TROUBLE , kaz brekker

xxi. if there are saints, i'm going to make them cry

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ARE MONSTERS BORN OR created?

Running for one's life was hardly the time for these moral dilemmas, but Echo had a feeble hold on her mind on the best of days and her preoccupation with trying to not die in a West Ravkan suburb gave her subconscious free rein on the darkest precipices of her thought.

As she stumbled through building and stone, Echo couldn't shake the feelings that bombarded her mind. They suffocated her until she could barely fight to keep one aching foot in-front of the other.

Her sister was close, she could feel it, like a calling in her blood. Two halves of one terrible whole. An ungodly grisha and her ungodly amplifier.

Was monstrosity given to nameless clusters that swam in the unending darkness, or was it something children tore apart with sharpened teeth? Did abomination choose us, or did we choose abomination?

Echo ran with heavy breaths, with every strain of her lungs there was the brutal reminder that it could be her last. She had one job: do not be seen. She could keep the air flowing through her lungs but she could not be seen. To be seen was to give in to the grisha power that flowed through her sister's veins. In darkness, she was safe.

She was running down an alley with the manic looks of an injured animal and so, it was no surprise when the handful of civilians still roaming the streets parted and cleared the way for her frantic run.

What she wouldn't give for the surety of Ketterdam in that moment. Sure, Echo may have felt like little more than a flea of the back of the boundless island but at least in Ketterdam there was her Crows. They were just that - hers. She wondered if she'd ever get to tell them.

So maybe Ravka wouldn't save her. But Ketterdam still could.

Her induction into the criminal life was short but sweet and if her memory was good ( which, obviously, it was ) then Echo could still rely on the lessons she'd learnt across the waves.

One: location. Jesper had said that an enemy could wear the strongest armour the Saints ever smelt but once you dropped them in the harbour, they'd only sink a little faster than the rest. She needed to pick her ground. And pick it well.

Whilst Echo didn't know Ravka like she knew the streets of home, there was one thing that stayed the same from Shu Han to the Western Isles. She could marry Kaz for making her a bartender, damn his punishments. No windows, closed until the work day came to an end. It was the perfect, secluded graveyard.

Bars in Ravka, as in the rest of the world, were a dime a dozen and so, Echo had no problem finding one, slipping between locked doors and settling into the darkness.

Two: subtlety. Granted, this was never Echo's strong suit but at least Inej had tried to teach the red-head how to walk through the world as if she were a shadow and not declare her presence to anyone with a good ear and an eye for chaos. Echo was no Wraith, but then no one ever could be.

And so, the red-head folded into the dank corners of the bar and tried to smother her breath as it rattled from her mouth, the way Inej had coached her so long ago. She'd complained at the time, louder and bolder than before but whilst Echo wasn't fond of being quiet, she was even less fond of being dead.

And then the open doors creaked once more.

From her vantage point in the darkness, it would have been impossible for Echo to miss the way her sister strolled into the bar, turning up her nose at the onslaught of smells that seemed to emanate from the very walls.