TROUBLE , kaz brekker

v. fine night, ain't it, brekker?

CHAPTER FIVE

WHAT TWO THINGS ARE INFINITE? The universe and the greed of men. Or so they say.

Echo liked to think she knew a lot - philosophically that is. With each passing day serving as a reminder that no one could truly know everything, Echo was beginning to question if she really knew anything concrete at all. She knew what the books said. But the books didn't say the Darkling had sired two children. And the books certainly didn't say anything about the Sun Summoner beyond the mythic. Echo was starting to think the books knew nothing at all.

But books were only one vessel through which to see the world, you could also live in it. And the overwhelming amount of living she'd crammed into the space of a single year had allowed her to come to the staggering conclusion that, like many things in this world, everyone else was wrong.

Because Echo had a third infinite thing. One perhaps a little more infinite than the other two, if you really believed there could be.

So, what three things are infinite? The universe, the greed of men and the lengths Echo's mother would go to kill her.

Her evidence for this controversial claim? Folded up in her back pocket. Hand delivered by Sturmhond with a solemn glance and a brush of the hair and lips that said I'm sorry in a way that sounded an awful lot like goodbye.

At that moment, Echo stood with her back to the rather full diner Kaz had given as a rendezvous and the memory of that morbid farewell created an urge she couldn't quite resist. She had read it again to confirm what she already knew but refused to believe.

WANTED FOR MURDER: ECATERINA ORLOVA

Her mother had really outdone herself - she'd used her saintsawful birth name, sourced a pretty accurate-to-life sketch and put a few handy little translations for those kidnappers not fluent in Ravkan. And that wasn't even mentioning the reward.

Something weak and broken inside of her longed to tell Kaz. If not to solve the problem, to hear that he would handle it. She wanted him to tell her how, should the time come her mother washes up on Ketterdam's shore, they'd fight. There would be guns drawn and knives in hand and a display of criminality never before seen on this forsaken little island. She wanted to hear him say that they would never let her mother take her without a fight. That family was more than just a word in a fairytale. But, truthfully, Echo feared that the day she became more liability than useful would be the day Kaz started to second-guess his vested interest in keeping her heart beating. He was cold, calculating, cut-throat to a fault yet Echo couldn't hate him for it. She wasn't sure there was anything that could make her do that. The Barrel had a way of bringing out those parts of you. And Kaz Brekker been here longer than any of them.

She'd tell him one day. When the threat of Pekka Rollins had stopped breathing down their necks and they stopped waking up everyday to a new murder charge , only then would she fill the violent void left behind. It was the least she could do.

But until then, all that was left was for her to crumple the well worn letter in her fist, shove into back into the darkest recesses of her clothes and step inside the old building with a leather bound book clutched to her chest. The bell above the door rang a faint trill above the hubbub of the diners and Echo heard a familiar voice sound from the furthest corner.

"What? I have so many questions. How? Why? Who? Where? When? I guess... Yeah, I guess that's all of them."

Jesper took a pensive drink from his cup as Echo approached, looking thoroughly unimpressed with events passed. The glossy head of black hair sat across from him leant forward, whispering in hushed tones,