Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER EIGHT; nuisances
♠
ACE COULD HAVE SWORN she'd left the room right after Kaz left, though according to Eira and the kids, and their obnoxious, piercing laughter, she'd lost her balance and lay on the sofa in the sitting room for a good ten minutes before she could properly function.
If the second scenario was true—which was a total lie and disregard for Ace's self-control—it would be totally due to the fact that Kaz Brekker was damnation in person.
When she'd pulled him into that room she'd wanted to tell him she was going with him. To tell him he wasn't doing it on his own and that if he died she'd be right beside him. She also wanted him to tell her everything they'd both been terrified of saying—but his actions always were louder than his words.
She'd felt it in his kiss, though he hadn't said it, that he loved her just as much as she adored him—perhaps more. She'd felt his despair to keep her close, the fight she begged him to have. He did fight for her, and if she was being fairly honest with herself he had since they were children. He was always there, giving her the challenge she craved from life, urging her to be better—always a Devil she could rely on when the Saints turned a blind eye.
If he was addicted to her poison then Ace was intoxicated by his flames, the way she was sure she'd burn when she was with him and yet craved it so.
She'd been honest when she'd told him trusting him was as terrifying as falling off a cliff, and that she was already falling. And though he didn't say it, because Kaz Brekker hardly ever said what he was thinking, she knew he would catch her, just like he held her as she cried, just as he had kissed her like she was the only thing in the world he couldn't bear to lose.
And whilst all this might've been the truth, what was absolutely the furthest thing from it, was the fact that one kiss from Kaz Brekker had left her incapacitated—no matter how many times Eira told the others for giggles.
"I saw him leave and she just collapsed," the boy said with a snort, mirth in his eyes as the other three laughed. "She just stumbled onto the couch and just stared at the ceiling like she'd been cursed."
"You kissed the Bastard?" Luka asked barely able to speak through his giggles and Ace, annoyed as she was, couldn't prevent her own laugh as the boy in her arms nearly toppled backward from laughing.
"Alright, let's calm down," Ace said as she ushered the other three in front of her as they walked on a backstreet of the Stave, away from the mobs searching for the crows, and nearly getting where Luka, Ciara, and Elijah lived. "And I didn't kiss the Bastard. He kissed me."
Ciara made a face, her cheeks tinged a light pink and she glanced at Eira before looking at Ace, "Does kissing really leave people in a trance? Like you're cursed?"
