TROUBLE , kaz brekker

xviii. we shouldn't be alive.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KAZ HAD COME TO the conclusion that Echo Caddel was a woman of questionable parentage, dubious morals and raw, genuine, incredible stupidity.

Because only a fucking fool would take one look at the Fabrikator made a death trap and decided the best and most imminent course of action was to move closer to the poison-spewing machine. She'd done this to herself. Echo Caddel was an idiot and if she woke up, Kaz was going to tell her exactly that.

When she woke up.

Kaz was pulled out of his stupor by a butterfly down the throat, choking on something foul tasting and trying not to focus on the way Inej's hands felt on the back of his head, his jaw, hands that smothered and suffocated and rotted. In his panicked frenzy, he'd nearly struck her, but the Wraith was faster than he ever could be and whatever blows might have landed barely grazed her skin.

He couldn't work up the sense to apologise. Neither could she.

And as much as Kaz hated his instincts, his first thought was Echo.

She lay where she had fallen when the poison had taken them all, not even a stride's length away from where he lay. Where all the rest of them were coughing and spluttering and pulling themselves to their feet, she was motionless.

It was their first warning that something was wrong.

She hadn't moved since they'd woken
as he paced, on edge, frantic, feverish, looking anywhere but at her. Slight glances every now and then we're all he could stomach. The last time he'd looked, he hadn't been overjoyed by what he'd seen.

Tolya had one hand on Echo's chest. Feeling her heartbeat, no doubt. He wondered how it sounded in her chest? Strong? Weak? Did it jump erratically or was it solid, sturdy?

Did she dream, as she lay there? Just as he had?

Echo was still sprawled on the ground with her red hair splayed against the floorboards like a blood stain and it was that harrowing thought that led Kaz to decide, as he had already about five minutes ago, that he was going to focus on something - anything - other than that. Even that fucking dream.

By the next glance, Jesper had taken her hand in his. He had two fingers pressed into the flesh of her wrist, hard enough to dimple the skin. Kaz quickly realised he was feeling for her heartbeat, a damned useful way of monitoring her poisoned state that he might have even thought of first if he could have just reached for her hand.

The poison had certainly taken it's affect. Lying there, she looked paler than usual, almost ghastly and Kaz quickly added another thing to the don't think about list.

She'd gotten herself into worse states than this - surely she could get herself out of this one too.

"Why isn't she waking up?" He finally asked, a little louder than perhaps he'd meant to and Inej turned to look at him with something that he might have mistaken for sympathy if Kaz didn't know Inej knew better.

Becuase she did know better. They all did.

It was Tolya who gave him an answer.

"She was closest to the source of the poison." The Heartrender replied and, against his better judgement, Kaz glanced momentarily at the wall where the gas had poured. The evidence of her tampering was a stark white cloth, the bare skin of her arms a quick reminder. "She breathed in more than any of us so...it might take a little longer." If it works at all. Kaz appreciated that omission at least.