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CHAPTER THREE ▪▫▪▫▪
KAZ BREKKER DIDN'T NEED A REASON. Those were the words whispered on the streets of Ketterdam. He didn't need a reason any more than he needed permission. Of course, they were wrong. Every single thing Kaz did was deliberate, thought through every scenario. He had strings everywhere in town, he had reasons for every one of them.
All of them except one: the Whisperer.
Kira showed up, offering him a diamond that was worth more than his mind (which was saying a lot) only asking for protection in exchange. Not over her survival, but over her life. She asked him for a life free of some of the burdens of surviving. And Kaz didn't refuse her.
Not because of the diamond, or even the fact that she did win a surreal amount of gold that night, or even for her ability to just steal buttons from his overcoats in the middle of the street.
He didn't refuse her for one single infuriating reason: her smile.
A smile so pure it was as if she erased every corpse she had left to rot, every man she manipulated into doing her bidding, every string she pulled in a way that would make Saints bristle.
I don't lie. It's the only way I can keep my soul intact. Those were the words she had said and Kaz hadn't realized how true they were at that moment.
Kaz always had a reason for everything he did, but trusting the Whisperer of the Barrel, trusting Kira, was done blindly.
He had no idea why—why her smile stirred up the boy in him that had died with Jordie in the Reaper's Barge. However, in all his hatred for her reason for being there, Kaz did not regret allowing her inside. She was as useful as a Heartrender, she had a knack for secrets and better yet a clever mind, faster than his own at times (at least when it came to people).
On the other hand, she irritated him to no end, but she knew she could, and he knew he would just let her.
The worst part: Kira's background story had as many holes as the wall Jesper used to let off heat. And Kaz could not find a single lead in her past life. Not one. Her story was simple, though: Ravkan girl, a survivor of the Fold, made her way to Ketterdam young.
"Where did you come from in East Ravka?" Kaz had asked her, being careful with his words as he had learned how she was able to twist them all.
That was another talent of hers. In her claim of not lying he had learned she was far better at waltzing around the truth, letting misdirection and deception lead the dance and Kaz could hardly ever get a straight answer out of her lips.
Kira had smiled and said, "Os Alta. Where the king lives."
"What's your last name?"
"My last name is the one that comes after my name and tells who my family is."
