#soc & ck masterlist

[fairytalesofforever]

SOC fic masterlist

I can't believe I haven't done one yet, so:

Catch and Release (directly post CK, 2K words/one-shot, kanej)

The two deadliest people in Ketterdam struggle to sit together and learn some things in the process, including, but not limited to, that they will always come back to each other.

the ichor in their veins needs feeding (modern AU, 1K words/one-shot, kanej, helnik, wesper, platonic everyone/found family)

To be young is the nearest thing to being immortal. Or, a modern AU.

the willows' lullaby (verrry post CK [like several decades], 1.5K words/one-shot, kanej)

Her hair is white and her hands are lined, but she wakes up and asks for her knife. Kaz can refuse her nothing. Or, a series of reflections before the end.

The Best Worst Kept Secret in Ketterdam (post CK, 260K words and counting, kanej, wesper, mentions of past helnik, alby rollins/OC, platonic everyone who's still alive)

She’s really not their child, they promise. Unfortunately, she has other ideas: Cue the Parent Trap, but with trauma.

renegades in the ring (circus AU, 6K words/one-shot, kanej, helnik, pre-wesper, platonic everyone, jordie lives)

A magician with a mind as sharp as his tongue. An acrobat searching for her wings. A sharpshooter looking for freedom. A prodigal son with some tricks up his sleeve. A fortune teller looking to love in peace. A wolf trainer starting a new life. What happens in the Big Top, stays in the Big Top.

used to be mine (during and post-books, 4K words/one-shot, kanej, background implied wesper, platonic inej&jesper and inej&wylan)

"The lynx and the Wraith and the girl of the Ravkan fields are bidders in an auction for pieces of Inej Ghafa, whoever that is." A spy, a captain, a Saint; the treasure of a certain criminal king's heart; she has lost everything and more, but she has always been dangerous. songfic to "She Used to Be Mine" from Waitress

we're still in it, but in a minute (post-CK, 1.5K words/one-shot, kanej)

It’s a good night for them. For both of them, actually. “Can I try something?”

To Meet a Monster (pre-canon, 1.6K words/one-shot, outsider POV)

“Just now,” said the boy, “You were sizing me up, weren’t you? Thinking you could take me?” There was a dare in his eyes, a cruel black glitter that begged to be set loose. “I want everyone else to think that, too. And I want a weapon to prove them wrong.” It's hard enough to be a Fabrikator hiding in Ketterdam. It only gets worse when the boy called Dirtyhands wants something from him.

If I went to touch you now (during SOC, 7.5K words, WIP/eventual two-shot, kanej, background helnik, background pre-wesper, platonic Inej&Nina and Inej&Matthias)

"The marks were there, after all, clear as day—some black with destiny, others colored with a fate already found." It seems impossible. After all, the black marks that they bear are supposed to be the first place their soulmate will touch them someday. But Kaz and Inej both have to wonder—who would want to be the other half of a broken soul? Who would dare to touch the untouchable? Why would they obey the laws of fate, determined as they are to break all the others?

[capinejghafa]

SOC/CK Book Quotes [Gifset Master  List]

below is a compilation of my gifsets about soc/ck book quotes (so far). including scene manips, insp sets, and concept sets. as well as any other sets in the grishaverse that i used book quotes/incorrect quotes. 

all quote credits go to leigh bardugo :)

Split up into: 

Ship or Characters | Chapter of the Book | POV Character | Quote

Six of Crows Quotes (manip scenes):

Kanej | Chapter 4 | Inej | “We’ll be queens and kings, Inej.”

Kanej | Chapter 4 | Inej | “Please, my darling Inej, treasure of my heart, won’t you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat?”

Kanej | Chapter 5 | Kaz | In moments like that, he thought she might hate him.

Kaz & Helnik | Chapter 5 | Kaz | “You’ve seen [Matthias]?”

Kaz & Wylan| Chapter 8 & 21 | Jesper & Inej | “Who’s mark?”

Kaz | Chapter 13 | Kaz | “My Wraith would counsel mercy. But thanks to you, she’s not here to plead your case.”

Kanej | Chapter 16 | Inej | “My enemies?” / “Our enemies.”

Kanej | Chapter 25 | Inej | “A strange sound escaped Inej’s throat, part sob, part laugh, a weak, embarrassing sound, but it had been months since she’d heard her own name, her family name.”

Kanej | Chapter 28 | Inej | “If we don’t survive this night, I will die unafraid, Kaz. Can you say the same?”

Wesper | Chapter 32 | Jesper | “Just girls? No. Not just girls.”

Inej & Genya | R&R (Chapter 8) & SOC (Inej, Chapter 33) | Favorite Scene(s) -> Grishaverse

Kanej | Chapter 38 | Kaz | “The sobs he’d ignored.”

Kanej | Chapter 42 | Inej | “I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.” [Version 1] / [Version 2*]

Pekka & Kaz | Chapter 46 | Pekka | “I respect your drive, kid. And I understand. You want your money; you want the Wraith back; you want a bit of Van Eck’s hide—”

Six of Crows Insp Quotes (quotes that insp the sets):

Kanej | Chapter 3 | Kaz | Inej’s Saints (multiple quotes)

Inej & Kanej | Chapter 4 | Inej | “One minute [Kaz] made [Inej] blush and the next he made her want to commit murder.”

Kanej | Chapter 6 | Nina | “But Kaz’ll keep to any deal you strike with him.”

Kaz | Chapter 10 | Inej | “The thick sheaf of his dark hair was combed back, the sides trimmed short as always.”

Inej & Jesper | Chapter 17 | Jesper | “That makes you a rotten gambler, Jesper. But an excellent friend.”

Kanej | Chapter 18 | Kaz | “I’ll get us out. You know that.”

Kanej | Chapter 25 | Inej | “The truth was [Inej had] tried to sneak up on Kaz plenty of times since then. She’d never managed it. It was as if once Kaz had seen her, he’d understood how to keep seeing her.“

Inej | Chapter 25 | Inej | Inej + prayer 

Kanej | Chapter 38 | Kaz | “[inej] laughed, and if [kaz] could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have.”

Kanej | Chapter 45 | Kaz | “he looked at inej.”

Six of Crows Insp Quotes (concept sets):

Inej | Chapter 2 | Inej | “the only law that applied to her was gravity, and some days she defied that, too.” 

Kaz & Jesper | Chapter 3 | Kaz | “Kaz could have told Jesper that he knew he wasn’t dirty, reminded him that he’d trusted him enough to make him his only real second in a fight that could have gone badly wrong tonight.”

Kanej | Chapter 4 | Inej | “We’ll be kings and queens, Inej. Kings and queens.” 

Wesper | Chapter 8 | Jesper | “You’re passable at demo. You’re excellent at hostage.” 

Kanej | Chapter 18 | Kaz | “Instead he thought, What happens if I move closer?” 

Inej | Chapter 25 | Inej |  “Four million kruge, freedom, a chance to return home.” 

Kaz | Chapter 26 / 45 | Kaz | Kaz’ real name (multiple quotes)

Kanej | SOC (Chapter 26, Inej) & CK (Chapter 26, Kaz) | “I can help you.”

The Crows | Chapter 28 | Inej | “A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost grisha, a suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.”

OG Crows | Chapter 38 | Kaz | “You shouldn’t make friends with crows” / “Why not?” 

Kanej | Chapter 38 | Kaz | “But all he could think of was Inej. she had to live. she had to have made it out of the ice court. and if she hadn’t, then he had to live to rescue her.”

Kanej | Chapter 38 | Kaz | “He needed to thank her for his new hat.”

Crooked Kingdom Quotes (manip scenes):

Kanej | Chapter 11 | Inej | “Did he hurt you.” / “ No. He didn’t hurt me.”

Kanej | Chapter 12 | Kaz | “Why the net?”

Inej & Jesper | Chapter 23 | Wylan | “Jesper Llewellyn Fahey?”

Kanej | Chapter 26 (insp/based on) | Kaz | there was only one bed au/injured!Kaz

Kanej | Chapter 26 | Kaz | “Inej was stronger than he would ever be.”

Wesper | Chapter 28 | Jesper | "Stop.”

Wesper | Chapter 28 | Jesper | “I can read to him.”

The Crows (4/6) | Chapter 42 | Jesper | “It was a little like forgiveness.”

Crows | Chapter 42 | Jesper | “It was a little like forgiveness.”

Kanej | Chapter 44 | Inej | “How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster.”

Kanej | Chapter 44 | Inej | “That’s the laugh.”

Kanej & Inej’s Parents | Chapter 44 | Inej | Inej saw [her parents] in turn, saw her mother grip her father’s arm. They were running towards her.

Inej | Chapter 44 | Pekka | “Death is a gift you haven’t yet earned.”

Crooked Kingdom Insp Quotes (quotes that insp the sets):

Kanej | Chapter 2 | Wylan | “They were the last words he’d spoken. If he’d talked less, he might have lived.”

**Wylan | Chapter 14 | “My mother is Ketterdam. She birthed me in the harbor.”

Inej & Jesper | Chapter 24 | Jesper | “Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo.” 

Inej | Chapter 27 | Inej | “She’d often wished to chip away a bit of his arrogance, but she couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Kaz stripped of his pride.”

Crooked Kingdom Insp Quotes (concept sets):

Inej | Chapter 4 | Inej | I may not have Kaz’s devious mind, but I am a dangerous girl.

Inej | Chapter 4 | Inej | “[Inej] named the blades anyway—Petyr, Marya, Anastasia, Lizabeta, Sankt Vladimir, Sankta Alina—and found courage in each whispered word.”

Kanej | Chapter 11 | Inej | “She had wanted to believe they’d become more to each other. Jan Van Eck had robbed her of that illusion.”

Kaz | Chapter 11 | Inej | “Inej remembered the way the sun had caught the brown in his eyes only hours before.”

Kanej | Chapter 12 | Kaz | “Kaz held her gaze, saw the moon reflected there, twin scythes of light.”

Wylan & the Crows | Chapter 23 | Wylan | “Wylan hadn’t quite understood how much they meant to him.”

Kanej | Chapter 12 | Kaz | “But they’d tried. He’d tried. Maybe they could try again.”

Inej | Chapter 35 | Inej | “When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.” 

Kanej | Chapter 44 | Inej | “Her life had been a series of impossible moments, so why not ask for something impossible now?”

OG Crows | Chapter 44 | Inej | “They tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for.” [V1] [V2]

Kanej | Chapter 44 | Inej | “The boy beside her. The future before her. Anything was possible.” [V1] [V2]

Cracked sets / AU Sets (SOC - AU)

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | were we meant to have a happy ending? (not in this lifetime)

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | roomy, and drenched in sunlight

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | ghost maker

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | A Ghost Girl’s Guide to Ketterdam

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | The Four Seasons 

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | The Bastard Saint Of The Barrel

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | call it by name

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | Call from the Grave

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | All Kinds Of New Friends

AU | Kanej | Fic Rec | My Dearest Inej  

AU | Kanej | Collab w/ oneofthewednesdays​  | “That Laugh?” 

AU | Kanej | Criminals/Partners in Crime | after a heist goes wrong, kaz  has to clean up inej’s first kill. (part i)

AU | Kanej | Criminals/Partners in Crime | kaz lets inej take lead on their next heist. (part ii)

AU | Kanej | Meeting the Parents | after a bad first impression, inej tries to get kaz to have dinner with her and her parents.

AU | Kanej | Married | Insp by Fic

AU | Kanej | Circus | Magician!Kaz and Acrobat!Inej

AU |  Kanej | Reincarnation | maybe i’ll see you in another life / if this one wasn’t enough

AU | Kanej | Hadestown | orpheus as inej & eurydice as kaz

AU | Kanej | Reunion at Van Eck | “Captain Ghafa.” / “Kaz.”

AU | Kanej | Reunion - Handhand Holding | “Welcome back... Inej.”

AU | Kanej & Wesper | Scheming faces | Scheming face?

AU | Wesper | Prince & the Soldier | “Lost Princeling”

AU | Kanej | Sick AU | “What are you doing here?”

AU | Crows | College Majors | Various - Multi

Cracked sets / AU Sets (SOC - Incorrect Quotes)

Incorrect Quote | Jesper & Kaz | Mr. Iglesias | Good morning, Kaz.

Incorrect Quote | Crows | B99 | Rules are made to be broken.

Incorrect Quote | Kanej (ft. Jesper) | Unk | Kaz says “I love you” weird

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Community | And remember, kids: Don’t die.

Incorrect Quote | OG Crows | Unk | “You don’t want Kaz to die.”

Incorrect Quote | Kanej (ft. Jesper and Alina) | The IT Crowd | “Just say you’re sorry and move on.

Incorrect Quote | Kanej (ft. the Crows) | Unk/Insp | Kaz likes Inej.

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Bob’s Burgers | “I am the voice of the night!”

Incorrect Quote | Kaz & Wylan | POI/CK | “My mother is Ketterdam. She birthed me in the harbor.” (repeat)

Incorrect Quote | OG Crows | Parks & Recs | Codenames

Incorrect Quote | Kanej | Unkn/Insp | “We could...” 

Incorrect Quote | Kanej | Spikey44 | “...a simple I love you, or thanks now and then would be appreciated.”

Incorrect Quote/Book Quote | Kanej | Tumblr/SOC (42) | “Why are you so cold to Inej?” / “I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.” [Version 2*] (Repeat)

Incorrect Quote | Kanej | Unk | “Schrodinger's Cat”

Incorrect Quote | Kanej ft. Jesper | OFMD | “I would love to be stabbed by Inej.”

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Phineas and Ferb*| “Just twice.”

Incorrect Quote | Crows | The Simpsons | “I’d kill for you.”  

Incorrect Quotes | Crows | Unk | “How did none of you hear what I just said?”

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Unk | Blocking People in Real Life

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Unk | Arrest Charges? (v1 & v2)

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Unk | Murder

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Unk | [Sneezes.]

Incorrect Quote | Crows | Unk | “Saints.”

Other (Grishaverse): 

Manip scene: Shadow and Bone | Chapter 14 | “Just… be careful.” / [Alina] stared at [Genya], baffled. “Of what?” / “Of powerful men.”

Concept: Siege and Storm | Chapter 16 | “But I never thought, I never believed … all those people…”

Concept: Siege and Storm | Chapter 23 | “I have loved you all my life, Mal,” [Alina] whispered through [her] tears. “There is no end to our story.”

Concept: Ruin and Rising | Chapter 7 | I am not ruined, I am ruination (na razrusha'ya.  e‘ya razrushost.) (insp quote) [V1] [V2]

Manip scene: Grishas | Ruin and Rising | Chapter 8 | “I need to show you something,” [Alina] said.

Manip scene: Inej & Genya | R&R (Chapter 8) & SOC (Inej, Chapter 33) | Favorite Scene(s) -> Grishaverse* (repeat)

Manip scene: Rule of Wolves | Chapter 28 | Zoya | “It’s for Inej.”

Manip scene: Rule of Wolves | Chapter 28 | Zoya | “And when you rush a job, you don’t get to complain when the job goes wrong.

[ace-in-a-shopping-cart]

Writing Masterpost

About Me

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Reblogs >>>>> likes

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Requests are: Open

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Six of Crows Masterpost

[krugerevengeinej]

Ok so my biggest fucking pet peeve for the soc fandom

Is people mixing up the slat and the crow club

So let’s do this right here right now. I will highlight the differences of each and which important scenes took place in which building. And imma use color cuz why the fuck not

The Slat: Is where Kaz runs the dregs, it’s where his attic is and where some members of the gang live. I’m assuming it also has some form of bar because people are still drinking and partying at the slat. But essentially it’s the gang’s home.

Some scenes that took place in the slat:

Kaz’s conversation with per Haskell in the beginning

Kaz stripping in front of Inej

Kaz beating the shit out of a bunch of gang members(he was fighting to win back his home not his gambling den)

Like that one scene at the end of crooked kingdom before Kaz gets half drowned by the council of tides

The Crow Club: Is a business owned by Kaz and the dregs. He has been the floor boss since he was 15, and he worked very hard to get it running. But he does sell his shares in the club to Pekka.

Some scenes that took place in the Crow Club:

Inej firing Rojakke

Matthias deciding to participate in the heist in exchange for his pardon

(Also the slat was a piece of shit and Kaz fixed it up)

[manikas-whims]

Kanej Hair Headcanon

I think some must’ve already said this in the past but I headcanon Kanej loving each other’s hair (canon Kaz already does, i know).

When Nina made fun of Kaz’s haircut, i just couldn’t help but wonder: does he even get his hair cut? He was so repulsed by touch so I believe that for most part of his life sans his brother, Kaz got used to cutting his hair on his own.

So just imagine post-ck Kanej healing and Inej is the first person whom Kaz lets touch his hair in so many years. Slowly, he gets used to her running her fingers through his scalp and she does give really good head messages, almost to the point he finds himself dozing off.

One time when Inej returns from another of her slaver hunt, she notices his hair is slightly longer than its usual length. And she immediately takes up the task of trimming it for him. He is unsure, not because he’s afraid of her touching him but because he isn’t confident in Inej’s skills with a scissor as much as with knives. But she manages a decent job, if we ignore the minor cut above his ear..

Similarly, in Kaz’s case, imagine he finally decides to touch the glorious long hair he keeps fantasizing about. He learns that the real sensation of her untied, silky locks between his slender fingers is far more amazing than what he’d imagined. When he’s more used to it, he starts playing with it at random. Like absentmindedly twirling a lock as they sit by his room’s window and talk late at nights and such..

One time when Inej is about to leave for another hunt and is in the midst of getting ready, Kaz offers to do her hair. She happily hands him the comb and he slowly cards it through all the tangles and when he’s satisfied, he starts braiding it. Admittedly, its not as tight as when Inej does it herself, its still good enough. Besides, she’s just happy he did it for her.

And so, cutting Kaz’s hair & styling Inej’s hair, becomes a normal routine for them..

SoC Masterlist

[kettrdamned]

once i’m finished reading rule of wolves .... i’m gonna re-read soc / ck so i can make a masterlist of top ten times kaz brekker was autistic in canon (not clickbait) 

[xonepeacelovex]

main masterlist | xonepeacelovex

Stray Kids

DAY6

GOT7

B.I

Treasure

treasure imagines as songs from folklore (deluxe version)

Asahi Hamada

the playlist

the playlist | soc med au

Park Jihoon & Kim Junkyu | JiKyu

F*ck

TXT

Choi Beomgyu

the last act

Others

Song Inspired AU

LANY: mama’s boy album inspired au

Hozier : someone new inspired au

♫  Songs Inspiration  ♫

Copyright © 2020 xonepeacelovex All rights reserved.

[garfinkelstingle]

cowboy like me | kaz brekker

pairing: kaz brekker x fem!reader

warnings: none that i know of, although there’s slight spoilers to kaz’s back story- no spoilers to the plot of either soc or ck though !

word count: 2k

summary: based on taylor swifts “cowboy like me”; the bastard of the barrel was supposed to be just another con, and yet he turned out to be that much more

a/n: aah first time writing for someone other than draco and even though i’m a little scared i’m also super excited for people to read this !!! i’ve been in a writing slump but i recently read shadow & bone (so expect nikolai x reader and darkling x reader fics in the near future tehehe) and six of crows (even though i havent finished crooked kingdom yet rip) and i’m positively obsessed with my best boy kazzy!!!! so i really hope u enjoy reading this as much as i did writing it!! xxx

masterlist

They told her she was a fool, and maybe they were right. In fact, she was certain they were, because only a fool would fall for someone who carried the name Dirtyhands with nothing short of pride.

And yet here she was, gazing at him like the lovestruck fool that she was, while he was counting the kruge she brought back home earlier today.

Home. It was an insane concept to someone like her, someone who hadn’t called any place home since she had been barely six years old. She didn’t remember much of her life from before she came to reside at the Barrel, only enough to know that one day she had a family, people who cared about her and made sure she had food in her belly and boots on her feet, and the next day she suddenly didn’t.

It was hard, being a child in the most dangerous part of Ketterdam, but she managed, somehow. Not without damage, though. Those early years taught her that unless people needed something from you, they didn’t care about you, and in order to survive you needed to learn to not care about the people you needed things from in return.

That’s how she met him, and really, it’s quite ironic, and maybe they’re not wrong for calling her a fool because who would be idiotic enough to try to swindle the Bastard of the Barrel out of his money? But maybe that’s why she did it in the first place, because screwing over rich merchants was growing tiresome and after years of the same tedious and monotone routine she was finally ready for a real challenge. Or maybe if she would be honest with herself for just a second, she’d be willing to admit that she was a goner the moment she laid eyes on him that very first time, and that everything that came next was nothing but a series of meticulously planned events to get her exactly to where she was right now.

Finding out where he would be that night wasn’t hard at all. She was lucky to have been born with assets that could get her to make any man talk, let alone give her whatever money he had in his pockets and anything else her heart desired. She supposed it was only fair considering she hadn’t been very lucky in pretty much every other aspect of her life.

The hard part that night was to get him alone. There was barely anything she didn’t manage to find out about him, like how there was pretty much nothing in this world Kaz Brekker cared about more than kruge and any other riches he could get his hands on, or how in all the time that he was a part of the Dregs, there has never been a girl— or even a boy— that piqued his interest for anything other than a job or pay-check. To say that she was intrigued would have been an understatement, the same way that saying that she wasn’t at least a little bit worried that she would fail would be a lie.

However, she wasn’t really in the business of not getting what she wanted, which is why she was adamant on not only getting her hands on Kaz’s money, but also on him in general, so after a flute (or possibly three) of champagne to gain some courage, she twirled her way through the merchant’s house, drinking in the attention of pretty much every single man, and even a handful of— albeit mostly jealous— women, on her figure in her skin-tight red dress that had been a gift from her previous conquest, to stand right in front of him, just to have him keep on looking as if she wasn’t even there.

“You’re doing a very poor job of being inconspicuous, Mister Brekker.”

That seemed to snap him out of whatever thoughts were filling that scheming head of his, because finally, for the first time that night, he drank in her appearance next to him, and with a tilt of his head asked her “I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about, Miss.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, everyone is staring at me as if I’m the thing they desire most. You, however, have not averted your eyes from the necklace on that ugly woman’s neck in more than an hour. If you don’t look at my breasts within the next couple seconds, people will assume there is either something terribly wrong with you, or that you didn’t come here to mingle with the elite after all.” she said, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

He didn’t bite, though, and instead kept staring into her eyes, only betraying the effect her words had on him with a single twitch of a muscle in his jaw. “Maybe there is something wrong with me. Sufficed to say, I still have no idea what you’re talking about, Miss.” he said, adding more venom than necessary to the last word.

She wasn’t an amateur, which is how she knew that everyone’s eyes were still on them, and that if she didn’t diffuse the tense situation within the next few seconds, people would start to ask questions, and whatever small chance she might’ve had with the Bastard of the Barrel would evaporate into thin air. Which is why she forced out an airy giggle and leaned in to whisper into his ear “If I get her to give me the necklace within the next ten minutes, will you leave this horrible place with me and buy me a drink?”

He wasn’t convinced, she knew that, because everything about him, from his posture to the look he was giving her, practically screamed that he wasn’t above cutting her up if she screwed this up for him, and yet she was confident enough to blow him a kiss and give him a wink, and then she was gone once again, twirling around the room with everyone’s eyes glued on her, except this time, his eyes were on her, too.

Getting the necklace wasn’t hard. After all, this was how she made her living, how she survived in the darkest part of a city that lived on deceit and deception, how she kept from becoming one of the girls in the Menagerie or one of the other pleasure houses. Of course this wasn’t the life she dreamt of living as a child, but it’s the life she realised would give her everything she needed, and on her terms. She never went after anyone or anything she didn’t want, and the second someone became too dangerous, she wasn’t stupid enough to stick around and watch the life she made for herself burn to the ground.

But this was easy. All she had to do was compliment the woman on the necklace, and then tell her some sob-story, how her mother had a similar one, how it got stolen after she died, and thus the last part that she had of her with it. How she searched all of Kerch for one just like that, and how once she did she realised that she would never be able to afford it, but that she wished the woman to be as happy with it as her mother had been. She didn’t even have to cry and ruin her make-up, because the second the first tear escaped her eye, the woman was unclasping the necklace and putting it on her neck instead, giving her a pat on the cheek when she weakly protested “This is too much, I couldn’t possibly accept it.” And with one last hug and watery thank you, she was winking at him again, making her way towards the door and out into the cold Ketterdam night, but not without catching the look of obvious astonishment he was giving her, and how his mouth almost formed a smile.

She knew right then and there that all the riches of the world couldn’t buy her something that would make her feel the same as his smile did.

The one drink he owed her quickly turned into dinner the next day and him asking her to accompany him on his next heist, and even though her supposed plan was to trick him out of all of his money, she would’ve ripped off every single person, merchant or beggar, in all of Kerch just to have a reason to see him again.

It didn’t take long for her after that to go against everything she believed in, against every single rule and promise she had ever made to herself and to become fully and wholly his. Not a part of the Dregs or any other gang or institution in the Barrel; just Kaz’s, only Kaz’s.

And it was perfect. She still worked the same way she always had, because even though she was foolish enough to fall in love and be happy, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that it couldn’t be taken away from her any second, and she wasn’t about to be left again with nothing but her worn out coat and not a penny to her name. So she continued working, albeit only sticking to deceiving the merchants and their wives with words and smiles, nothing else. There were moments when she missed that part of her old life, the thrill of getting someone to come into bed with her when they were dancing with their spouse mere minutes ago, and yet she wouldn’t trade what she had with Kaz for even a single second of any of that, even in the moments when it got hard. And it did.

As much as she loved Kaz, and as much as she knew that he loved her, there were moments when she would trade the whole entire world just for him to hold her, even if it was with twenty layers of clothes, and yet she would never push him to do anything he wasn’t entirely comfortable with because his happiness came first to her, always. And of course she hated the whispers, the never ending glances in her direction and badly hid mumbles of “A man who doesn’t touch his dame is a man who touches someone else’s” but even without his reassurances she knew that there was no truth to it, not only because she knew better than anyone else that Kaz Brekker wasn’t doing any touching that didn’t involve holding someone steady while cutting their throat open with quite literally anyone, but because she knew that he never would’ve opened up to her as much as he did if he didn’t love her.

She remembered crying when he had first told her about Jordie, when he explained to her why he was the way that he was and when, for the first time since she’d known him, he looked unsure and uncertain, scared even, and when he told her that he would never be able to give her the life she deserved, and that she should probably run while the damage leaving would cause would still be at a minimum. She had told him, then, that she would never leave him, come high, come low, and that she would stay by his side for as long as he’d have her and she knew, without any doubt in her mind, that he felt the exact same way.

So maybe she was a fool for falling for the Bastard of the Barrel, but really, if it brought her to right now, to counting kruge with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, after tricking yet another rich merchant to empty out his pockets for her, to carefully taking his gloves off and intertwining their fingers, to having him smile that heavenly smile at her that he reserved solely for her, to having him look at her with the same exact lovestruck expression she looked at him with? Well, then maybe there were worse things in life than being considered a fool.

[manikas-whims]

Post CK Kanej

Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa

King of the Barrel • Queen on the Seas

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*Tag me if you write a fic inspired by this ♥

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