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The flower doesn’t blossom when Kaz first meets Inej.
It isn’t a big thing, or even noticeable at first. It stays small—a tiny birthing seed hidden in the skin of one of their wrists. Everyone in the town talks about soulmate marks and other religious things like that. To him, it means nothing important.
Kaz had noticed Inej during one cold night in Ketterdam, when she made an attempt to escape from the Menagerie and its horrid business. But she was caught and dragged back in, meeting his eyes with dread. He was probably the one that ratted her out.
She believed that someone would come for her, in her earlier days being there.
Then Kaz, supposed errand boy , was telling Tante Heleen (the vile woman) that his boss wanted to buy Inej for himself. This man named Pekka Rollins had his own pleasure house in the lower areas of Ketterdam—the Barrel, it was called—and her services would be good elsewhere. But the truth was that her indenture was paid off and that she was given a chance to escape from that hellish place. In exchange for grabbing information when asked and becoming a scout for the Dregs.
After careful hesitation, she took it. Saints, yes she did.
The seed dug in deep.
During the first year of Kaz bringing Inej into the Dregs, the seed cracks and starts to grow.
He taught her how to defend herself and now she was filled with the pride and definition that came with the word dangerous . She knew how to work with knives and make herself be silent, where no one would hear her coming. She wasn’t able to handle her first kill—sobs echoed from her room that entire night—but soon after, it became part of her routine. Taking lives that were necessary to be taken.
One afternoon, she’s perched on the sill of his attic window, her hand feeding food to the crows that crowded on the roof.
“You shouldn’t make friends with crows,” he says.
“Why not?” she asks.
His answer is already on his tongue as he pulls his head up to look at her, but then, it vanishes. Thin air, nothing known or remembered. The reason for why is more surprising than he wants to admit.
Inej’s face is turned towards the sun, that bright, burning star, and it lights her face in a delicate glow. Her eyes are closed with her raven black lashes spanning over her cheeks— beautiful is what he believes to call it. The winds carry her long, dark hair and there’s seconds, moments, where he’s innocent and sure that there’s goodness in the world just like when he was a boy.
In his wrist, he feels some writhing underneath his skin—not painful but soft— and the first three petals sprout. Bright red and sweet-looking against his pale skin, yet he doesn’t know what flower they are. He doesn’t come to realize that he’s still stalling on her question until she repeats herself.
“Why not, Kaz?”
He gives her the first thing that comes to mind and subtly tugs on his glove, covering most of the flower but letting a bit of the petals breathe.
He doesn’t want to kill it. It’s nice to look at.
Inej notices the flower when Kaz asks if Van Eck hurt her. After the deadly heist that they went on in Fjerda, she was kidnapped and had to be rescued. Van Eck didn’t waste any time to make her second guess if she would be saved or not. She tells Kaz that he threatened to break her legs and she doubted if he would come for her— if it would be the same like the Menagerie.
His answer is, “We’re your crew, Inej. We don’t leave our own at the mercy of merch scum.”
It’s not the answer she wants.
“He was going to break my legs, ” she says, with a quaver in her voice. “Would you have come for me then, Kaz? When I couldn’t scale a wall or walk a tightrope? When I wasn’t the Wraith anymore?”
All the lack of faith she’s felt can be determined by his answer. Because she’s a tool. A deadly, killer tool that grabs information and disguises herself as a ghost.
“I would come for you.”
His answer makes her stop short. She feels her brows draw together, feels herself become weary. Would you really?
The words leave his mouth again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”
She nods her head and turns around, chin then dipping down. His answer is so vulnerable and strong that it sends chills up her back, makes her shiver. He admits that he would go to find her—even with wounds—and she isn’t sure what to make of it. A parted confession like that.
Her eyes drift to her wrist, red and bleeding petals against brown skin. The flower is small and delicate. A quiet gasp leaves her. Does she have a mark? When did this get here? Why?
Daring a glance to Kaz, who’s a short distance behind her, she can barely see it but it’s there. Some tiny glimpse of red that peeks outside of the leather of his glove. She stares long and hard.
Then she whips her head back around and starts walking. Her teeth nip at the inside of her cheek. She feels foolish to make some sort of connection.
I can help you, Kaz tells her. They’re both in a hotel bathroom and Inej is cleaning her injuries after making their final plan to bring Van Eck down. Him and his crew found themselves in a trap and he’s determined to get them out of it. That’s what he always had done.
Inej awkwardly tugs at a strip of towel wrapped around her shoulder that acts as a bandage. “Nina needs to fix this one.”
But instead, Kaz says that he could. He does it without thinking.
Now he has a clean strip of towel in his right hand with the shears placed down on the sink, ready to loop it twice behind her. The ruined bandage is on the floor, cut away a long time ago. He leans close (a sharp inhale fills his nose) and wraps the strip of towel around her shoulder, though it pains him to do so because she’s so close to him and the ache hurts along with the sickness.
He can never draw nearer to her. The waters won’t let him.
His bare fingers secure the knot and his mind tells him to move away. He rejects the command. But I’m here now. Such an intense thought. Is this somewhere he’s always wanted to be?
Inej’s eyes are closed, her pulse is pounding against her neck—he wants. He stubbornly wants without realizing.
In some other state of mind, Kaz makes his head lower down to let his lips hover just above the juncture between her damp shoulder and the column of her neck. Bright crimson petals brush together at the link of their wrists—it’s an act of pause. It tells him to wait.
Tell me to stop . Push me away , he thinks. If they are connected as the flowers want to show (and daresay, as fate wants them to be), this needs to be right.
Inej only exhales. “Go on.” Her words are a lighted whisper. Maybe a relief that she isn't, in fact, foolish?
But he moves only a small inch more. The petals wrap together and there’s a pressure from it. The color matches in tandem just like them, how they are with each other, but something still feels off.
It’s a start that they know—know that they can be together —but he marvels in his own sort of doubt.
When it’s this early on, will it be enough?