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The letter arrived with the morning fog. A simple envelope, unmarked except for his name scrawled across the front in a hand that was anything but familiar. Kaz sat behind his desk in the Slat, cane resting against the arm of his chair, the faint rasp of Ketterdam rain on the windows behind him. He did not open it right away. He never did. Letters could carry more than words—powdered toxins, sharp edges tucked beneath the flap, curses hidden between inked lines. But something about the uneven scrawl of his name made his gut twist.
He slit the seal with his letter opener.
The words inside were brief, rushed. The Wraith will soon dock at Ketterdam. Please have a healer ready on standby.
The signature was nothing but a mark—someone who had never written much in their life, or whose hand was shaking so violently they could barely force pen to paper.
That was all.
No elaboration. No flourish. No “Saints keep you, Kaz.”
Not Inej.
His pulse faltered for half a beat, then roared back, sharper, louder. Not Inej. She always wrote herself. Her hand was steady, her script precise, elegant in a way that reflected the discipline with which she lived. The absence of her letters these past weeks had already gnawed at him, but now, confronted with this…
The cane slipped slightly beneath his grip before he corrected it. His mind began to stitch the pieces together with brutal efficiency: her silence, this letter written by another hand, the request for a healer. His stomach turned to ice. He forced his jaw shut against the swell of panic, but the dread pooled low, heavy and cold, as though he’d swallowed stones.
He moved.
Jesper, was summoned in quick succession.
Jesper’s head popped into the office a moment later, too jaunty for the acid that was burning a hole through Kaz’s gut. “You rang, oh great—”
“Get me the best Grisha healer in Ketterdam. Now. If they hesitate, make them an offer they can’t refuse. If they still hesitate, make sure they don’t walk away from you without agreeing. And send Rotty to every apothecary in the city—anything that might be useful for a healer, I want it here by sundown.”
Jesper blinked once, twice. “What’s happened?”
“Now, Jesper.”
Something in his tone—quiet, cold, sharp—made Jesper sober instantly. “Right. On it.”
Kaz gave no explanation. His orders were enough. They knew better than to ask when his voice was edged with glass.
—
By evening, the harbor was alive with the rattle of chains and creak of mooring lines. Lanterns swung in the breeze, casting fractured light over water slick as oil. Kaz stood with his seconds, his cane digging into the wood of the dock, the other hand hidden in his coat pocket where it clenched tight enough to leave crescents in his palm. Behind him, the Grisha healer Jesper had found—a woman with steel-grey hair and eyes sharp as razors—waited with her satchel. Another stood nearby, a boy no older than twenty who wouldn’t meet Kaz’s gaze. Between them sat a cart piled with supplies, everything from bloodletting instruments to bags of dried herbs.
The Wraith glided into berth, her sails folding with weary grace. The gangway was lowered with a groan, and the first figure to appear was Declan, Inej’s helmsman. Kaz recognized him by the broad shoulders and the seafarer’s stance. Tonight, though, Declan looked smaller, diminished. His eyes found Kaz, then flickered down and away. His face was carved with exhaustion and something darker—fear, guilt.
Kaz didn’t wait. He strode up the gangway, each strike of his cane a warning. Declan shifted aside, his head bowed. No words. No explanations. None were needed.
The captain’s quarters smelled of death.
Kaz stopped at the threshold, his stomach lurching. The stench was one he knew too well—blood soaked into wood, the sour tang of sweat, the sickly sweetness of infection. He pressed the crow’s head of his cane until the iron creaked beneath his grip.
She lay on the bed.
Inej.
Her skin, usually rich with warmth, looked greyed, drained of the life he had always thought indestructible. Strands of her dark hair clung damply to her temples, curling like ink brushstrokes across parchment. She looked too still, her body diminished against the bedding, a fragile outline where once had stood a woman made of steel and storm.
Don’t think it.
She will push through. She always does.
He repeated it silently, an incantation, a desperate mantra against the rising tide of dread. She will. She will. She will.
The healer rushed past him, pulling on gloves, snapping open her satchel. Kaz remained at the doorway, unable to advance, remembering another time—the Ferolind, Nina’s voice sharp in his ears, his own feet rooted to the deck while Inej’s blood spilled out across the planks. That same paralysis clawed at him now, but he refused it. With spine rigid and shoulders taut, he forced himself across the room, positioning in the far corner like a sentinel carved of stone.
Scissors glinted. The healer cut through the gauze binding Inej’s middle, peeling it away to reveal crimson-soaked bandages beneath. The fresh tang of iron filled the air, searing his nostrils. His gaze locked on the motion of the healer’s hands though every instinct screamed to turn away. He couldn’t—not when it was her.
Time fractured. Minutes became hours, hours a long night stretched taut as wire. Inej’s crew moved in and out like ghosts, bringing water, cloths, buckets for discarded rags steeped in blood. The healer worked ceaselessly, her murmurs low, her hands steady. Kaz stood vigil, not once allowing his cane to rest, though his legs burned and trembled. Only when dawn broke, pale light seeping through the porthole, did he relent, dragging a chair from behind Inej’s desk and lowering himself onto it.
He did not sleep. He did not blink. He simply watched, each breath tethered to the faint sound of hers.
When morning came, he summoned Jesper into the quarters. “Retrieve my ledgers from the Slat,” Kaz ordered, his voice a whisper edged with steel. “Do it quietly. No one is to know I’m here.”
Jesper, uncharacteristically solemn, nodded once and left. Soon after, the ledgers were delivered. Kaz opened them upon Inej’s desk, her pen in hand, his figures and notes filling the silence as the healer continued her work. The rhythm of her breathing became his metronome, steady, grounding. It kept the tremor from his fingers, the fear from spilling past the bars he had locked it behind.
—
He left only once to bathe and change his clothes, returning before the hour could turn. The second day blurred into the third, marked only by the slow rise and fall of her chest, the healer’s updates whispered in clinical tones. Infection had been cut out, the wound cleaned, flesh stitched back together. Still, her body lingered in the space between.
It was the third evening—two and a half days since he first walked into the room—that Kaz stood by the porthole, staring down into the endless black of the sea. His hands were clasped behind his back, shoulders locked to keep them from trembling. He had imagined her waking a hundred times, her voice, her eyes opening, her smirk at his expense. He had imagined it so often he feared his mind might conjure it only to torment him.
Then—rustle of sheets.
He went rigid. His breath caught. For a long, still moment, he told himself it was nothing, the healer adjusting bandages, the wind.
Then a low groan broke the silence.
“You should be more considerate,” Kaz said, voice rougher than he intended, “about what your poor health does to those around you, Inej.”
A pause. Then, incredulous: “Kaz?”
He turned.
Her eyes, hazy with exhaustion, found him. She looked fragile, yes, her body weakened, but she was awake. Alive. His teeth clenched as the tightness in his chest almost broke him.
“You had Jesper, Wylan, everyone in your crew worried,” he said.
Me. You had me worried sick.
Her brow arched faintly, even now. “Tell them I apologize for the inconvenience,” she rasped, propping herself weakly on her elbows. “I was too busy trying not to die.”
They both knew she wasn’t talking about Jesper or Wylan or anyone else. She always could cut straight through the layers of armor he wore.
Kaz stepped closer, taking in her thin, too-small shape on the bed. “I’ll retrieve the healer. She’ll want to check you over.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait.”
He stopped, glanced over his shoulder.
“How long have I been out?” she asked softly.
“Two and a half days.”
Her dark eyes scanned the room, then landed on him. “And you… have you been here the whole time?”
Kaz’s lips pressed into a line. “Yes. Your desk chair is more comfortable than mine. I wanted to use it.”
Her look told him she saw straight through him. The lie was weak, and they both knew it.
“I’m fetching the healer,” he muttered, escaping into motion.
The healer confirmed she was stable, bustling about with renewed vigor. Kaz remained on the deck, gripping the railing until his knuckles burned, his insides caught in a war he had no weapon for. Frightened by her mortality, terrified by the weight of what she meant to him.
When he returned, Inej was waiting, sitting slightly more upright.
“You need to eat,” he told her. “Strength won’t return on water alone.”
Her lips quirked, the faintest shadow of her old smile. He turned as if to leave again when she caught his sleeve, her fingers weak but insistent.
“Thank you,” she said softly, brows knitting together.
Kaz froze, then pulled out of her grip—but before she could withdraw, he caught her wrist and slid his gloved hand down until their fingers locked.
He leaned closer.
“Let’s make a bargain, Wraith. For my services today, you will repay me by keeping your eyes sharp on the sea. Always watch for danger. Always.”
Her lips curved faintly. “Deal.”
For the first time in days, the tension in his chest loosened—just slightly. The rhythm of her breath once again became his anchor. And Kaz Brekker, who had stood vigil through two endless nights, allowed himself to believe she would keep breathing tomorrow, too.