as he starts to laugh at her words.

‘Who wants breakfast?’ you quickly say. 

Luckily, the thought of breakfast is enough to distract them. They are quick to race out of your room and down to the kitchen. You turn to glare at Jesper, who is still laughing.

‘I told you, don’t make comments like that when the girls are around. They tend to repeat you a lot.’ you say.

‘Sorry, love.’ says Jesper. ‘Force of habit.’

You roll your eyes but smile as well while you hold your hand out for him to take. He takes it, and the two of you head to the kitchen as well.

Ava and Mae are already sitting at the table, waiting for you to make their breakfast. You’re softly humming to yourself as you’re making breakfast, while Jesper tells the girls stories, filling the kitchen with their giggles. 

The four of you sit down and have breakfast. You’re listening to them talking, admiring them. Some days you still couldn’t believe how you got so lucky. To marry Jesper. To have two beautiful girls who are the perfect mixture of you and Jesper. Sometimes it seemed simply too good to be true.

After breakfast, Jesper gets up, announcing he’s going to harvest the apples that grow in your backyard. Without even asking him, the girls happily follow him out the door to help with the harvesting.

Thought it would probably be a lot faster if Jesper did it by himself, you know very well that the girls have him wrapped around their little fingers. He’d do anything for them.

For a while, you sit in the kitchen and enjoy your morning coffee. You listen to the laughter and voices outside, and after a while you decide to join them. You finish your coffee and head out the back door.

Jesper has lifted Mae, so she’s sitting on his shoulders. She’s gathering the apples and dropping them in a basket. You smile as you look at the two of them.

You then notice little Ava dragging her basket back to you, which is almost overflowing with apples. There’s no way she could have gathered the apples from the tall trees on her own, and Jesper had been helping Mae.

‘Ava.’ you say as she approaches you. ‘How did you get all of those by yourself?’

She looks up at you and smiles proudly. She then motions to the air.

‘The wind helped.’ she says.

You frown and share a quick look with Jesper, who puts Mae down. 

‘What do you mean the wind helped?’ you say to Ava.

Jesper walks up to you and looks at Ava’s basket. He raises his eyebrows in question at you, but you look at Ava, waiting for her to explain.

‘Like this.’ Ava simply says. She looks at the tree Jesper and Mae had been working on, and raises her little hand to it.

The tree starts to shake in the wind. Softly at first, then harder. The apples fall to the ground one by one, and Ava and Mae move to put them in the baskets. You frown as you look at the tree.

Not because Ava got all the apples, but because the tree she was focused on, was the only tree that moved in the wind.

You’re going over it again in your head, when you hear Jesper softly gasp beside you. You turn to look at him and find him looking at Ava in awe.

‘Zowa.’ he says so softly, only you can hear it.

Zowa. Blessed. Ava was Grisha. It looks like the genes had passed down from Jesper to one of your girls. You desperately needed to plan a trip to Ketterdam and visit Nina. You had a lot to talk about.

A/N: If you want to request something, make sure to read my house rules Here’s the list of characters I write for. Everything that I have written can be found on my masterlist. Please don’t repost my work, as I spend much time and effort on it!! Thank you for reading! Much love, Marit

[trassellynn]

Rule of Wolves - Spoilers

My angry rant about a thing 

As I promised, here my very angry and sad rant about Nina's ending.

I would beg you not to make flames here or to send me hate messages, if you disagree and liked it, good for you, I'm not in the mental conditions to discuss, I just need to vent, because I loved Nina's character and I feel so bad for her. Now... I have no idea how can Bardugo consider that ending “happy” or even barely acceptable. First of all, I find it very rushed, shallow and unrealistic, it was obvious to me she had little time to finish the book and wanted to solve huge plots as soon as possible. Before talking about Nina, I'll spend two words about H (I don't want to use a deadname, but I don't know how to call him/them, if anyone knows please tell me). Now, if it wasn't clear enough, hating a ship doesn't mean hating the characters. I have nothing against H and I actually feel very sorry for him/they too. He/They (does anyone know the correct pronouns to use?) made a self-acceptance journey through the duology, but what that for, if now he/they cannot even be himself/themselves? He/They has/have been hiding his/their powers for years... now he/they must hide his/their whole identity? Hidden in the sunlight, pretending to be someone else? (I personally find this an unfair and insensitive treatment to the only transgender character of the series, a character that is also indigenous and now has the appearance of a white man, but being white and cisgender I don't know if I'm right to talk about this, I don’t want to risk to say something wrong or offensive). And about Nina... she's a character I shared a very special connection with. I never talk about it because it involves a very personal topic (non eating) that might make other people uncomfortable.  It broke my heart discovering what Bardugo did her. Like H, she's now trapped. My Nina, who was so free and confident, who loved Ravka, is now stuck forever in another person's identity, in another body, in a land that's not her home and she doesn't even like. I had no idea I could hate something more than CK ending, and yet, here we are. Thinking about Matthias' last words, “Be free”, I feel even worse (and don't let me start to angrily rant about Matthias' sh*tty ending, especially considering Brum is still alive). Royal court is a dangerous, horrible environment, especially in a land like Fjerda. It's not realistic Nina and H will, someday, be able to tell the truth without any consequences. I think the “happiness” at the end of the book is just a temporary illusion and that the whole situation will soon burden heavily on their psychology. Especially considering 1. both of them are very free spirits, I don't think they would enjoy life in a royal court; 2. I highly doubt they have the skills to rule a country. Basically, they're in a horrible mess and I can't understand how the author of SoC is the same person who started to make these lazy, rushed and unrealistic plot choices, without thinking to all the problematic consequences of them. (And can I also add I’m starting to see a pattern in Bardugo’s endings? 1. A couple with a (unnecessary) horrible ending (Nina/Matthias in CK, Genya/David in RoW). 2. A couple with a fake happy ending that hides many problems inside (Jesper/Wylan and Nina/H; we even have a sh*tty father who is still alive even though he doesn’t deserve it). 3. A couple (the author’s favourite, what a surprise) with a good, or at least decent, ending (Kaz/Inej and Zoya/Nikolai; we also have Kaz and Zoya on the land and Inej and Nikolai on the sea, lol)).  If I think Bardugo now wants to write SoC 3 I feel even worse. I never wanted it because Matthias won't be in, now I'm literally praying she'll never write it. I don't want other characters to be ruined or killed and tbh please, STOP WITH PLOTS AROUND THE DARKLING! He had his ending in the Trilogy, why is Bardugo constantly bringing him back? (Also, the Darkling yes but Matthias no, okay). I also have (not very good) theories about SoC 3, maybe I’ll write them in another post.  So, here my rant. As I said, I just needed to vent, not to argue or discuss. If you liked the ending, good for you, I can't tell the same for me and I know I will never change my mind about it. P.S.: Can I say I'm a bit tired of the constant use of tailoring ability as a plot device?

P.P.S.: There's actually someone who Bardugo hates more than Matthias and Helnik shippers, and that someone is Genya./Half joke. Half.

[booknerdateen]

The Grishaverse Series

A mini dramaticness before we begin

Also note: there are spoilers so beware

It all started with Six of Crows. I read the book either last year or a few years ago. The news came when Shadow and Bone was being adapted into a show. So, I decided to go down the rabbit hole and read the trilogy before I watched the show so I can get a more depth of the world and all that. I finished the books with eight days to spare. A few days after I finished the season, I went to Barnes to get the other books. I already had Six Of Crows, but y’all can never have too many copies. Soon, I reentered the world of the Crows. Finally at last, I was able to read Crooked Kingdom (one of my best friends been dying for me to read CK). After the catastrophe of CK’s ending, I delved into King of Scars. I didn’t really know much about Nikolai’s duology besides it being about him, Zoya, and Nina. With the annoying ending of Scars, I started Rule of Wolves the next day. I started this journey from Alina and the Darkling to the Crows and their hiesting to seeing Nina’s happiness and Nikolai and Zoya dealing with their demons-figuratively and literally. So, here we are reaching and end of an era for me. I am glad I got to read an amazing series of this world.

The Grisha Trilogy

Aright yall!

I went into the trilogy not knowing much, besides the teaser trailer knowledge

I went in trying to not be biased about the Darkling cuz Ben Barnes

Did it affect me, yes yes it did

Although I don’t like Darkling

Some of y’all hate me for this but I ship Darklina

Yes yes, they toxic, but man you can’t convince me Darkling and Alina had that amazing chemistry in the first book

Not counting when Alina found out bout his true intentions and all that

I didn’t understand why we hated Mal until half way through Siege and Storm

I’m not Malina, but I can understand why we ship them

My amazing love of my life, Nikolai/Stormhund!

Him revealing himself as the prince, omg

Nikolai planting a kiss on Alina and her hitting him afterwards, love it

Tamar and Toyla are amazing!

I actually didn’t realize they were Shu until King Of Scars

Do I see why they betrayed Alina and used her for the Apparat (who needs to freakin die!), yes

Should they’ve, no but I see why though

Harshaw is me half the time

I love him teaming up with a random cat and called him Oncat pure wholesome

Alina going back to the Palace to start the Second Army and understandably putting a whole in the cafeteria ceiling, yes bruh

It’s not the cafeteria but I can’t remember what it’s called so hush

I thought she was gonna murder someone with that cut

Zoya declaring her alliance to Alina

Alina being sus about Zoya….I get that

Genya’s iconic “I am not ruined, I am ruination” I freakin love that!

Nikolai putting his father in his place and potentially exposing the king to r*pe

I freakin lived for that!

I did suspect that what happened between him and Genya, but it was more implied until R&R

Deaths=man, we lost some amazing peeps

Founding out Mal is the third amplifier, blew my mind

Mal dying=was not having that

Mal resurected=didn’t think it had worked, but it did

Darkling being stabbed and killed by his own knife by Alina…..wow

I didn’t like that

Sorry not sorry

I thought it felt a little rushed when that happened

I’m still confused on how he died

Overall: 9/10 I loved it

Six of Crows Duology

I don’t remember what happened in this book when I first read it

I longing to live to be part of the Crows

I love their friendship

Reminds me of my friends

“Compromise. I’m sorry does the trick and uses fewer bullets”

I’ll probably do a post about my favorite lines of the books

Oh yes, so I read SoC after watching S&B

Reading Nina and Matthias’ parts with the shipwreck and all that and it being the same as their scenes in the show

I loved that

Well vice versa it should be….show being line for line like the book with them

“Please, my darling Inej, treasure of my heart, won’t you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat”

I actually texted my mom that but reworded it as a way of asking her to get Taco Bell breakfast after her PT

It worked

Wesper, Kanej, Helnik=yesssss

My cinnamon roll Wylan

Jesper, Inej, and Wylan hijacking a fjierdan tank=high speed chase but with teenagers

The 180* that Van Eck and Kaz kept doing in the end, omg

Van Eck being a total evilness, man I wanted to smack him

Inej almost giving up on escaping

Kaz pushed Wylan against the wall about to kill him

Jesper’s father being afraid of Little Jesper being killed cuz Jes being grisha

Speaking of that, I did not see that coming

Kaz and Jesper getting into a fight and Wylan and Kuweii being the only ones concerned

Jesper Llewellyn Fahey

Jesper kissing Kuweii thinking he was Wylan

Wylan being broken-hearted

Them making up ahhhhh

The auction….that’s it that’s the only thing

Matthias being shot

Him going to Nina to say he loves her

Chapter 40= I tossed the book and dramatic screamed (not actually screaming)

Omg, Wylan finding out his mother aint dead but in a rehab place bruhhhhh

Kaz reuniting Inej with her parents

Kaz’s small steps of touching people again

Overall: 10/10 I’m biased about this duology

Nikolai Duology

Nikolai transforming into darkling creature at night is the equivalent of a werewolf turning at night (depending if we do every full moon and all that)

Nina burying Matthias’ body 😭

He found peace

Nina being the best necromancer grisha

Nina wanting to choke the ever living death out of Brun

Genya and David being married

Nadia and Tomar being married

David threating the monk

The monk 🤦🏾‍♀️

Wait no, the “Starless Saint” Cult 🤦🏾‍♀️

Nina mentioning about the Crows, mentally not verbally

Kuweii setting a tree on fire

The fold universe is very confusing

Sankta Eve…whats her name betraying them all to bring Darkling to life

Zoya being amazing as always

The Apparat really needs to die

I cannot stand that dude

The attenpted assination on Nikolai and Princess Shu (I forgot her name)

Isaak willingly to take Nikolai’s place while he in the fold

Isaak falling in love with Princess Shu

Or should i say “Princess Shu”

Isaak deserved better

Darkling ressurected 🙄

Nina and Hanne 💜

Freakin Brum I swear

Ramus deserved to die

Alina, Mal, Misha, and Oncat cameo

The Crows cameo!

Inej cameo in the end!

“Captain Ghafa”

Darking decided to give a redemption

Why….just why

Zoya turning into a dragon, that’s my zoya!

Nikolai turning into darkling creature to risk Ravka’s future

Brum being exile

Mwhahah

Hanne tailored as Ramus bruhhhh

I feel like Hanne is a trans coded character, I’ll go depth in another post

Freakin fjeirda in general

Fjeirda soldiers bowing down to “Sankta Zoya”

Nikolai stepping down the throne

Giving the throne to Zoya!

Queen Zoya

David’s death….I was not prepared for that 😭

Inej suspecting Alina to be actually Alina to Nikolai

Nikolai brushing her off as an old friend from the country

“I need Stormund to send a message to Kaz Brekker. I have a job for him”

Not word for word but ya know

Six of Crows 3??!?!?!! Ahhh

Overall: 8/10 loved it!

[iiinejghafa]

what makes you think the monk is a love interest?

Hi! So my theory about the monk first started with the release of the official book summary for King of Scars, but I’ve been able to build upon it from information we’ve gotten since then.

When the summary and cover of KOS was released last year (i think around summer?) the wording of a particular line caught my attention. In the second paragraph of the summary it says “with the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha Squallor...” which is interesting for a few reasons:

--- the monk is the first listed of Nikolai’s two companions, which highlights him and cements him as a significant character (not even Nina, the third POV character, is mentioned in the summary) and implies he will have an important relationship with Nikolai

--- Zoya, the established character who we know is already physically with Nikolai at the start of KOS, is listed after the monk. If she were to be his love interest, it doesn’t really make sense not to emphasize her by listing her first.

--- This may seem really particular and over-analyzing, but this summary had to be written and approved by multiple people before it was released. And in book publishing/professional writing, wording is important, especially because the summary should still give the right impression of the story even in hindsight.

There’s also the matter of how little we know about the monk; we don’t even know his name, but we do know he’s one of Nikolai’s companions and that he was at some point a member of the Cult of the Starless, a Darkling cult that wants to canonize him as a saint.

--- This is something that automatically connects him to Nikolai (much more directly than Zoya, which is why I rule her out as the monk’s love interest) and suggests they could have an unwilling and tense relationship to start due to their opposing viewpoints. The monk also has something to do with Nikolai accomplishing his mission, or else he would not be listed in the summary or part of Nikolai’s group.

--- Because of their differences in background, viewpoints, etc - not to mention the fact that the monk is a new character - from a writing standpoint there is a lot more to develop in their relationship than there is with Nikolai and Zoya. Given how little they interacted in past books, obviously Nikolai and Zoya’s relationship has room to evolve, but it is not set up to have the same tension, potential distrust or room to develop dramatically as with Nikolai and the monk.

Nikolai’s sexuality has been speculated for a long time, with the popular headcanon/interpretation that he’s bisexual or pan. Interestingly enough, someone asked Leigh in a tweet if Nikolai was bi. Instead of ignoring it or answering it directly, she responded with something along the lines of “I like to answer this kind of thing on the page. In canon? I hope this isn’t a brush off” which is VERY interesting

--- This answer pretty directly states that we will learn Nikolai’s sexuality in KOS, a book where we get his perspective for the first time in the Grishaverse. Leigh answered a tweet about Nina’s sexuality after Crooked Kingdom came out and confirmed she viewed her as bi, so this suggests that Nikolai’s sexuality is a spoiler that she doesn’t want to discuss until after KOS (or maybe the duology) is released.

--- If Nikolai has appeared in three books (S&S, R&R and CK) and his sexuality is still not apparent - with his only confirmed love interest being Alina - then it suggests that we still have something to learn through his POV in KOS.

Finally, the most recent tidbit that really fueled my theory is the Kirkus review of KOS.

--- The review describes the romance arcs as "multiple romantic storylines among a multiethnic cast"; multiple would suggest more than two romances, and multiethnic is very specific (EDIT 1/28: The Booklist review also mentions "several" romances, supporting the idea of more than two romances ie none of the POVs are getting together). All three POVs are white Ravkans, so even if Nina's love interest is a person of color it seems like an inappropriate word choice when 3/4 of people involved in the romantic storylines are white. This is what really led me to believe my theory could be correct, because the most straightforward interpretation of that line doesn't really support Nikolai/Zoya and we don’t know the ethnicity of any of the new characters, including the monk.

--- It’s also interesting that the review points out racial diversity in the cast, but not in the sexuality of the characters. We know Nina is bi and is likely to end up with a woman in this series, and even if she wasn’t Leigh would absolutely include multiple LGBT main characters like she did in SOC. This makes me think Kirkus purposefully didn’t discuss sexuality/LGBT content to avoid spoilers.

--- Also in the Kirkus review is a brief description of Nikolai’s mission; to distract his enemies from his pursuit of political power and ways to strengthen Ravka, he will be pretending to search for a future queen. The whole “queen” thing has been a reoccurring thing; one of the first taglines of the book was “Who will become his queen?”, Zoya refers to his need to get married in her first POV chapter, and now we know this is a plot point in the book. If Zoya is his love interest, this seems painfully obvious and unsubtle - especially since she’s certainly in a good position politically and as a powerful Grisha to be a match for him - and assuming the monk is accompanying Nikolai during the matchmaking part of his mission as well as the political one, I could see this being intentionally ironic/misleading as the monk ends up Nikolai’s love interest, not Zoya or any of the suitors he “pursues”.

--- This also works on a personal level for Nikolai. He’s pragmatic to a fault when it comes to his kingdom - in the Grisha series, there’s a conversation with Alina where he has to a take a second and consider if he really would throw her under the bus if it would serve his goals, despite the fact he likes her and is interested in her as a future queen thanks to her power and influence - so Nikolai’s love interest being someone who is not an ideal match for him is a lot more interesting than someone who is, because it will force a challenge and personal growth on Nikolai as he navigates his feelings and the choices he makes because of it.

All of this is obviously a theory (though I tried to construct it as objectively and reasonably as I could lol) but it'd be super cool for a lot of reasons! Either way, it’s evident that the monk and Nikolai will have an important relationship and I’m excited to see how it turns out. Only three days to go!!

[chicleeblair]

I’m rereading SoC having listened to the audiobooks of it and the Nikolai duology last month, and originally reading them last year. I’ve also delved into the fandom, because I cannot get these idiots out of my head, but maybe because I came at the whole universe all at once I’m not mad about the same stuff as Fandom seems to be. 

there’s no real structure here, just thoughts because this universe has taken over my brain in a way few fantasy series have. (basically Harry Potter, queen’s thief, Tortall, specifically Aly’s books, and The folk of the air.) 

thought dump incoming:

like, I am as anti-darkling as anti-darkling can be, see also: anti-joker, but I would take a whole other trilogy with him in it if it meant getting more of the badass bitches (complimentary) that are Nina Zelnick and Zoya Nazyalensky.

“I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker” took me a while to square, in spite of my love for inej because it’s ableist af, but she can be ableist af in general—from the start, she mocks Kaz going down the stairs, which can be read as a an “I’m your friend, I can do this” joke, but coming from someone so focused on a talent that requires not falling, and being in control of one’s body, yeah there’s internalized ableism there.

The way Kaz’s leg affects him means a lot to me, too. I know it’s based on personal experience, and that shows, even if sometimes I’m like “Wow, he can last a while without his cane,” it’s never like his pain disappears during those periods. He suffers to be able to pass as abled, to do what he needs to do for the con. there’s a lot of discussion on here about his arrival in Ketterdam, losing Jordie, starting his vendetta with Pekka, etc — If I had a nickel for every time “brick by brick”  appears in fic… --but his leg is important to his character, too. Pain can shape a person. it changes the way you interact with people, with the world. it makes you consider every exit, every chair. In Kaz’s case, it affects the way he’s seen. He uses that to his advantage — Dirtyhands and his cane — the way disability is often the trait of the villain — but in his POV we see how human it makes him. I don’t think a Kaz before his fall would have seen past Wylan’s dyslexia, or both seen the way shooting benefits Jesper’s mental health and utilized it.

that’s the thing. I love how the flaws in these characters are so understandable. which may also be why I’m okay with Matthias’s death outside of the fact that I love the way Nina grows in the Nikolai duology and also love Hanne. because for all he is redeemed, and rejects Fjerda, Matthias’s story is told. he and Nina may have been otp, HEA, but that would’ve been incredibly difficult for the very reasons some people on here cannot square their relationship — for all he regrets his heinous acts toward Grisha, he did perform them, and while Nina ( an individual) forgave him, not everyone would. he’s part of a system that has to be destroyed for the Grisha—the titular focus of the universe — to survive. I don’t think the Fjerdans serve well as a direct N^zi allegory, but I’m not qualified to take on that argument other than to vaguely wave to the fact that Matthias’s family very much was killed by Grisha soldiers, and there are Grisha soldiers who do have magic, so it’s not a direct parallel to one culture making up slander about the other. That twists the black/white narrative in a way, for me, but I am very much not speaking with authority.

But for all they twist some allegories and tropes, they are not subverting Beauty and the Beast (as a trope, not the original fairytale), not the way Kaz and Inej subvert the traditional romance they’re caught in. It’s two different ways of dealing with reader expectations and story structure.

I’m sure there are ways they could have moved forward, but I think their story is satisfying, and it lets Nina continue on with her goal to protect/save Grisha from the monstrous Fjierdans, except now she can do it with a better understanding of how to get through to them.

I guess what I’m saying is that I think their relationship is suitable for Nina’s life at that point, outside of Ravka, away from her friends and mentors, and very much still a girl fascinated by the dark. For all that she spent a year in Ketterdam, she retains some naiveté —being a Grisha both puts her in danger and saves her from what Inej goes through — and in a way SoC/CK are about how no one is immune to trauma.

there is probably a way Matthias could have become part of conquering the prejudice in Fjerda, but he’s already returned there and faced his peers, and that wasn’t the story being told. Beauty and the Beast is a fairy-tale, and it doesn’t go past the happily ever after.

but Nina did. And while you’re free to like what you like, I think it’s powerful to mourn someone so deeply, but not be closed off to a future with someone else. Nina is very much someone who wants to eek all the good out of life, and her relationship with Hanne is partially her reclaiming that part of herself. It’s also the only f/f rep in the series so far, so I am admittedly biased, but it’s not like I’d be mad if Matthias had survived and they’d spent their lives rescuing grisha and educating Fjerdans. doing restorative justice. something like that.

ALL OF THAT SAID, David’s death really threw me. Genya has been through so much, and his character is one of the better autistic-coded characters I’ve seen in fantasy (NB or anywhere….). I hate how much his death felt like “welp, someone has to die because the bombing has to have a big effect.” However, I am interested to see how Genya moves forward, particularly because while David loved her without care for her physical appearance, it’s clear she’s still not comfortable with her appearance 100%. as someone with a very visible physical disability, I relate to that journey a lot.

Like I said, I think the Nikolai series could do without the darkling, and also maybe the embodied saints, but I’ve never been big on “realm of the gods” type tropes. It does serve to validate the Grisha religion over others, but… I dunno, we had science-explained magic, and demons that were explained by the story, and I didn’t really need more. I wish we’d gotten a different way to put a half-suli, Grisha, girl on the throne of Ravka, but A HALF-SULI, GRISHA GIRL IS ON THE THRONE OF RAVKA.

a bisexual Grisha and a trans-man rule Fjerda, and while I know they’re a secret at this point… I dunno, for all she’s a spy, I don’t see Nina Zelnick lying about her identity forever and ever…. Hanne is part of a shift, one we saw in Matthias, but he had accepted the indoctrination. She rebelled against it, and we’ve seen that more and more fjerdans are coming to see that the grisha’s magic isn’t always a force for evil. (it’s so telling that they’re taking on the religious aspect of it, when Small Science is a reason-based explanation).

That’s such a game-changer.

[emjenenla]

If You’re Gone, Maybe it’s Time to Come Home [SoC Fanfic]

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Title: If You’re Gone, Maybe it’s Time To Come Home

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjen_enla (Wattpad)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: (There’s an awful lot of breathing room, but I can hardly move) Or Kaz goes into a downward spiral after Crooked Kingdom.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: Mainstream, post-Crooked Kingdom

Dominant Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, appearances of various other characters, a couple relatively minor OCs

Pairings: Kanej (Kaz/Inej), perhaps one OC/OC if you squint (and/or can read my mind)

Warnings: depression, panic attacks, anxiety, some drinking, Kaz being Kaz, Ketterdam being Ketterdam

Notes:

-I think the time has come for us all to admit that I’m not going to be posting as much as I once did. I’ve been really busy in the last year with school and work and my own original work. I’m not saying that I’m completely done with fanfiction, but updates might be pretty slow from now on.

-I did not intend for this to be a multi-part fic, but I was working on it tonight and realized that the part I have written (which I think it roughly half) was already over eight thousand words. I figured that I may as well release it in parts to make it a bit more manageable. I’m hoping this will be a two-part fic, but it might get up to three. Hopefully I’ll be done before I go back to college at the end of August, but I’m honestly not sure what will happen.

-I read the Six of Crows Duology over Christmas break and it (mostly Kaz, let’s be honest) has stuck with me ever since. This story is mostly inspired by the fact that I’m honestly really worried about Kaz now that his only real reason for living (revenge on Pekka Rollins) is gone.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Six of Crows or the song “If You’re Gone” by Matchbox 20.

--

Part One

(1)

After they beat Van Eck and Pekka Rollins, everything and nothing changes.

Kaz is now king of the Barrel. Of course, the rest of the gangs haven’t figured that out yet. Everyone is expecting Rollins to eventually dig his way out of the hole he’d fallen into. The rumor of him on his knees at Kaz’s feet is spreading through the Barrel like wildfire, but Rollins has been in power for so long that no can fathom the idea that his time as ruler might be over. However, Kaz knows that it’s only a matter of time before that minor annoyance is rectified.

He also has four million kruge slowly siphoning into his accounts. Between that and the shares of the Crow Club and Fifth Harbor that he bought off Haskell, he figures he’s easily the richest person in the Barrel and probably comfortably in the top fifty richest people in Ketterdam. Not bad for a person who was flat broke two weeks before.

Still he makes the rest of the people involved in the Ice Court job keep the payoff quiet. It won’t do any of them any good for people to realize just how much kruge they’re each rolling in. Kaz has built his life around stealing from the ridiculously wealthy and he’d rather not become one of those pigeons for some other angry upstart.

He should be ecstatic, even with the Council of Tides still breathing down his neck, but he’s not. Firstly, Inej is leaving. He’s not surprised, though, and he’s not going to try to stop her. He understands why she needs to go, he just…wishes she wouldn’t.

Inej and her parents stay for a few days so Inej can show them around Ketterdam. She’s always with them so Kaz tries to say out of their way. Being around Mr. and Mrs. Ghafa makes him nervous. He’s not positive, but he’s pretty sure that Inej’s parents know exactly how he feels about her. (He shouldn’t be surprised, nothing says “I’m completely and totally, illogically in love with your daughter” like “I bought her a ship so she can go fulfil her purpose in life.”) That transparency makes him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s not ashamed of what he is, but he knows that he’s not the kind of boy that the Ghafas want their daughter to end up with.

(Will he and Inej end up together? He’s not even sure.)

He tries to tell himself that Inej is the only thing bothering him, but if he’s truly honest with himself Matthias is weighing heavily on his mind as well.

Though it’s a truth he’ll take it to his grave, he was not completely surprised by Matthias’ death. He’d planned hundreds of possible scenarios for the auction scheme and he’d known that the chances that at least one of them wouldn’t make it out were much higher than he would have liked. He’d also known that after Kuwei, he and Matthias had the worse odds of them all. If something went wrong, the rest of the gang had a chance of being able to vanish underground and wait things out. He and Matthias would be forever chased by the powerful people who wanted them dead.

Still, he hadn’t mentioned any of that to Matthias. He’d told himself that he didn’t want to risk Matthias backing out, but he’d known that Matthias would never back out while Nina was still in danger. There had been no excuse. Perhaps telling Matthias about the dangers would have saved his life, perhaps it wouldn’t have (they still aren’t sure what had happened, though Kaz has his theories). Either way, the idea of Matthias going to his death knowing it was a possibility seems like it would make things a little better.

Kaz has lost crewmembers before, but somehow Matthias weighs on him heavier than all those others. The night of the auction, after he left Van Eck’s—Wylan’s—house, he returned to the Slat. He made a mug of the herbal tea Inej keeps around and makes after big jobs when he feels like crud because of shear exhaustion. He couldn’t get it to taste right so he corrupted it with a double dose of a painkilling tonic and couple shots of whiskey because why not. Then he downed the whole vile-tasting thing in a couple gulps. His stomach was empty so the concoction hit him hard and knocked him out in a matter of minutes. He slept until late the next morning and expected to wake up feeling more like his normal self, but he didn’t.

He hadn’t felt quite right since then either, but it would be okay. He’d had low times before and he always snapped out of them.

It would be okay.

(2)

Inej leaves long, long before he’s ready. The night before the Wraith is due to leave, she shows up at the Slat and they spend a night wandering the city, just like they did before the Ice Court. Kaz leaves his gloves off and tries not to flinch when people come to close. Inej pretends not to notice when he fails.

“So how exactly are you planning to catch these slavers?” he asks while they’re walking down an empty street even though they’ve already talked about this a number of times.

“Well, first I’m taking my parents back to Ravka,” Inej says. “I want to see the rest of my family again, plus they’ll need a ride back. While I’m there I might try to add to the crew. Papa says that I have a couple cousins who might be interested in signing on and there are a lot of purposeless Grisha in Ravka now. After that, I start looking for slavers.”

“And how are you going to find them?” he asks.

“Well, I know there’s a slaver hideout somewhere between here and Ravka,” she says. “I don’t have the crew or experience to take it now, but knowing where it is will help me to intercept individual ships.”

He nods and they’re quiet for a couple more minutes while he considers if he really wants to do this.

“I’ve thought about what you said about me helping you catch slavers,” he says after what feels like an age.

“Really?” she looks at him. Her expression is passably neutral, but he knows her well enough to see the tension.

“I’ll help you,” he says before he loses his nerve.

A huge grin spreads across Inej’s face. She moves like she’s going to hug him and he leaps out of the way, wrenching his bad leg. The smile fades as she realizes what just happened. Her arms drop back to her side and her lips press together. “Thank you very much,” she says formally.

The mood never quite recovers from that.

(3)

More people show up to see the Wraith off than Kaz anticipated. He hadn’t realized Inej had integrated herself so well into the Dregs. Even people like Beatle and Swann who had tried to literally beat Kaz’s brains out a few weeks before are there. A small group of people crowd the dock as Inej and her crew off.

Kaz leaves his gloves on. The crowd isn’t big by Ketterdam standards, but the dock is narrow enough that people bump and brush up against each other. He knows that if he tried to go barehanded he’d probably end up having one of his episodes like the one in the prison cart. (He knows what the proper name for those is, but he feels less pathetic and weak when he doesn’t think of them by that name.)

He waits until everyone else has finished saying goodbye to Inej before he approaches her. They stand there, staring at each other, neither knowing what to say, how they should part.

“Remember to write,” Inej says. Perhaps that sounds sweet to someone who doesn’t know that they ended last night by coming up with a plan on how he can get letters to her and an overly complicated code so he can send her information without blowing his involvement. There’s nothing romantic about her telling him to write; it’s just business.

He wishes it wasn’t. He wishes he could tell her he loves her. He wishes he could throw his arms around and hold her until she agrees to stay here with him. He wishes he could kiss her just so he could know what it’s like.

Instead he nods stoically, showing no hint of any of his desires. “I will,” he says and the promise is too audible in his voice so he goes on with something cutting, “And try not to get killed. It would be a waste of perfectly good kruge I spend on that ship.”

Her expression is somewhere between fond and disappointed. When she speaks again, her voice has dropped to a near whisper. “Kaz, about last night-”

He does not want to talk about this ever, let alone in front of all these people. “Wraith-”

“Kaz,” she cuts in her voice rising slightly, but when she next speaks her voice is quiet again. “Don’t give up hope, okay? Just keep trying. It’ll get better.” Then she reaches out, takes his gloved hand and squeezes.

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, but he finds himself nodding stiffly and squeezing her hand back. They stand like that for a couple seconds. He can feel the gazes of the other people burning into him. He’s uncomfortably aware that for most of these people this is probably the first time they’ve seen him touch someone in a way that isn’t violent.

He pulls away first and steps back to put a little more space between them. “No mourners,” he says because he doesn’t know how to put words to what he actually wants to say.

“No funerals,” she says. “Take care of yourself, Kaz.”

When he doesn’t respond right away she turns away and heads up the ramp onto the Wraith, leaving him in Ketterdam all alone.

“You too,” he says too quietly for anyone else to hear.

(4)

The next few weeks are busy ones. Kaz consolidates his control of the Dregs and begins to use his inside knowledge of the falsity of the plague to encroach on the territories of other gangs (namely Rollins’). He begins searching for more spiders after it becomes obvious that Roeder won’t be able to fill Inej’s shoes on his own. He quietly starts tracking down slavers and their compatriots.

He’s very busy. Given that, if he’s eating and sleeping less than he should, that’s okay. If he’s drinking more coffee and whiskey than he probably should, that’s okay too. He’s a general now, not a lieutenant, he has more responsibilities than he did before (never mind that he was practically running the Dregs before the Ice Court job).

He’s not trying to ignore his stubbornly lingering guilt about Matthias. He’s definitely not trying to distract himself from the gaping hole in his heart and by his side where Inej is supposed to be. He’s fine. Just fine, thank you very much. There’s absolutely nothing wrong.

Nothing.

(5)

A month after the auction, Kaz pulls his first job as leader of the Dregs. There shouldn’t be much difference between this and any other job he’s ever done. After all, after the Ice Court and everything that happened afterwards, Kaz is pretty sure every job he’ll ever do should seem easy.

Still, no one knows about the Ice Court, and it doesn’t look like anyone ever will. This is his first job as leader of the Dregs and all the gang members in Ketterdam will be watching and waiting to see if he chokes.

That shouldn’t bother him—if anything it should make him more confident—but it does.

The job is a raid on a particularly rich mercher’s private jewel collection. It’s a job that requires a fairly small number of members (himself, Anika, Pim, Roeder and Mina, the thirteen-year-old Grisha Heartrender he’s letting try for a position as a spider). The job also doubles as a chance to look through the mercher’s records to see if the vague rumors Kaz has been hearing about the man being involved in the slave trade are accurate.

The break-in goes off without a hitch. The mercher and his family are still waiting out the “plague” in a summer home and it looks like the servants have taken this as an opportunity to take a paid vacation. Once inside, he leaves the others in the showroom to bag the jewels while he goes upstairs under the pretense of doing some reconnaissance. In reality, he picks the lock on the mercher’s office door and goes through the man’s papers.

It takes him four and a half minutes to find the information he’s looking for. Yes, the man’s involved in the slave trade. Yes, he knows when the next shipment’s coming in. There aren’t any routes in the information, but there are locations of launches and when they’re supposed to come in. That information will be a start for Inej. It takes him three minutes to memorize the information, then he puts the office back the way he found it, locks the door again and gets back to the showroom before the others have time to start wondering what was taking him so long.

The rest of the job goes off without a hitch. They’re back in the Slat within a few hours a couple thousand kruge richer. As soon as he’s sure everything’s settled and the jewels are locked up in the big safe that only he knows the combination to, Kaz retreats to his upstairs rooms (he’s taken over Per Haskell’s office, but his private rooms are something else entirely). He lights a candle, gets out a sheet of paper and starts his first coded letter to Inej.

He takes all his self-control to focus on the business and not say anything pointless about how much he misses her.

(6)

He doesn’t get a return letter from Inej for almost a month and when one does come it’s a list of the ships they’d raided (mostly ones from that first list he’d sent her) and people rescued. Perhaps Kaz feels a little pride at knowing his information was put to good use, but mostly he wishes she’d have said something, anything about herself and how she was.

He forces those thoughts out of his head with a couple shots of whiskey, then sits down and writes her another completely impersonal letter about the new information he has for her.

(7)

Almost three months after Inej left, Kaz dreams that he’s in the harbor again, swimming for his life. Not that unusual an occurrence, especially now. He would have thought that his nightmares would have gotten better after he got his revenge on Pekka Rollins, but if anything, they’ve gotten worse.

Still none of that matters in this moment. He struggles to keep hold of the corpse under his arms and struggles to keep kicking towards the lights of Ketterdam which never seem to get any closer. His breaths burn in his throat, his teeth chatter from the cold, his chest is tight with fear.

A wave washes over his head. He almost loses his grip on the corpse but manages to pull himself back onto it at the last moment. He blinks saltwater out of his eyes, harsh breaths that are just a little like sobs ripping out of his body.

Then he looks down and realizes the corpse he’s clinging to isn’t Jordie’s but Inej’s.

He jolts back to reality in his bed in the Slat, blankets twisted around his legs, sweat soaking through his shirt and sticking it to his chest and back. He takes two heaving breaths before he turns and vomits over the side of the bed onto the floor.

When he’s done he collapses onto his side and twists his bare hands into the sheets. He’s been trying not to wear the gloves as much so he can surprise Inej if she comes back (when she comes back, Kaz tells himself, when), but now he wishes he was wearing them. He’s sure that if he was just wearing the gloves he could deal with this, but they’re lying on his desk in the other room and he’s shaking too hard to make it in there to get them.

He curls up in a ball, biting the insides of his cheeks so hard he tastes blood. He stares at the opposite wall until his vision starts to tunnel. Images both from his memory and from the dream play over and over in his head. He can’t stop shaking.

He lies there, almost too afraid to blink as the night drags by and sunlight starts to slowly creep into the room.

The sun is quite high by the time he’s able to get up and go retrieve his gloves.

(8)

Inej comes back to Ketterdam two weeks later. Kaz meets her on the dock under the pretense of having just been passing by. He can tell she doesn’t believe him, but he finds that he doesn’t really care. He’s just happy to be near her again. Her quiet, steady presence relaxes and completes him. He feels more like himself than he has in months. Which is relieving, but also a little scary, mostly because he hadn’t realized he wasn’t feeling right until it stopped.

“So, you managed not to die or destroy my investment,” he says jerking his head at the Wraith.

Her smile is superficially fond, but he can see disappointment underneath it. Her eyes shift to his hands, encased in his gloves. She doesn’t say anything but he knows what she wants.

“Sorry,” he says beginning to peal the gloves off. “Forgot.” His stomach clenches into a series of knots. He’s been wearing his gloves constantly since the nightmare, because the thought of that happening again gives him cold sweats. He feels ashamed; he really wanted to be less reliant on the gloves the next time they saw each other.

He doesn’t mention any of this as he tucks his gloves into his coat, careful not to let his hands shake. Inej is studying him, with her head cocked to the side. He expects her to have noticed his nerves, but what she says is, “You look tired.”

He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s been trying to avoid sleeping as much as possible because he’s terrified of having a nightmare about clinging to her corpse again, so he just gives her a thin smile. “Been busy.”

Now her smile is definitely fond, he feels like he’s floating. “You do know that even demons need to sleep, don’t you, Kaz?”

(9)

She leaves again long before he’s ready. Again, he wants to beg her to stay, again his bites his tongue and covers his true feelings with biting comments. Still he stands on the dock and watches until long after the Wraith has vanished over the horizon. Though he’ll never admit it, he’s hoping she’ll realize that there’s more for her here with him than out at sea.

That’s ridiculous though, Inej is nothing if not a noble person. There are a lot of people in the world who need her way more than one demon-boy in the city of Ketterdam.

By the time he heads back to Slat, a cold rain has started to fall.

(10)

Several months later, the Razorgulls start a gang war with the Dregs. People have been slowly realizing that Pekka Rollins is not coming back. That makes things more difficult for Kaz. He’s been slowly moving the Dregs into Rollins’ holdings since the plague scare. Up until this point, people have just been letting him, assuming that he’ll regret it once Rollins comes back. Now that it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, people realize that Kaz has been allowed to snag a huge amount of territory with little to no resistance.

The conflict with the Razorgulls comes down to a massive fight through the streets of the Barrel while the stadwatch stands by helpless to control the violence. Torches light up the night until it’s nearly like day as Kaz chases the Razorgulls general through the alleys near the fighting.

He comes out into a dark dead end and the general is nowhere in sight. He has half a second to wonder where he went before the man leaps on him from behind wrapping bare forearms around Kaz’s neck in a headlock.

The waters rise up before Kaz has time to breathe and he drops like a stone. Within instants the other general is on top of him, one bare hand around Kaz’s throat and the other punching him in the face. He was probably yelling, but Kaz couldn’t hear him over the ringing in his ears.

Kaz can’t breathe, he can’t think. He struggles against the weight of the body on top of him, looking for a way out. Eventually he gets his fingers around one of his hidden knives and stabs it into the other general’s stomach. The man’s grip loosens and Kaz is able to shove him off. He finishes the job, then collapses against the wall gasping.

He waits until he’s no longer shaking like a Grisha on parem before he drags the general’s body up onto a high balcony above the main body of the battle. He declares the war over and gives the Razorgulls an ultimatum: join the Dregs or die.

Unsurprisingly most of them opt to join the Dregs.

That surrender takes place a few hours before dawn but it’s still well into the afternoon by the time Kaz gets back to his rooms. He’s profoundly exhausted in a way he hasn’t been since the Ice Court and he can’t quite shake the tremors from the memory of someone else’s hands around his neck. He collapses onto his bed and loses his grip on the world.

He wakes up late the next morning by Anika pounding on his door with a list of questions, as exhausted as he was when he fell asleep.

(11)

The surrender of the Razorgulls nearly doubles the size of the Dregs. Granted, it’ll be a while before he can actually trust any of these new recruits, but the Barrel runs on strength. Kaz is confident he can win them all over given time.

One of the more interesting new members is a scrawny eleven-year-old boy. He’s newly orphaned and worked cleaning chamber pots in one of the Razorgulls’ hideouts. His name is Espen and his eyes gleam with the same cold, calculating anger Kaz sees in himself every time he looks in a mirror.

Perhaps Kaz should take Espen under his wing and attempt to put the boy back together in a way better than the way he put himself together. Perhaps he would if he was a better person. Perhaps he would if the mere thought of putting up with another person’s issues on top of his own wasn’t utterly exhausting.

So, he doesn’t try to help. Instead his foists the kid on Mina and tells her to teach him to be a spider instead.

Maybe that will be enough.

(12)

His letters to Inej are starting to get out of hand.

Not the ones he actually sends to her; those are just as impersonal as always. It’s the drafts of those letters that are starting to become problematic.

They’ve gotten long.

Kaz has always been a master of brevity when it comes to letters. He can normally fit anything he could possibly need to say to anyone into under a page. His average letter is only a couple sentences.

The drafts of his letters to Inej go on for pages and pages.

His words scrawl across the paper, rambling in ways that don’t sound like him, and to make matters worse, he’s not really talking about anything. He does talk about the Dregs and Ketterdam news sometimes, but mostly he just talks about how much he misses her and begs her to come back and stay with him.

He realizes that this is getting beyond ridiculous the night he writes almost thirty pages of a logical, step-by-step argument for why she should abandon her quest to bring justice to the slavers and return to being his spider.

He stares at the letter for a long time, a strange feeling of disgust and fear swirling inside him. He can’t possibly send something like this to Inej. Hunting slavers is her purpose, and she will keep doing it no matter what. All this letter would do is guarantee that she really will never come back.

He crumbles the letter into a ball and throws it into the fire. Then he starts another draft. He intends for this one to be a short, to-the-point passing of information, but somehow it devolves into an even longer argument. This one is about how he is a horrible, corrupt person with no hope for anything better and how Inej would really be better off if she left him behind and never looked back.

The sun has risen by the time he finishes this letter. He sits at his desk and stares blankly at the letter. He images that a normal person would probably be crying right now, but there are no tears for him. There haven’t been since that night in the harbor all those years ago. It’s like something about that night locked all his tears up somewhere inside him and threw away the key. He hasn’t been able to cry since, even as an act.

So, his eyes are dry as he looks at the letter, but his chest is tight. He has never hated himself, never felt a sliver of shame about what he is, but he feels it now. If only he wasn’t like this, maybe Inej wouldn’t have left him. Sure, she’s come back a couple times, but how long will it be before she realizes how much better off she is without him in her life and stops coming back? How long before she leaves him completely alone?

The sunlight creeps into his room. The Slat is coming awake around him. He has a million things to do. He’s the leader of the Dregs, he has everything as long as he does the things he needs to do. He knows that he needs to get moving, but he doesn’t want to. He’s empty and sad and so incredibly tired.

So, for the first time that he can remember, Kaz Brekker ignores his responsibilities, he shoves the letter aside, pillows his head on his arms and hopes things will be better when he wakes up.

They aren’t.

(13)

Kaz is tired.

He’s used to being tired—he has a tendency to ignore things like sleep when on big jobs and doesn’t sleep a normal amount even when he’s not on jobs—but normally he can just slam a couple cups of coffee and be fine. This is something different. Even with his veins seemingly swimming with coffee, he still finds himself fighting against a deep-seated exhaustion. Even sleep doesn’t seem to shake it, even though he’s sleeping more than he normally does.

He tells himself that it’s no big deal. He knows that his sleeping habits are unhealthy, and if they’re finally catching up to him, Inej would probably say it’s for the best. It’s not like he’s sleeping an insane amount, anyway. If anything, he’s probably just sleeping a normal amount now and it just seems like a lot because he’s not used to it. It will only take him some time to adjust.

Still, he is tired and it’s hard to care about any of the things that used to take up his full attention. He hasn’t destroyed the letter. He keeps it tucked carefully away in one of the drawers of his dresser, nestled among his ties and spare pairs of gloves. He takes it out and reads it sometimes, as a reminder of why he’s so lucky for the chances he’s had with Inej and why he should never expect too much.

(14)

He, Roeder, Mina and Espen are on a job. They get in easy enough, but while they’re bagging the man’s inappropriately stuffed safe, the owner of the house comes home. They all freeze in shock when they hear the front door open. Kaz had calculated that they had another hour and a half before the mercher came home from his mistress’ house. For a few blank seconds, all Kaz can think is “How was I so wrong?” then survival instincts kick in.

“Clear out,” he orders and they make for the windows.

They aren’t fast enough. Within minutes the stadwatch are on their tails. They’re crossing over the river when one of the stadwatch gets lucky and hits Roeder. The oldest spider takes a dive over the edge of the bridge and into the water. Mina skids to a stop on the bridge and stares over. “Dirtyhands!” she yells (he has never heard her call him anything else, even Brekker) “You need to do something! Espen and I are too small!”

A voice whispers that he should just let Roeder die, but he needs Roeder. Roeder is the only one of the spiders who’s obviously useful in a fight and he’s not about to lose that advantage.

“Take care of the stadwatch,” he tells Mina giving her a look he hopes she interprets it correctly. Then he thrusts his cane into Espen’s hands. “Be careful with that; it’s worth more than your life,” he says then vaults over the side of the bridge and into the water.

Kaz knows how to swim; he is honest enough about his own life to know that is a useful skill, but he doesn’t like it. The water in the river tonight is cold and the memory of the barge returns. Still he does his best to push it down and he lunges to Roeder.

He grabs the back of the spider’s shirt and pulls him into his chest. He wraps his other arm around Roeder’s chest and almost immediately has one of the biggest flashbacks he’s ever had. He is nine years old in the harbor clinging to Jordie’s body, he has little to no recognition of ever being anything else. His head goes under and the only thing that keep him from shoving Roeder’s body away is the belief that he is Jordie and the only thing keeping him drowning.

His free hand strikes something hard. He grabs on and manages to drag his head above water. His mind is whirl of panic and revulsion. He knows that he needs to get out of the water, but the panic is so much that he can’t move.

When another hand clasps around his arm, he loses himself completely and trashes, letting go of whatever he was holding onto completely in an attempt to get away. The hand doesn’t let go, actually another joins it and jerks him to a stop just as his head goes under again.

The next moment his heartrate starts to slow and the edges of his panic fade. He realizes that his head is underwater and kicks until he’s above the water again and can get a gasp of air. His vision clears and he realizes the person attached to the hands holding his arm is Mina. She’s kneeling on the pier he grabbed onto, water sticking her mouse-brown hair to her face and her gray eyes wide. She’s using her abilities to lower his heartrate.

Mina helps him pull Roeder and himself out of the river and they drag the spider onto the shore together. Immediately, Mina pulls Roeder’s shirt open and positions her hands over his chest. Kaz knows that she’ll now use her powers to draw the water out of his lungs. She’ll do it carefully so no one knows exactly what she did. It’s still dangerous to be a Grisha in Ketterdam, so Mina keeps her powers carefully under wraps. Kaz isn’t even sure if Roeder and Espen know she’s a Heartrender. She would have been careful to find a very subtle way to incapacitate the stadwatch when he ordered her to.

Kaz just wants to collapse and not move until he can breathe again, but the instant Mina starts tending to Roeder, Espen is in his face.

“What was that?” the little boy snarls with an expression that even Kaz will admit is slightly demonic. “What is wrong with you?”

“What are you talking about?” Kaz asks more to buy time than anything else. He almost winces at how wrong his voice sounds.

“You were supposed to save Roeder, not freeze and make Mina pull you out!” Espen has his face in very close to Kaz’s, so close that flecks of the boy’s spit hit Kaz’s cheeks. “What kind of general are you?”

Kaz wants to pull away and put miles of distance between himself and every other human in Ketterdam, but he forces himself to react to Espen’s taunts and closeness in the way that helped to earn him his reputation, the way that will save face.

He punches the kid in the jaw.

Espen, for all his bravado, does not know how to take a punch. The kid goes sprawling across the ground, gasping. Mina looks on in surprise. Kaz takes a fortifying breath and stands up even though his legs feel no more solid than the water he almost drowned in both tonight and all those years ago.

“You really should learn that you’re not in charge here,” he tells Espen, keeping his voice steady through sheer force of will. “You only have a place in this gang because you the good you outweighs the annoyance of putting up with you. Understand?”

Espen is staring. For once, he’s actually wearing an expression other than anger. He looks shocked and a little scared. His mouth opens and closes mutely.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Kaz snarls. “Now, what did you do with my cane?”

--

[lmartinezwrites]

6, 8, 21, 46, 47!

6 : What would be the biggest compliment you could hope to receive on your current WIP?

I don’t think there’s one general comment but just the individual stories on how my book has affected different readers would make me cry forever. 

8 : What author would you be most excited to be compared to?

I’ve only ever read 1 of her series but it is the series that I most aspire to write like in terms of characters. If anyone ever compared my level of characterisation to the one Leigh Bardugo achieves in the Six of Crows duology I would just implode I think. Characters like the SoC gang are all I ever aspire to create. 

21 : Do you finish most of the stories you start?

Short answer: no. 

Seeing as I only ever write novels that span thousands and thousands of words, I determine a project as finished when I can no longer learn from it anymore. Being a young writer means that I’m constantly trying to learn from past projects until I finally produce something that I feel someone out there would benefit from. Therefore, I do believe my first novel, Dalliance, to be complete (regardless of plot) because I have learnt as much as I could from it. 

The Court’s Champion is still useful to me sometimes so still revisiting every once in a while but ATS has taken centre stage for now :) 

46 : What Hogwarts house would your protagonist(s) be in?

Ok I love this. I’m going to do it for Amidst The Stars!

Lyra: Gryffindor 

Jack: Ravenclaw 

Kit: Slytherin probably...?

Amira: Hufflepuff 

Atticus: Slytherin

47 : Where do you see yourself as a writer in five years?

I don’t even know what I’m doing in a month, let alone FIVE YEARS. I hope to have successfully completed one novel that I am genuinely proud of, and that I can share with the world. I hope that someone somewhere will have been able to read my book (whichever one that is) and that they love it. 

Thank you so so much Logan!