THESE BROKEN VOWS (Kazbrekker x Fem!reader) [ book version]

CHAPTER 25

🧤KAZ P.O.V🧤

ELEVEN BELLS AND THREE QUARTER CHIMES

The fall seemed impossibly long.

Kaz hoped the Shu boy he was
holding on to was a surprisingly young Bo Yul-Bayur and not some
hapless prisoner Bhagya Nina and Matthias had decided to liberate.

He'd shoved the disk of baleen into the boy's mouth as they went over, snapping it with his own fingers.

He gave the whip a flick, releasing all of the cables, and heard the others scream as the strands retracted.

At least they wouldn't go into the water bound.

Kaz waited as long as he dared to bite into his own baleen.

When he struck the icy water, he feared his heart might stop.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but the force of the river was
terrifying, flowing fast and hard as an avalanche.

The noise was deafening even beneath the water, but with fear also came a kind of giddy vindication.

He'd been right.

The voice of god.

There was always truth in legend.

Kaz had spent enough time building his own myth to know.

He'd wondered where the water that fed the Ice Court's moat and fountains came from, why the river gorge was so very deep and wide.

As soon as Nina had described the
drüskelle initiation ritual, he'd known: The Fjerdan stronghold hadn't been
built around a great tree but around a spring.

Djel, the wellspring, who fed
the seas and rains, and the roots of the sacred ash.

Water had a voice.

It was something every canal rat knew, anyone who had slept beneath a bridge or weathered a winter storm in an overturned boat - water could speak with the voice of a lover, a long-lost brother, even a god.

That was the key, and once Kaz recognised it, it was as if someone had laid a perfect blueprint over the Ice Court and its workings.

If Kaz was right, Djel would spit them out into the gorge.

Assuming they didn't drown first.

And that was a very real possibility.

The baleen only provided enough
air for ten minutes, maybe twelve if they could keep calm, which he
doubted they would.

His own heart was hammering, and his lungs already felt tight.

His body was numb and aching from the temperature of the water, and the darkness was impenetrable.

There was nothing but the dull
thunder of the water and a sickening sense of tumbling.

He hadn't been sure of the speed of the water, but he knew damn well
the numbers were close. Numbers had always been his allies - odds,
margins, the art of the wager.