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CHAPTER TWO; too late
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THE IRONY OF THE SITUATION Kaz found himself in was simple: he was miserable without his Misery.
It had been just under a week since they'd arrived in Ketterdam—since she'd been taken—and Kaz was sure he hadn't slept more than necessary to keep him from collapsing out of sheer exhaustion. He needed to find her; he needed to save her; he needed to burn Van Eck and his legacy to ashes and get rid of the Shu who was more trouble than he was profitable.
He'd given up on trying to make anything else a priority—pretend anything else was. It was useless to do so because without her in sight he felt lost. Not even destroying Pekka Rollins gave him enough motivation to push through life—he needed to find her, he needed his reason to live, as opposed to surviving through wrath and spite.
Van Eck had given him seven days to hand in the Shu for Ace. That was when he took her but by now Kaz was nearly sure Van Eck had connected the dots on who she was, and if his theory about Ace's father, Lavern, and Van Eck's late wife was correct then Van Eck wouldn't free Ace. Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, wasn't afraid of much, but the thought that his Bela Miseria might be dead seemed to throw him to the moment he thought he'd die on Reaper's Barge—lost and drowning and urging himself to grab onto anything that kept him moving and alive.
Only three days after Ace had been taken, Rotty had alerted Kaz to the lights that had appeared on Eil Komedie, and the fact that boats had been seen coming and going there at odd hours, often carrying a young Suli man. With Inej's intel, he'd quickly been identified as Adem Bajan, a music teacher indentured to Van Eck for the last six months. He'd joined the Van Eck household after Wylan had left home, but Wylan wasn't surprised his father had secured professional musical instruction for Alys.
Alys. The key to his plan. That was Van Eck's problem: Too much to lose. And he gave them a map of what to steal first. Breaking into Cornelis Smeet's office, Jan Van Eck's lawyer had been easy—while Jesper and Nina kept Smeet busy at Club Cumulus, a gambling parlor, Kaz and Wylan met up with Inej at the office while Matthias kept guard.
And because he knew Ace was being kept at Eil Komedie, he only had to look for someplace close by where Van Eck could be keeping Alys. The day Rotty had told him about Eil Komedie, Kaz's first impulse was to go to the island, slaughter everyone and get his girl. However logic and reason stepped in—Van Eck would be prepared with more firepower than they could fight, maybe even a few Grisha using parem, he would have her well-guarded if she wasn't already... He wouldn't make it so easy on them.
They had to hit where the mark wasn't looking—that's what she would do too. And he could only hope it wasn't too late to save Ace.
