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

ACT II

CHAPTER 1

Y/N lay on her belly, arms extended in front of her, wriggling like a worm through the dark.

Despite the fact that she’d been as good as starving herself, the vent was still a tight fit.

She couldn't find Inej anywhere.

She couldn’t see where she was going; she just kept moving forward, pulling herself along by her fingertips.

She’d woken sometime after the fight on Vellgeluk, with no sense of how
long she’d been unconscious and no idea where she was.

She remembered plummeting from a great height as one of Van Eck’s Squallers dropped her, only to be snatched up by another—arms like steel bands around her, the air
buffeting her face, gray sky all around, and then pain exploding over her skull.

The next thing she knew she was awake, head pounding, in the dark.

Her hands and ankles were bound, and she could feel a blindfold tight
across her face.

For a moment, she was fifteen, being tossed into the hold of a drüskelle ship, frightened and alone.

She forced herself to breathe.

Wherever she was, she felt no ship’s sway, heard no creak of sails.

The ground was solid beneath her.

Where would Van Eck have brought her?

She could be in a warehouse, someone’s home.

She might not even be in Kerch anymore.

It didn’t matter.

She was Y/N Y/L/N and she would not quiver like a rabbit in a snare.

Wherever I am, I just have to get out.

She’d managed to nudge her blindfold down by scraping her face against the wall.

The room was pitch-black, and all she could hear in the silence was her own rapid breathing as panic seized her again.

She’d leashed it by controlling her breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, letting her mind turn to prayer as her Saints gathered around her.

She imagined them checking the ropes at her wrists, rubbing life into her hands.

She did not tell herself she wasn’t afraid.

Long ago, after a bad wound after fight training class, her mother had explained that only fools were fearless.

We meet fear , she’d said. We greet
the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear
arrives, something is about to happen.

Y/N intended to make something happen.

She’d ignored the ache in her
head and forced herself to inch around the room, estimating its dimensions.