𝑮𝑳𝑰𝑻𝑻𝑬𝑹 | 𝑘.𝑏.

20

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D O N ' T F O R G E T T H E G L O R Y
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IT TOOK TWO DAYS AFTER Feta emerged from the surgeon's cabin for Kaz to approach her. She was sitting by herself, miraculously without some sort of company vying for her attention, legs dangling over the hull of the ship as she sipped a cup of coffee that looked to be more cream and sugar than it was actual coffee. Just the way she liked it: too sweet to taste the caffeine.

Kaz limped over to her. "I want to show you something."

Her chin dipped slightly to the sound of his voice but that was the only indication she gave that she'd heard him at all. Their scenery tinted grayer and grayer the farther north they sailed but today the musk of the clouds was thinner, allowing for a blue hue to the waves, a strict sheen of sunlight to glint off the water. Feta hadn't been able to look away since she'd awoken that morning. She may as well have been installed as a figurehead on the Ferolind with the way she tamed the sea with her stare.

Feta rested her coffee in her lap. "Is it more sugar? Rotty underestimated how bitter this brew was."

Her voice wasn't the grand, graceful pitch the Siren was known for but it was close. The cold most likely wasn't helping. Her voice was a little scratched, raspy in the same manner as his own. Kaz fought the urge to clear his throat.

Instead he leaned against the railing, his elbow near her hip. "Can't afford you falling off."

Kaz caught her smirk. "Why? Afraid you might actually miss me?"

He felt his lips twist. "Afraid you'd make the ocean spit you right back out. You'd give our druskelle a heart attack before Zenik would get the chance."

"Then you're going to hate the act I've got scheduled for later," Feta hummed. "Figured I'd break it to him gently before he started asking me what my favorite flavor of homemade ice is. Slushy, flakey, yellow—"

Something too close to a laugh for Kaz Brekker's taste leapt up his throat. He didn't do his slickest job of disguising it, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway: the slightest hitch in the air between them would have been all it took to earn Feta's triumphant smile, the melting of her statue-esque fixation on the sea. She twisted her hips as she pivoted on the railing, her boots sticking her delicate descent onto the deck. Besides a minor wince and a dismissive rub to her torso, there was hardly any acknowledgement to her injuries, certainly no disturbance to the natural flow of her movements.

"Oh, I'm thriving, thanks for asking," she said as sincerely, as thankfully, as though he had asked. "Thank Djel Oomen was more focused on quantity over quality, otherwise I might've actually—" And this is where Kaz was reminded of how incessantly foolish and endlessly distracting Feta was at her core, because she saw the opportunity of a nearby bucket, half-full of rain water, and right on cue with her speech, nudged it with the toe of her boot.

When Kaz groaned loudly, glared at her as if it would do anything to diminish her joy, Feta's smile only brightened. "Get it?" she practically squealed. "Kicked the bucket?"

"Yeah, I got it, Siren."

But glare and snap and groan as he might, Kaz's lips turned up at the ends against his better judgement, his eyes brightening to nearly the same shade as Feta's coffee, and Feta felt that same booming in her chest — that victory — that reminded her why she bothered at all.

"How 'bout yourself, Brekker?" Feta asked in turn, cocking her head. She'd tied her hair back loosely in a bunched up bun at the base of her neck, and it seemed this mockery of manners, only a mockery on his end because she knew good and well he didn't participate, pushed it past its limits that not even the sea breeze could do; her hair sprang loose around her shoulders, cascaded down her back. She cursed and went to work reigning in her curls once again.