TROUBLE , kaz brekker

xvi. well, that was quite the magic trick.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE LAST TIME ECHO HAD seen Genya Safin, she had been covered in her sister's blood.

She was eighteen and the rumours were rife. Irina Orlova wants to kill her sister. It was nothing that thousands of siblings hadn't contemplated daily but, unlike those thousands, there was not a doubt in anyone's mind that she would do it.

But, her fatal mistake was bragging about it. Echo knew to expect her weeks before the assault began. Poor Irina, she always was far too confident. And so, Echo sat awake in their family home for nights on end without so much as a wink of sleep and a stolen shotgun hidden under her long coat, waiting for her fate to arrive wearing a familiar face.

The night was quiet and the house was even quieter. Her parents were at some gala or another ( how convenient ) and there was no one to attest to the nature of their fight. She was supposed to die - hidden by whispers that she couldn't hear, couldn't fight and couldn't challenge.

She was supposed to go quietly. So that's why, when her sister walked into her room, Echo shot her in the face.

Unfortunately, it was a modified round, a blank, if you will. Instead, the casing hid a rather wonderful substance that when set alight, could serve as a flash bomb. Irina was blind, her heartrender abilities were useless.

But she was also angry. She screamed, clawed at the open air and the fight for Echo's life began.

It was, in the simplest of terms: kill or be killed. Which is why, in the chaos, she'd taken a marble bust from their fireplace and hit Irina Orlova with it until she stopped moving. And then she'd fled.

She'd learnt several months later, when the news of a murdered Heartrender didn't't reach the shores of Ketterdam, that her sister just wouldn't die. In that moment, she had been delusional enough to believe that the one with the power to fuse broken bones together with her bare hands, wouldn't be able to mend her own skin back to it's arrogant flawlessness. But, at least it had given her what she needed most - time.

Time to sneak into the Grand Palace, either on a whim or a reflex, because the only person who could possibly help her had long since left to serve in the First Army and so she almost began to chastise herself until she'd seen that familiar flash of red hair and just for a second, let herself smile.

Echo had loved Genya since she was a stupid child with the even stupider notions that love could right all the wrongs in the world. It was only when she'd experienced true love in Ketterdam that she realised- it didn't matter. Genya was loyal to the same thing all Ravkan grisha were - the Darkling. It didn't matter how much she loved her. It wouldn't make Genya love her back.

That didn't mean the sight of the Tailor didn't steal the breath from Echo's lungs.

"Genya." She tried to sound haughty, as her sister always did.

The other red-head wrinkled her nose in distain before marching into her quarters. Apparently, her and Kaz had done an excellent clean up job as she didn't even give the room a second glance. "Saints, now I can see why you called for me. You look awful."

Sure, she hadn't slept in days and months of hanging around Kaz Brekker had fashioned this kind of permanent scowl on her face but Echo didn't think she looked that bad. So she shrugged and tried not to take it to heart.

"I lost a little sleep." Quite possibly the understatement of the century. Saints, she really needed to stop hanging around Kaz. "One of our new guests decided to be awfully loud, awfully early."