Shadows: A Six of Crows Fan fic

Chapter Seventeen: Inej

Hours passed as Inej and Jesper laid back on her bed, alternating between peaceful silence, tearful cries, boisterous laughter, and confessional whispers. In the lives of shadows and bloodshed that they both led, moments like these were hard to find. To start with, it was difficult to find people they could trust enough to be so vulnerable with as to not only let down their physical guard, but also their emotional ones. Friendships were hard to nurture in the dark, rat-filled allies of the barrel. When they spent most of their time avoiding death, finding a shoulder to cry on didn't become a top priority. But lying there in the swaying dim of Inej's cabin, they took comfort in the presence of each other and pushed away, if just for a few hours, the troubles that waited outside the door. A reprieve they both desperately needed.

Inej wanted to stay there. Jesper's words had resonated with her, and she would make Dawa pay. But right now, all she wanted to do was sit with a friend and just be normal. She didn't want to fight for her life or think of all the people counting on her. She didn't want to think of the stress mounting on her shoulders or the problems piling up at her feet. She didn't want to deal with the boy that made her heart simultaneously skip a beat and break into pieces

She just wanted this moment of peace to last forever. She just wanted to talk to a friend she'd known for years, and yet had never had the chance to really speak to.

But no matter how hard they tried, time still kept passing, the sun kept sinking, the moon kept rising, and soon a knock sounded at the door. Specht and the crew calling for their captain.

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Inej stood at the helm of her ship as the sun rose above the horizon, calling orders to her crew as they started pulling out of the harbor and headed towards open sea. From where she stood, hands steady on the wheel, she watched her crew scramble to heed every word she called, untying and tying ropes, raising the sails, flying the colors, and in the midst of all the chaos, a lone dark figure stood at the prow of her ship unmoving. Her orders quieted as a fresh sea breeze tousled his hair, and his gloved hands came to rest calmly on the head of his cane. His head tilted back to look up at the sky and soak in the rays of sun poking through the cloud cover and smog. A ray of light glinted off his face, radiating around him to make him look almost peaceful and ha-

Specht's voice cut through her thoughts, asking for another command. Snapping out of her fixated trance, Inej shook her head and continued calling orders, making sure her ship and crew were ready for the True Sea. What was she doing? She thought she was supposed to be mad at him.

Minutes passed and then they were finally out at sea, The Wraith following close behind Dawa's ship, the Neshyenyer-sesh, the Relentless Heart. The man, naming his own ship after himself, really couldn't have been more conceited. Flanking the waters on either side of The Wraith, Dawa's other two ships followed. She hated the feeling of being pinned in, but according to Katya, the appointed leader of the six assassins aboard her ship, Dawa wanted her to stay in the middle of their little fleet. 'Better to keep an eye on' apparently.

Inej lifted a hand off the wheel and touched each of the knives she could reach on her body, counting off the names of her protecting saints to calm her unease. She even counted her newest addition, an ornate pirate's sword gifted to her by Specht and the crew she'd named Sankt Nikolai, the patron saint of sailors and lost causes. Somehow both sides of the saint seemed fitting.

The blade was light, single-edged, and made of perfectly balanced, sharpened steel. The hilt was an intricate yet austere working of silver vines woven together to form a guard shadowing a leather grip and wide enough to cover her knuckles plus half the back of her hand. The Scabbard was the true beauty. A light husk made of perfectly fitting, tough leather, but on the outside impressed into it was a covering of ornate metalwork. The covering of silver depicted waves, sea monsters, and the symbols of various saints. Interwoven between the images and etchings, gold veins spun, circled, and crept across the surface. The moment she'd seen the sword tears had come to her eyes.