BOMBS AWAY ➤ kaz brekker

travels through the snow

You are worthless. You are weak. Your whore mother left you for a reason.

Standing on the icy shores of Fjerda as the rest of the Crows unloaded themselves from the ship, it was easy to see how her stepmother had so easily called this barren wasteland home. The landscape stretching before her was just as cold and formidable as the woman who terrorized her throughout her childhood. The harsh, cold winds bit sharply at Esther's cheeks, and she rubbed her gloved hands against them, trying to warm herself.

You deserve a painful death. Djel will not welcome you. Greta's voice rang sharply through her head.

Shut up, Greta, she thought back, as violently as she could.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Inej move to stand by her. The Wraith was quiet as ever, making no noise even in her bulky boots. Her thick black hair was bound into a braided coil at the nape of her neck, not a single hair escaping, even as the wind tried to pull it this way and that.

"Are you ready?" Esther asked. 

"Will we ever be ready for this?" 

"That's really cryptic," Esther muttered as the Wraith slipped away.

Their little group waved goodbye to the Ferolind as it slowly moved away from the shore. Esther watched their faces carefully, noting the sad, almost weary expression staining their faces. She herself felt a little melancholy. She'd been with the Dregs for such little time. Her arm bore no tattoo. But that ship cutting through the waves was possibly the last bit of Ketterdam she would ever see. For these people, it might be the last image of their city till the moment of their deaths. And if they survived this impossible heist... well, they'd be rich enough to buy a thousand Ferolinds and send them back and forth for all of time. They could watch their ships leave the harbor till the day they died.

"Keep moving," Kaz snapped. He set a brisk pace, even with his walking stick, which he had swapped with his conspicuous crow's head cane. The others had kept most of their possessions aboard with Specht, taking only what they could afford to have taken from them when they arrived. Esther thought of Inej's many knives and Jesper's precious revolvers stored in some dusty chest, sailing away, and shuddered. To say she was worried what would happen in a fight without their most valuable weapons aboard the ship. But these vicious criminals had survived Ketterdam - surely they could survive a bit of traipsing about the Ice Court.

Ahead of her, she heard Kaz and Jesper discussing some ridiculous concept of burning kruge, delving deeper and deeper down the ladder of who would burn it for them and who would pay someone to pay someone to pay someone to burn it for them and whatever else Barrel boys discussed. She shook her head, wishing they had some actual wood to burn. She was entirely unaccustomed to the harsh cold of Fjerda, instead preferring the warm, usually humid climate of Kerch. She pushed the hair out of her face and set to catching up with the rest of them.

With the first day behind them, the others had collapsed soundly into their tents, sleeping away the soreness and cold that had plagued them through the snow. But Esther turned restlessly in her sleeping bag, repeating Kaz's words over and over in her head. Grisha can't summon energy. They manipulate already existing energy. So why was it that she'd summoned all that flame without even so much as a spark? A raging fire filling a barn filled her mind with screams, and she clutched her head, trying to rid herself of the image. But the screams continued, reminding her of all her crimes, all her many failings. She suddenly felt too contained in this tent. She scrambled out of her sleeping bag, pushing the flap of the tent to the side as she practically fell into the snow.

Esther crawled a few feet away into the snow, feeling the tears come. Her arm stung as the charred flesh was pulled apart by her panic. She pushed up her sleeve, whimpering slightly as a flake of dead skin was torn from her. The burns extended all the way up her arm like a horrifying sleeve, extending over her back. This is my punishment for killing her. The Saints had deemed that justice would come for what she'd done, and even in death, Greta got to make her hurt one last time. Maybe she was a wish. Maybe she did deserve this. After all, she'd retaliated with violence. Unable to contain her anger, she'd caused someone's death. Her stepmother's death. She shuddered and felt bile rising in her throat, both from the thought of the blood on her hands and the ruined map of her arm.