Inej Ghafa

It's a first time they've gotten a sitter since October, but they need this. It's not an in-home sitter. They could have gone out, gotten a hotel room, all of that sort of thing. But part of the comfort of this is that they found a woman who agreed to watch the twins overnight, and Inej can pick them up in the morning. They have the whole night to themselves.

Of course Inej is a little nervous about it. Not about their plans, but about leaving the twins to someone she doesn't know and trust implicitly. But they both need this. Just a little moment away, to not be parents and to work through some of the quiet, building tension that can't be worked through in the brief, quiet moments they manage to steal away during nap times.

"Are you going to tell me the plans, or is everything up to you until the last second?" Inej teases as she stands in her closet in nothing but her underthings, contemplating outfits. "I can't get dressed if you don't tell me where we're going."

They rent a room for the night. Rather, three weeks back, Inej rented a room at the casino-hotel so they could have their wedding night together without it being in their apartment. Were they Suli, they would have spent it in their own, new, Vardo just outside the rest of the camp, a mockery of privacy because everyone would know what was happening. She's not sure what a wedding night entails with the Kerch, except probably a lot of pretending they're not having fun doing it, and prayers about duty and commerce. Their wedding, Inej's and Kaz's, is more Suli than Kerch, but it's mostly just theirs.

So Inej changes into something a little more comfortable when they pick up their overnight bags from the apartment, and they have a room for the night.

It's strange, how giddy and nervous she feels. There's nothing different about tonight than any other night that they've been alone together, and they've been alone together for more than just their two and a half years together in Darrow. Well, there is one difference. She's a bride tonight, and he's her groom.

The room is huge, a suite with a kitchenette and a whole separate bedroom from the sitting room. It's practically an apartment. There's a balcony that overlooks the beach, and a bright, clear breeze off the bay. Inej steps out onto it with a glass of wine. She's a little drunk, but only pleasantly.

Fall comes in with a suddenness that thrills Inej. She throws open the windows in their apartment and busies herself in the kind of deep cleaning she won’t do again until Spring. There’s something good about doing it, something peaceful. If she must be stuck in a birdcage, she is at least stuck in a very good one, and she can at least make the soaces she occupies her own.

When she gets to the bedroom, she clears out their closest, dumping everything on the bed so she can start sorting out her summer thibgs and give Kaz’s clothes a good airing as well. He’s been here for years now. That never really strikes her until she sees the things they’ve amassed.

Once Kaz’s suits are done, she sits surrounded by her array of clothing, sorting diligently from the middle of the bed.

They take a cab back to the apartment, and Inej is once again grateful that she didn't wear heels, because even in her flat shoes she can feel the ache in her feet. It's silly. She's gotten soft and gentle in Darrow, in the last year, but it's a thing she's earned. Or maybe she just needs better shoes. Both, probably.

She hums some of the tunes from the party, unfamiliar, light music that sticks in her head and makes her smile. It reminds her of some the wassailing tunes she's heard back home. Curious, to find the bits and pieces. She likes it when she does, even if it makes her homesick.

Once they're inside, she toes off her shoes immediately, and reaches up under her dress to pull off her tights. Those were definitely starting to get uncomfortable.

Inej wakes in fits and starts, unsure of what it was that brought him to consciousness. When he was half awake, he's aware of his hands. It's a curious thing to notice first. He had fallen asleep with his hands folded between Kaz's chest and his own cheek, and there they remained when he woke, but something about them seems different some how.

Inej sits up slowly, aware that the movement might wake Kaz but doing his best to be as still and quiet as he can. He looks at Kaz, smiling gently, before he hauls himself out of bed to go wash up and get ready for the day in the cool, crisp light of pre-dawn.

It was a long day, one where they'd both been on the clock for longer than they'd intended to be. In some senses, Inej is eternally grateful that the Crow Club has gotten such a good start in Darrow. It makes sense, though: drinking is a pastime that most people can get behind, and it seems that the poor winter weather only encourages that.

She's exhausted, in a way that means she'll sleep through the night, whenever she gets to that. It won't be for hours. Kaz is in the back, running numbers. Just as in Ketterdam, he keeps a book for everyone else, rather than for himself; Inej is fairly certain that the authorities in Darrow are a bit more stringent in the keeping of paper records than they were in Ketterdam, but she never questions Kaz's practices. Not these ones at least.

Inej sends home the other bartender from the night, smiling as she hands over the wad of tips she earned. They were good. Inej isn't hardly used to that. Then, once the other bartender is gone, Inej locks the door and heads into Kaz's office.

"Just about finished?"

Once, Inej's mother told her that the man she loved would know her favorite flowers. The difficulty with this, Inej finds, is that she is not entirely sure she knows what her favorite flowers are. Ketterdam did not have many flowers. But when she thinks of flowers, thinks of the smell of flowers in her mother's hair, and the fried dough over the fire, and her father's laugh, she also thinks of fields dotted with wildflowers. She thinks of the caravan, of her family, of freedom. So, maybe, she thinks those are her flowers.

Kaz has a knot of them tattooed on his arm. Inej noticed it early, the first day they were alone together, and Kaz was changing shirts in front of her, as he had so many times in the Slat. This, she realized in that moment, was Kaz Brekker without armor. It was quiet, little things. Like wanting her to stay, even if she could not bring herself to his bed.

Like not wearing his gloves, except when he was pulling them on to be around people who were not his people. He did not wear them around her, when they were just in his apartment. And he did not wear them around Jesper, either. This, she realizes, is a story she doesn't know. But Inej is Kaz's spy, his spider, his wraith. If there is something new here, she will figure it out. Or, Kaz will just have to tell her. She expects the former before the latter.

That afternoon, Inej is curled into the corner of Kaz's couch in soft, comfortable clothing that are unsuitable for the late autumn outside, but are perfectly suitable for lounging in Kaz's space. She has a book, something easy and tawdry and ridiculous, and she has been watching Kaz out of the corner of her eye as he putzes about.