WICKED GAME [shadow and bone] ON HOLD

nightly conversations

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄:

"you wish I would be your mother"

Before dark embraced the sky, Katerina was back in the Little Palace. Her mind was occupied with too many thoughts to go to Aleksander's rooms to tell him her trip went well. Instead, she decided to do that the next day.

Even though it was long past bedtime, Katerina was sitting by her desk, looking outside her window towards the lake that was located by the Little Place. She once again let her mind dwell deep into the land of memories. She was tying together her childhood memories with the ones from today when she encountered the unusual group in Kribirsk. An invisible thread was doing its work trying to put together the boy she remembered from her childhood, the always smiling boy with the man she saw today.

The thread broke not being able to put together these two different characters. It felt like her mind is laughing at her for trying to do that, but then she put on the table the memories that were not her own but those of the young man.

Katerina was quite special, and it was not because she could do so much more than a usual Inferni, she had something else that made her character more important.

Only later did the redhead find out that it was a family thing. Sometimes skipping generations, the women in the Kozlowski family were gifted with unusual power. For Katerina, every mind of a person was like an open book she could read. A room full of people was like a library full of books for her. Books she could read and then put down in their respective place before picking up the next one. The girl long ago dropped the idea that getting into people's heads was a rude thing to do, it was, but honestly, she couldn't care less. If she felt someone is lying to her, Katerina did her work to find out the truth and the reason why.

And that is exactly what she had done to Kaz Brekker or maybe Kaz Rietveld. The redhead couldn't comprehend why the boy had lied to her. She recalled the lack of reaction from his friends and that made her think that they had no idea who Kaz Rietveld was. Only when she stepped out of the bar, she let her mind recall the memories from Kaz Brekker's mind.

Katerina never liked to cry but from time to time when the redhead was alone, she allowed herself to be vulnerable and weak. And that was exactly what Katerina did when she was certain that she is alone in the small clearing far away from the civilization.

She cried, and she screamed from the pain that was not her own, but it felt like it was. The redhead did not care if her screams could be heard in Os Alta in the Little Palace or even in Fjerda. At this moment Katerina was thankful for all the Grisha lessons and training that thought how to separate her fire from her emotions, otherwise half of the Ravka would be in ruins.

She cried for the little boy that she used to know and for the young man he had become. She cried because he couldn't. She cried, so he wouldn't need to. Katerina remembered the promise between the two, she remembered the silent agreement, that they will share the good and the bad in hopes that it will be easier to go through it.