How Villains Are Made - Kaz Brekker

Chapter Three

Kaz Brekker had thought that Maud was beautiful under the moonlight, but that was because he had no idea how that new version of her looked under the morning sun rays invading his room by the window. She was still sitting on the chair in front of his desk, perfect posture and complete blank face even after hours of conversation.

"I understand that you didn't want to go back," she had said once she had calmed herself enough the last night to find her voice and stop pacing around the room. "I understand that you were grieving, but, Ghezen, you could've sent word, checking in every once in a while, saying, I don't know... that you were still alive."

"For what?" he asked.

What could that family do for him? They shared no blood, they shared no responsibility of taking care of him and his brother, and that was the reason that Jordie and him had left; without his father and without Jordie and Angelica's preadolescent relationship, there was nothing but his friendship with Maud dragging them back. When he was young, he would imagine making himself becoming successful enough to bring Maud to Ketterdam and they would play in the garden every day. But then Jordie was gone and all his blood was senseless – Kaz was just another canal rat since the day he crawled out of hell, fighting to stay awake and struggling to breathe. What could that perfect little family know of that? What could have they done for him?

"Why not?" she had said.

And then silence came once more.

They stayed in silence for at least a whole hour until she had gotten up, her wide eyes on the dark trying to see through the burning candles.

Hidden by the darkness, Kaz allowed himself to admire her once more. In pink, in the dark; Maud was so out of place, after all his past and his present didn't mix up well – his future seemed to say otherwise, of course, but that was making him awfully anxious deep inside. She was a lamb in slaughter, waiting for the moment she would drop her guard and then she would be dead. Kaz couldn't afford protecting her.

"I looked for you since the first day I got in Ketterdam," she admitted, standing with her back to him. Kaz was watching her and he knew that she could feel his eyes on her by the way she was holding her own elbows in some awkward hug. "Since the moment I stepped in this dreadful city, I went to every standwatch station, I went through all the names in the Black Books with all the dead's names and descriptions and I found nothing. I even went to the hospitals! When I didn't find you anywhere, I allowed myself to have some hope! How stupid of me!"

She turned to him once more, tears on her blue eyes, but none on her cheeks. She was angry, he could tell by the curled lip and flared nostrils and the start of narrowed eyes. She didn't want cry and she was trying not to, but Kaz knew her enough to know how she was never the best on hiding what she was feeling.

"Hope is stupid," he said. "Hope is setting yourself up for failing."

"Hope is what kept me alive when I wanted nothing but to..." she stopped, gasping a sob.

He watched her, trying to understand what she was getting at. But though he didn't want to believe in it, the back of his mind murmured what he already knew – hope kept her alive when she didn't want to be alive. Still, however horrible it was, Kaz felt no sympathy for her, he didn't feel any type of attachment to that.

Hope hadn't kept him alive; hope had knocked him down and kicked him when he was down. All that he had left was spite, it was anger and revenge. Much like Maud wouldn't understand that, he couldn't understand how she seemed to be clinging to the dying hope withering away in her mind year by year.

"Hope led you to nothing more than the shell that I was," he said. "Ketterdam ate me and spat me out because I was too bitter for her. I am her son now, Maud, and there's nothing in me from back then that survived."