(𝐊𝐀𝐙 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐊𝐊𝐄𝐑 𝐗 𝐅. 𝐎𝐂)
❝︎Why didn't he see
it coming?❞︎
BORN A PRISONER, TURNED INTO
one of the best soldiers of the Second
Army was Vera Sokolov, a Fjerdan
girl born with Shadow Sum...
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KATIYA VOLKOV WAS a shadow summoner, and Kaz didn't know how to feel. She had talked very little, mostly reiterating how she was a shadow summoner who escaped the Little Palace. Kaz felt like he still didn't know her at all. It felt as though they had restarted from when they met. She was just a girl, and he a boy. Both strangers. A thick wall had been built between them, and he wanted nothing more than to climb over it. And yet, he stayed on his side.
At least he knew why she didn't want to venture back to Ravka now. She was a powerful Grisha, sitting across from him, eating the food that he had paid for.
It all should have enraged him. He should have found a way to punish her for keeping this from him (especially since he had asked specifically for no surprises), yet all he felt was annoyance. It didn't feel like a life-altering lie, but a mild inconvenience. It concerned him, how easily he found himself getting over the fact that she had lied to him since they knew each other. A part of him tried to convince him that it was because she was still there, on his side, trying to help him pull this crude heist.
He knew what it was deep down. It was because she was like the poison, and he the blind fool drinking every last drop before he had even realized it was toxic. Worst of all, he wouldn't regret it. Kaz would soak in her every lie like his life depended on it, as long as she was by his side. That kind of devotion was threatening, something he knew too well.
Kaz gazed at the blonde woman who sat calmly at the table, watching the people who walked by with a cautious gleam. She truly was a devil in disguise, and quite the pretty one. Even if she wasn't poison, she was still just as dangerous. She still wasn't being truthful with him. That much was clear. He didn't believe that an average grisha (especially Katiya, who he had seen be so fearless) would be this afraid of going to the Little Palace.
Perhaps she wasn't an average Grisha. Katiya didn't seem like she could ever be mundane to Kaz.
His mind twisted and turned over the topic for hours. Ultimately, he came up with his best guess: She must have been the General's Second in Command. Or ex, second in command. She hadn't said it aloud, but he was able to connect it once he remembered how stiff she had been when they discussed the supposedly dead woman in the Crow Club.
Just who was Katiya Volkov? If that even is her name. The thought rang through his head. What else had she lied about? What more would she spin into her growing web of false truths? He felt desperate by how strong his desire to know was.
