BOMBS AWAY ➤ kaz brekker

devil child

Esther hadn't spoken to Kaz since she burned his hand and left him on the docks. But she had thought of him every second of the last three days, even in her sleep. In her dreams, she was repeatedly choked by long-fingered hands gloved in black leather. Her entire body would light on fire, but she could never chase the nightmares away. Instead, the flames she loved devoured her from the inside out. 

During the day, she kept thinking about her last words to him. Every time you make me kill someone, I will kill a part of you. She didn't know who or what she was anymore. She thought she could avoid murder in Ketterdam, but she'd become the exact thing she feared. She killed, and killed, and killed, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to stop. The child in her told her that everything would be alright, that she would survive this. She wouldn't kill anymore, not even if it was Kaz. But the hardening Esther silenced  the child. You and I don't know each other anymore. Faintly, she wondered if she was becoming a devil child like Kaz.

As soon as she thought that, she curled up underneath the blankets in her bed, pressing her hands against her ears. Nononononononononono. You're a good person. You're a good person. You can fix this. 

But another part of her struggled to find hope. Why fight it? She asked herself. You have killed. What's another life taken by you? What's more blood on your hands?

And above it all, What would Kaz think? What would the boy Kaz think of her huddled in her bed, pleading with herself? He would have come to her, held her in his arms, and reminded her that she didn't have to let her actions define her. The new Kaz would have stared at her, eternally unforgiving, and told her to get over it. Yet she couldn't help but think that the cruel Kaz was right. She was in Ketterdam, and crying wouldn't keep her out of debt or put food on the table. There was no one good enough to pity her here. She had to be ruthless, and she had to be reminded of how.

Who was the first person who showed her what it was like to hurt people and not give a damn? It wasn't her sister, or her stepmother. They had tortured her behind the whitewashed wooden walls of the Janssen farmhouse. It wasn't her father, who had watched while her sister tied her up in the rafters of the barn, or bit her so hard she bled; her father, who had stayed silent while her stepmother locked her in her room without food or water. It wasn't even monstrous, murderous Kaz, who made her watch while bodies were flung into the air from the force of an explosion she created. It was Joris Janssen, who had conned her father out of most of his money and made a name for himself as one of the most powerful men in Ketterdam. 

Esther went to pay a visit to her uncle.

When she first arrived in Ketterdam, she had considered going to her uncle for help. He was rich and prosperous, and could have easily provided her with a home and an allowance of more than her father made every year. He could have taught her how to scheme and plan within the law, taking money from the innocent to build his empire. But that was when she still had hope, when she still could find it in her to love her father, and could never really betray him for her uncle. Now, the story was different. She didn't care about her father - she couldn't afford to - and if her uncle had asked her to deepen his debt or send him into bankruptcy, she would have done it, if there was something in it for her. She wondered when exactly she had changed into the beginnings of a monster.

Esther hurried through the well-manicured streets of the richest, most upstanding part of the city - somewhere she definitely didn't belong. While she didn't look exactly rowdy or untrustworthy, she was more ragged than was acceptable in those parts, and there was a wild look in her eye that would make mothers drag their children across the street when they saw her coming. My uncle is going to teach me how to let go of everything I used to love. He's going to teach me how to burn my heart.