𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐄𝐃𝐄𝐍 | Kaz Brekker

「criminals」

The crow clubs noise was not as comforting as it usually was when the group returned after every stop came up empty. Val crossed her legs in her seat and raised her eyebrows at the barmaid who immediately ran over with her drink of choice.

Val's head was resting on Inej's shoulder as she fought off sleep quite admirably considering she hadn't slept properly in a while. Inej knew this well since she shared a room with her and could hear the pages of one of the books Kaz brought her being flicked late into the night or the sounds of knives being flicked into the ceiling to a homemade dart board that hung above her bed.

Kaz's thoughts had been consumed with their current failure until his eyes looked up to Val whose eyelids verged on slipping very few moments, the cherry drink not helping. He looked to Inej with a raised brow and she only gave a weary look back. Kaz's frown returned, deeper now.

"Here's what I don't get." Jesper said, breaking the silence on the table.

"We're going to be here all night." Inej said, raising an eyebrow and making Val huff out a light laugh.

"Rude," Jesper said, glaring playfully at the girls. "Why haven't they tried going under it. Just dig tunnel."

"Tried that. More than a century ago." Kaz said, still frowning into space. "Something heard them digging."

"So it was made hundreds of years ago by that crazy Grisha-"

"The Black Heretic." Valeria said, eyes closed but she was still listening. She refused to sleep when everything was just starting.

"Yeah the one that controls shadows. They've got one in their army now don't they?" Jesper said, sometimes when he spoke it was like he was making a candidacy speech with all the rhetorical questions.

"Your point, Jesper?" Inej asked, watching as Val lifted her head and began playing with a knife that she pulled from her shoe, tossing it around and doing all the things she shouldn't be doing while running on four hours of sleep.

"If one of his kind made it, can't he unmake it?" Jesper asked and for a moment Val looked gobsmacked.

"Jesper, my love how much have you had to drink." Val said, catching her knife without looking and kept her eyes on Jesper who suddenly looked slightly afraid, a tired Valeria but her inhibitions in a box and lost it in the slat. "If I I were to stab you once."

She made a show of throwing it at him then catching it before it hit him and saying;

"And then felt guilty and tried to undo it, by your logic, and stabbed you again." She said, brushing a hair from her eye that cam loose form her braid. "Would that work?"

"Kaz, can you take her knives please." Jesper said jokingly, although he looked as though he wanted to piss himself. "And maybe her poisons?"

Kaz wasn't listening to him, his eyes on Valeria who had just done the most attractive things he had seen today.

"A sun summoner." Val said, regaining some sanity and winking at Jesper. "That's what they'd use."

"Right. Then one of those." Jesper said, putting his arm behind her shoulders. He was grateful he would not die at the hands of a sleep deprived Valeria Eden tonight.

"Doesn't exist." Kaz said, having turned away when Jesper put his arm around Val.

"Doesn't exist yet." Inej corrected, twisting her own knife on the table top. Kaz's jaw twitched.

"Dreeson comes into town, doesn't waste a minute. Send out for a crew to steal something but doesn't specify what. Well is it heavy? Large? Worth more than a million on the black market? Maybe he doesn't know." Kaz hissed like Valeria did when she was impatient, Inej noticed. The two spent far too much time together.