THE STREETS OF KETTERDAM are made for runaways. With tourists and locals crowding the streets during the day and shadows and drunks during the night, it's easy to slip into the flow of traffic and disappear.
When Estera was little, her father would bring back stories of Ketterdam with him when he returned from chaperoning his harvest to the city to be sold. He told her about the University District, where he told her she could learn anything she liked, from science to poetry to medicine. It was poetry that had struck an interest in her, even at such a young age. It was a love she shared with both of her parents, who would write each other love poems and slip the notes into each other's pockets.
But Estera never got the chance to go to the University District like her mother and father had hoped she might. And even if she had, it wasn't like they were alive to see it happen.
Anatol and Irsia Moers had been dead since she was thirteen, gone within two weeks of each other, both taken by an illness no one could name. Estera hadn't even found out until Kaz told her two years after.
Most days, she can't remember their faces. Only the sound of her mother calling her home for supper, or the smell of grapes and grass her father always carried with him from the vineyard.
Estera pushes the thoughts away. Mourning has no place here. The city is alive, and it hungers for weakness like a monster hungers for flesh.
Tonight, the streets of Ketterdam are no louder or rowdier than usual, but Estera feels a change in the air. It could just be the longer-than-normal winter muddling her perception, but she swears the night air carries a tension in it, as if the Saints or gods or whoever are watching Ketterdam with bated breath, waiting for... something.
Estera is no Wraith, so Kaz spots her easily as he walks down the alley beneath the roof she's perched on. It's as easy to spot her somewhere above the streets as it is to spot her at Kaz Brekker's side, watching from a vantage point few could stomach without the standard fear of heights. When she was a child, Estera had had the same fear, but after being forced to jump from higher and higher points during her training as a Squaller, learning to catch herself on a draft before she could hit the ground, the fear has been stamped out.
Now, heights are her kingdom, and she wears her crown proudly. She is every bit the crow that drinks from a cup on her forearm—the only thing she's missing is wings, though she certainly doesn't need them.
Kaz doesn't speak when he meets her gaze. Not that she would have been able to hear him from ten stories up, not unless he shouted, and Kaz rarely shouts. The poisonous threats and taunts that spills from his lips are as lethal in a whisper as they are in a yell.
Estera pushes herself off the edge of the roof, reveling in the familiar feeling of wind racing past before summoning an updraft to slow her fall. Kaz tracks the movement with his nearly pitch black eyes until her feet connect lightly with the ground.
"You're not dead," she says in lieu of a greeting.
"You sound disappointed." He resumes his walk, and Estera falls into step beside him.
"Devastated," Estera says. "I was sure the Black Tips would have at least left you with some sort of bloody trophy."
"Would you have preferred a gunshot or a stab?"
Estera smiles teasingly at him. "Why not both?"
"Ambitious," he says. "I'll try to be more obliging next time I face-off against a rival gang."
"Please do. And invite me so I can bear witness."
There isn't even a shift in his expression. "Not a chance."
YOU ARE READING
Stars ― Kaz Brekker
Fanfiction[SLOW UPDATES] 𝘪 𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘬𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴 ， 𝘪 𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴， 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵，𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘺 𝘺𝘰�...
