ELEVEN BELLS

Wylan triggered Black Protocol.

They raced down the stairs. As they were about to burst from the gatehouse archway, six guards came running into the courtyard. Jesper stopped short and held out his arm.

The guards weren't moving towards the gatehouse; all their attention was focused on a man in olive drab clothing standing by one of the stone slabs.

A woman walked through the wall, a figure of shimmering mist that solidified beside the stranger. She wore the same olive drab.

"Tidemakers," Wylan said. "The Shu."

The guards opened fire, and the Tidemakers vanished, then reappeared behind the soldiers and lifted their arms.

The guards screamed and dropped their weapons. A red haze formed around them. The haze grew denser as the guards shrieked, their flesh seeming to shrink against their bones.

Wylan shrieked. "All Saints, the Tidemakers are draining their blood."

They were being squeezed dry.

"Back up the stairs," whispered Jesper. "We need to get out of here."

But it was too late. In the next breath, the female Tidemaker was on the stairs and planted her boots against Wylan's chest, kicking him backwards into Jesper. They tumbled onto the stone of the courtyard.

The rifle was jerked from Jesper's arms and tossed aside. He tried to stand, and the Tidemaker cuffed him on the back of his head. Then he was lying next to Wylan as the Tidemakers towered above them. They lifted their hands, and Jesper saw the faintest red haze appear over him.

He was going to be drained. He felt his strength start to ebb. He looked to the left but the rifle was too far away.

"Jesper," Wylan gasped. "Metal. Fabrikate." And then he started to scream.

In a flash, Jesper understood. This was a fight he couldn't win with a gun. There was no time to think, no time to doubt.

He ignored the pain tearing over his skin and focused all his attention on the bits of metal clinging to his clothes. He wasn't a good Fabrikator, but they didn't expect him to be a Fabrikator at all. He thrust his hands forward, and the bits of metal flew from his uniform.

The female Tidemaker screamed as the metal burrowed into her flesh, and she tried to turn to mist. The other Tidemaker did the same, features liquefying, but then solidifying once more. Jesper didn't relent. He drove the metal into their organs, questing deeper. He could feel them attempting to manipulate the particles of metal, but the flecks and shavings of steel were too many and too small. The woman clutched her stomach and fell to her knees. The man screamed, coughing up clotted black specks of metal and blood.

Were they dying? Had he just killed two of his kind? Jesper had only wanted to survive.

Wylan tugged at his arm. His face looked slightly transparent, the veins too close to the surface. "Jesper, we have to go."

Jesper made himself follow Wylan, scale the rope to the roof. He felt woozy and lightheaded. The others were depending on him, he knew that. He had to keep going. But he felt as if he'd left some part of himself in the courtyard below, something he hadn't even known mattered, intangible as mist.

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ELEVEN BELLS AND QUARTER CHIME

When Matthias opened the door to Nina's cell, she hesitated for the briefest moment. She couldn't help it. As long as she lived, she would never forget Matthias face at that window, how cruel he'd seemed, or the doubt that had sprung up in her heart. She felt it again but when he held his hand out to her, she knew they were done with fear.

She ran to him, and he swept her up in his arms.
He buried his face in her hair.

She felt his lips move against her ear when he said, "I never want to see you like this again." Then he cupped her face in his hands. "Jer molle pe oonet. Enel mörd je nej afva trohem verretn."

Nina swallowed hard. She remembered those words. I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath. It was the vow of the drüskelle to Fjerda. And now it was Matthias promise to her.

She knew she should say something beautiful in response. Instead, she spoke the truth. "If we make it out of here alive, I'm going to kiss you unconscious."

A grin split his beautiful face. She couldn't wait to see the real blue of his eyes again.

As Nina raced down the hall after Matthias, the clanging bells of Black Protocol filled her ears.

"Please tell me Kaz hasn't gone missing again," she said as they hurtled down the corridor.

"I left him in the ballroom. We're to meet him by the ash." Matthias told her. But he wasn't sure if Kaz Brekker would show up, the last person Matthias trusted in the crew was him. But he could trust him enough to show up and claim the ten million kruge package, he was Kerch after all.

"Last time I looked, it was surrounded by drüskelle," Nina gasped. "If we survive the drüskelle, we won't survive Kaz, not if we kill the Shu scientist_"

"Let's not forget your darling Lin, who'll kill us before the demjin does." Matthias reminded Nina.

At that moment Nina recalled: Aeolian had left with a Shu man, Aeolian was the most capable among the crew to take care of herself. She was a dangerous girl. But if Kaz had any knowledge about her being taken away, Nina was sure that he'd not show up at the ash. Instead, he'd go and look for Aeolian. Because Kaz Brekker would never ever leave his precious Aeolian at the mercy of the Fjerdans.

Nina made quick work of the guard at the vault door. Matthias took his rifle. The room was as white as all the others, but hardly bare. Its long tables were full of beakers set over low blue flames, heating and cooling powders in varying shades of orange. A Shu boy was seated cross-legged. He stared at them, a notebook in his lap. He couldn't have been more than sixteen.

Nina said in Shu. "Where is Bo Yul-Bayur?"

The boy brushed his hair back. "He's dead." He asked. "Have you come to kill me?"

Nina wasn't quite sure of the answer to that. "Sesh-uyeh" she ventured.

The boy's face crumpled in relief. "You're Kerch."

Nina nodded. "We came to rescue Bo Yul-Bayur."

The boy looked at them. "My father died when the Fjerdans tried to stop the Kerch from taking us out of Ahmrat Jen...he was killed in the crossfire."

My father. Nina translated for Matthias as she tried to take in what this meant.

"Dead?" Matthias asked. Nina knew what he was thinking: all they'd endured, all they'd done, and Yul-Bayur had been dead the whole time.

But the Fjerdans had kept his son alive for a reason. "They're trying to make you recreate his formula," she said.

"I helped him in the lab, but I don't remember everything." He bit his lip. "And I've been stalling."

Whatever parem the Fjerdans had been using on the Grisha must have come from the original stock Bo Yul-Bayur had been bringing to the Kerch.

Nina asked. "Can you recreate the formula?"

The boy hesitated. "I think so."

Nina and Matthias exchanged a glance. Nina swallowed. She'd killed before. She'd killed tonight, but this was different. This boy wasn't pointing a gun at her or trying to harm her. Murdering him—and it would be murder—would also mean betraying Aeolian, Kaz, Jesper and Wylan. People who were risking their lives even now for a prize they'd never see. But then she thought of Nestor falling lifeless in the snow, of the cells full of Grisha lost in their own misery, all because of this drug.

She raised her arms. "I'm sorry," she said. "If you succeed, there will be no end to the suffering you unleash."

The boy's gaze was steady, his chin jutting up stubbornly, as if he'd known this moment might come. The right thing to do was obvious. Kill this boy quickly, painlessly. Destroy the lab and everything in it. Eradicate the secret of jurda parem. And yet her hands were shaking. Wasn't this the way drüskelle thought? Destroy the threat, wipe it out, no matter that the person in front of you was innocent.

"Nina," Matthias said softly, "he's just a kid. He's one of us."

One of us. A boy not much younger than she was, caught up in a war he hadn't chosen for himself. A survivor.

"What's your name?" she shuddered.

"Kuwei." He answered.

"Kuwei Yul-Bo," she began. Before they entered the Ice-Court, when Nina was tailoring Aeolian's tattoos, Aeolian had told her the story of how she met the crows at the first place. The Empress send her on the mission under the guidance of Dreesen to kidnap the Sun Summoner and bring her to Shu Han, on her mission she met Kaz, Inej and Jesper. The reward Dreesen promised the crows for Alina Starkov was one million kruge. But on the journey, they found out that Alina was just a teenager like them, trying to survive and so with a heavy heart they let her go and with that Aeolian lost her ticket home, and that's how she ended up in Ketterdam. So, if Aeolian a princess and a spy who's only purpose was to serve her Empress could have sympathy on someone whom she barely knew. Why couldn't Nina do the same for this Shu boy. When she found her voice, all she said was, "How fast can you destroy this lab?"

"Fast," he replied. He sliced a hand through the air, and the flames from beneath one of the beakers shot out in a blue arc.

Nina stared. "You're an Inferni."

Kuwei nodded. "Jurda parem was a mistake. My father was trying to find a way to help me hide my powers. He was a Fabrikator."

"We need to destroy as much as we can," she said.

"There are combustibles," replied Kuwei. "I can rig an explosion."

"Only the vault. There are Grisha here." Nina said. She would have gladly let Brum die, but though Matthias had betrayed his commander, she doubted he'd want to see the man who'd become a second father to him blown to bits.

As soon as they opened the door, the clamour of the bells became almost unbearable.

"Halt!" someone shouted.

There were drüskelle everywhere. Any moment they'd be gunned down. That was when the explosion hit. Everything was smoke and chaos. One side of the treasury had been reduced to rubble, smoke and dust billowing into the night sky.

"Sten!" cried two guards breaking off from another group running in the direction of the treasury.

"Helvar?" One of them asked, in shock. His name was Lars. He looked from Matthias to Nina. Then he took in Kuwei's presence, and understanding struck. "Traitor," he snarled at Matthias.

Nina raised her hand, but she cried out as something struck her. When she looked down, she saw loops of cable closing over her, binding her upper arms tight to her body. She couldn't raise her hands. She couldn't use her power. It was the same cable that was used on her before.

Matthias grunted, and Kuwei screamed as cables lashed from the darkness, snapping around their torsos, binding their arms.

Lars kicked Matthias legs from beneath him. Matthias went to his knees. "They told us you were dead. We mourned you, burned boughs of ash for you. But now I see they were protecting us from something worse. Matthias Helvar, a traitor, aiding our enemies, consorting with unnaturals." He spat in Matthias face. "How could you betray your country and your god?"

Matthias was silent.

"Are there others here for Yul-Bayur besides you and this creature?" Lars asked.

"No," lied Nina.

"I didn't ask you, witch!" spat Lars.

He made a signal in the air. From the shadows drüskelle, men and boys emerged, hoods drawn up. They fanned out, surrounding them.

Nina cast a last desperate look into the darkness, praying for some sign of Kaz. Had someone got to him, too? Had he just abandoned them there? If Aeolian was in trouble and Kaz got to her, she'd come for Nina that's what Nina knew. Aeolian would never abandon her in the White Island, she'd force Kaz to rescue them. But what if something terrible had happened to the Shu girl, saints forbids.

Nina was meant to be a warrior. She needed to steel herself against what was to come.

One of the drüskelle came forward with a long-handled whip attached to the cables that bound them, and handed it to Lars. Lars flicked his finger over one of the cables, and Nina gasped as stinging little barbs jabbed into her arms and torso.

"Leave her be," Matthias growled in Fjerdan, the words bristling with rage. For the briefest second, she saw a flash of panic in his former compatriots.

He was bigger than all of them, and he'd been one of their leaders, one of the best of these murderous boys. Then Lars gave another cable a hard flick. The barbs released, and Matthias let out a pained huff of breath, doubling at the waist, human once more. The snickering that followed was furtive and cruel.

Lars gave the whip a sharp snap, and the cables contracted, forcing Nina, Matthias, and Kuwei to totter after him in an awkward parade.

"Do you still pray to our god, Helvar?" Lars asked as they passed the sacred tree. "Do you think Djel hears the mewling of men who give themselves over to the defilement of Grisha?"

Then a sharp, animal yelp sounded. It took them a long moment to realise it had come from Lars. He opened his mouth and blood gushed over his chin. His hand released the whip, and the hooded drüskelle beside him lunged forward to snatch it up.

A sharp pop came from the base of the sacred tree. The ash creaked and moaned. Its ancient roots began to curl.

"Nej!" cried one of the drüskelle. They stood open-mouthed, gaping at the stricken tree.

"Nej!" another voice wailed.

The ash began to tilt. It was too large to be felled by salt concentrate alone, but as it tipped, a dull roar emerged from the gaping black hole beneath it.

This was where the drüskelle came to hear the voice of their god. And now he was speaking.

"This is going to sting a bit," said the drüskelle holding the whip. His voice was rasping, familiar. His hands were gloved. "But if we live, you'll thank me later." His hood slid off, and Kaz Brekker looked back at them.

At that very moment, Nina had the urge to pull him into a kiss. She had never felt that kind of way for Kaz but seeing him when she thought all hopes were lost, she kind of lost herself and all she wanted was to thank him in her own way.

The stunned drüskelle lifted their rifles.

"Don't pop the baleen before you hit bottom," Kaz called. Then he grabbed Kuwei and launched them into the black mouth beneath the roots of the tree. And they were falling into the throat of Djel, into nothing at all.

➖➖➖➖➖

ELEVEN BELLS AND THREE-QUARTERS CHIME

Kaz had considered to go looking for Aeolian, but he knew that he had to keep an eye on Nina, and keep his feelings at bay. Aeolian could look after herself, wherever she was. If he wants to find Bo Yul-Bayur, he needed to stay focused. He'd gambled on Matthias feelings for Nina, but he'd always liked those odds. The real risk had been in whether or not someone as honest as Matthias could convincingly lie to his mentor's face.

Kaz had tracked Nina and Brum across the grounds to the treasury. Then he'd taken cover behind an ice sculpture and focused on the miserable task of regurgitating the packets of Wylan's root bombs he'd swallowed. He'd had to bring them up—along with a pouch of chloropellets and an extra set of lockpicks he'd forced down his gullet in case of emergency—every other hour he'd to keep from digesting them. It hadn't been pleasant. He'd learned the trick from an East Stave magician with a firebreathing act before the man had accidentally poisoned himself by ingesting kerosene.

Aeolian was asleep, when he was swallowing the packets. He had ordered the others not to disturb her and let her sleep, she was exhausted and she had tried to hide her exhaustion as much as she could but he saw it in her. All these months together, battling side by side, of late-night scheming, impossible heists, clandestine errands, and harried meals of fried potatoes and hutspot gobbled down as they rushed from one place to another, this was the first time he had seen her this exhausted.

Once Kaz was done, there was nothing for him to do but keep hidden. He remembered Aeolian standing on the embassy roof, aglow with some new fervour he didn't understand but could still recognise—purpose. I'm taking my share, and I'm leaving the Dregs. He knew she'd leave Ketterdam one day, but hearing it from her, wasn't easy.

When the bells of Black Protocol had begun to ring. He'd waited, but there was still no sign of Nina or Matthias. They're in trouble. Or you were dead wrong about Matthias, and you're about to pay for all of those talking tree jokes. But then Kaz saw the way Matthias looked at Nina, the eyes never lie. He knew this very well because he'd do anything for Aeolian and that same intensity, he'd seen in Matthias for Nina.

The rest was pure improvisation, all Kaz had told Matthias was to meet him by the ash when Black Protocol began to ring. Now he just had to hope that they wouldn't panic and that his luck was waiting somewhere below.

The fall seemed impossibly long. When he struck the icy water, he feared his heart might stop. The force of the river was terrifying. The noise was deafening 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.

As soon as Aeolian 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—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.

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.

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. But now he had to rely on something more. What god do you serve? Aeolian had asked him. Whichever will grant me good fortune.

Maybe, the greater power that Aeolian truly believes in—the greater power that had helped her multiple times before and even brought her back from the jaws of death, would do the same for him? If Aeolian prayed for Kaz, like she said she would.

But he had never believed in saints or prayers, the only person who'd watched over him was Aeolian. "No Saint ever watched over me. Not like you have." He'd admitted, and she looked up at him as she smiled. Her emerald eyes twinkling under the starlight. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.

What would be waiting when they fished up in the gorge? Who would be waiting? Jesper and Wylan had managed to engage Black Protocol. But had they managed to do the rest? Would he see Aeolian on the other side? Yes, he would. He have to see her on the other side.

Survive. Survive. Survive. It was the way he'd lived his life, moment to moment, breath to breath, since that terrible morning when he'd woken to find that Jordie was dead and he was still very much alive.

Kaz tumbled through the dark. He was colder than he'd ever been. He thought of Aeolian's hand on his cheek. His mind had gone jagged at the sensation, a riot of confusion. It had been terror and in all of that clamour: desire, a wish that lingered still, the hope that she would touch him again.

When he was fourteen, Kaz had put together a crew to rob a bank. They got their money but he'd broken his leg dropping down from the rooftop. The bone didn't set right, and he'd limped ever after.

It became a declaration. There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken. The cane became a part of the myth he built. No one knew who he was. No one knew where he came from. He'd become Kaz Brekker, bastard of the Barrel.

The gloves were his one concession to weakness. Since that night among the bodies and the swim from the Reaper's Barge, he had not been able to bear the feeling of skin against skin. It was the only piece of his past that he could not forge into something dangerous.

Bright flashes of memory sparked through Kaz's mind. A cup of hot chocolate in his mittened hands, Jordie warning him to let it cool before he took a sip. The first time he'd smelt the sweet aroma of Aeolian at Dressen, and how enchanting she looked—that he thought he was dreaming. The knife he'd given her. The glimmer of tear that he saw in her eyes, after their return from Ravka. The tear he'd ignored.

Kaz remembered her perched on the sill of his attic window. She'd been feeding the crows, she was an animal person.

"You shouldn't make friends with crows," he'd told her.

"Why not?" she asked.

He'd looked up from his desk to answer, but whatever he'd been about to say had vanished on his tongue.

The sun was out, and Aeolian had turned her face to it. Her eyes were shut, her thick black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world.

"Why not?" she'd repeated in that melancholic voice of hers, eyes still closed.

He said the first thing that popped into his head. "They don't have any manners."

"Neither do you, Kaz." She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

The river knocked him against the wall of the tunnel. The pressure in his chest grew. I'm stronger than this. My will is greater, but he could hear Jordie laughing. No, little brother. No one is stronger. You've cheated death too many times. Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man.

Kaz had almost drowned that night in the harbour, borne aloft by Jordie's corpse. There was no one and nothing to carry him now. He tried to think of his brother, of revenge, of Pekka Rollins. Kaz forced him to remember Jordie's name. But all he could think of was Aeolian and Aeolian alone. She had to live. She had to have made it out of the Ice Court.

And if she hadn't, then he had to live to rescue her. His life would lose its purpose without her, she was his better half, she was the soul that fits in his. She was his reason.

The ache in his lungs was unbearable. He needed to tell her...what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn't pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he'd begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near. He needed to thank her for his new hat.

Kaz said. "The DeKappel, I lifted from Van Eck's house." As he placed the painting down on the dinning table.

Aeolian lifted her head up, she was scribbling in a diary. "I don't think Wy, would want to see a stolen painting from his father's house hanging in the sitting room."

"It's not for decor," Kaz looked at her. "I want you to keep it in your safe, for now."

She gently rose up, "nothing's safe with me, not even you." A light chuckle passed her bewitching face. He looked away and picked up his cane. "I want you and the merchling at the Crow Club by eight bells. Oh, and put in an order for a new hat."

"Please." She pouted.

He looked over his shoulder and said, "Please, my darling Aeolian, treasure of my heart, won't you do me the honour of acquiring me a new hat?"

She flapped her long black lashes. "Anything for you Kazuki."

The water pressed at his chest, demanding that he part his lips. I won't, he swore. But in the end, Kaz opened his mouth, and the water rushed in.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

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There is a swelling storm
And I'm caught up in the middle of it all
And it takes control
Of the person that I thought I was
The boy I used to know
But there is a light
In the dark, and I feel its warmth
In my hands and my heart
Why can't I hold on?
It comes and goes in waves
It always does, always does
We watch as our young hearts fade
Into the flood, into the flood
The freedom of falling
A feeling I thought was set in stone
It slips through my fingers
I'm trying hard to let go
It comes and goes in waves
It comes and goes in waves
And carries us away
Through the wind
Down to the place we used to lay when we were kids
Memories of a stolen place
Caught in the silence
An echo lost in space
It comes and goes in waves
It always does, it always does
We watch as our young hearts fade
Into the flood, into the flood
The freedom of falling
A feeling I thought was set in stone
It slips through my fingers
I'm trying hard to let go
It comes and goes in waves
It comes and goes in waves
And carries us away
I watched my wild youth
Disappear in front of my eyes
Moments of magic and wonder
It seems so hard to find
Is it ever coming back again?
Is it ever coming back again?
Take me back to the feeling when
Everything was left to find
It comes and goes in waves
It always does, oh it always does
And the freedom of falling
A feeling I thought was set in stone
It slips through my fingers
I'm trying hard to let go
It comes and goes in waves
It comes and goes in waves
And carries us away

✨✨✨

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Not as active as I was before with the updates, due to my busy schedule but I'll try to update at least once or twice a month if possible :)

I hope ya'll are enjoying the book 😉

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