The Love of a Crow - Wesper/Crows Fanfiction/AU

13. Matthias

A/N: Updates may be slow at times and I'm sorry because I am beginning to catch up on the writing. Hope you still enjoy! 

  Life went on as normal as life could get when you lived with 4 pyromaniacs and a demjin.

For Matthias, everyday was a terrifying mystery forced on him; staying alive, not getting caught, waffles... sometimes it was too much to bear. There were moments he savoured though; collapsing in a reasonably comfy bed after a stressful heist (how had he survived so long at Hellgate without cushions?), the sound of the tall ocean waves whenever he took a walk to the harbour, the way Nina would rest her head under his chin like a cat; a very loud and hungry cat, but a cat all the same.

To be honest with himself, Matthias was getting used to the people around him; Kaz would always be Kaz, but there was a part of him that respected the way he secretly looked out for his Crows. Jesper was wild, and half the time Matthias didn't understand his rude jokes, but he found it particularly hilarious how he knew the right way to get under Kaz's skin. Inej was sleek and smart, able to hide anywhere, yet she had a wonderful presence about her that reminded Matthias of water; it may not seem like much, but without it they'd be lost. Wylan was like a rosebud that had yet to bloom, and when he did Matthias knew he'd be beautiful. He held back with everyone, the familiar plagues of worry that had once haunted Matthias still looming over him. Acceptance is what he longed for. Wylan just needed to let it happen.

Nina was his favourite. Nina was the one that would brighten up a dreary corridor, the one that could snap at Kaz and not die, could whisper to Inej and make her smile, could make Wylan's laugh tinkle across the room and could throw an even ruder insult right back at Jesper. And Matthias had fallen in love with her all over again. He could only pray to Djel that she felt the same way.

The days slowly trickled by into weeks filled with tension in the group. Though he did his best not to show it, Kaz was more on edge with everyone, snapping at them to be silent and barely composing himself not to yell at Wylan when he tripped over a piece of metal. If it wasn't for Nina keeping him happy Matthias might have gone insane and hopped on the first ship back to Fjerda. He still got that feeling whenever he looked at Wylan, their ticket to one million kruge. But he would rather swim to Fjerda in winter than give Wylan up to his father.

Inej was also acting strange, but that was because she must have known what was wrong; Kaz's secrets were hers to keep as well. Matthias was desperate to know what was going on, and whether it put them in any danger; his one job was to keep the Crows safe, and he wasn't about to let Kaz keep all that glory to himself.

One day Matthias finally managed to corner Inej as she left Kaz's room. Her skin was slightly paler than usual, eyes tired and weary.

"Can I talk with you for a moment?" He asked, failing to keep the desperation out of his voice. Inej winced, probably knowing what this was about already, but she followed into a side room leading off from the Crow Room. It was an old library; shadows crawling up against the wall, shelves robbed of any books that had once resided there, broken bits of furniture and weaponry littering the hideous red carpet coated in dust.

"I can't tell you everything, but I can tell you what I know," Inej began as she hopped onto a table and crouched there.

Matthias nodded, bracing himself for whatever bad news that could have possibly managed to annoy Kaz Brekker.

Inej sighed. "You remember the man the Van Eck instructed to have Wylan killed?"

"How could I forget? What was his name... Edmund Rithouse?" One million kruge. The ocean. Fjerda. Freedom...

"That's the one. Turns out he doesn't just suck up to Van Eck. He's been travelling around the lower parts of the Barrel, where there are the least major gangs. He's working for a network of snakes infiltrating gangs, stealing their most valuable assets and destroying them from the inside, all led by one man; people have named him Scales."