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Kaz had lost count of how many things in his life were a constant source of irritation. He just never expected a pair of glasses to be among them.
It started almost immediately. The one of the first times he stepped out of the Slat with them on a particularly humid morning, his breath barely ghosted over his coffee before his glasses fogged up completely. Jesper had doubled over laughing.
“Saints, Brekker, you’re defenseless.”
Kaz had very calmly set his coffee down, whipping the glasses off with more force than necessary, and contemplated murder.
Then there was the issue of fights. The first time his glasses got knocked off in a scuffle, they snapped clean in half. The second time, they flew across the room and slid under a bar counter. No matter how well made whatever glasses he’d gotten had been, they were more fragile than Jesper’s ego. The third time, he simply pulled out another pair from his coat pocket like some deranged magician.
Jesper nearly lost his mind. “How many of those things do you have?!”
Kaz ignored him and adjusted the new pair on his nose.
It didn’t stop there.
The lenses smudged constantly, whether from the grime of the Barrel, the damp mist off the Ketterdam canals, or, more often than not, Jesper’s fingerprints. Jesper claimed it was a “test of patience.” Kaz suspected it was just an excuse to get away with touching something of his without losing a finger. He seriously thought about revoking that privilege.
“They make you look even grumpier, you know,” Jesper said one night, sprawled across the worn couch of the Slat. He squinted at Kaz from his upside-down position. “All serious and broody, like a librarian who moonlights as a crime lord.”
Kaz merely flipped a page in his ledger. “Go to sleep, Jesper.”
The complaints kept coming. The weight of the frames pressed an irritating groove into the bridge of his nose. Rain turned his vision into a blurry mess, more often than not he would just remove them entirely. And when he woke up in the middle of the night, he’d reach for them automatically for the clarity he desperately needed, only to fumble and knock them to the floor.
One morning, he walked downstairs to find Jesper holding a pair of his glasses up to the light, examining them like they were some kind of scientific marvel.
Kaz froze. “Put those down.”
Jesper smirked, turning them over. “You’ve got good taste, boss. These are nice. I mean, for something that makes you look a decade older.”
Kaz snatched them back and slid them on with practiced ease. “I will replace you with a brick and drown it in the harbor.”
Jesper grinned. “But who else would make sure you don’t walk into walls when these get knocked off?”
Kaz pointedly ignored him. He’d survived this long without them, he wasn’t
completely
blind.
But, despite all the frustration, there were benefits. His vision was sharper than it had ever been, every face, every flick of a card, every twitch of a merchant’s fingers when they lied amplified a hundred times what he’d been able to see before, and Kaz had been able to see more than enough. He had now been able to pay less attention to the smaller things, which served him massively. And when he adjusted his glasses with a deliberate push up the bridge of his nose, it had a certain effect. A ‘tell’ that he’d entirely fabricated. People hesitated. Paused. Reconsidered their choices.
Jesper, however, remained immune. …And insufferable.
“You’re doing the glasses thing,” he accused one evening, pointing at Kaz. “Like, the ‘calculating villain’ move.”
Kaz didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he took them off, cleaned the lenses with measured precision, and slid them back on.
Jesper groaned. “Ugh. It’s worse when you do it slowly.”
Kaz smirked. Maybe the glasses weren’t so bad after all.
The annoyances weren’t just physical. He’d managed to avoid most comments from the Barrel, but the whispers still reached him, even without his Wraith collecting them.
“He looks different with them.”
“Think he’ll be less of a bastard now?”
“Maybe he won’t see me coming when I cheat at cards.”
Wrong on all accounts. If anything, Kaz had perfected the art of removing his glasses just to glare someone into submission before slipping them back on like nothing had happened. They were a tool he could use to his advantage in a way that was worth the cons.
The first time the Crows saw him in them, the silence that filled the room was deafening. Jesper had been mid-sentence when he stopped, blinked, and immediately burst out laughing. Kaz has not had a day since where he has not wanted to wring Jesper’s neck out like an old shirt doused in water.
“Oh, this is—this is
fantastic
. I need a moment.” He doubled over, slapping his knee. “Kaz Brekker, Barrel King,
scholarly edition
.”
Wylan, trying and failing to hide a smile, cleared his throat. “They… suit you.”
Inej tilted her head, considering him like a puzzle piece that suddenly didn’t fit quite the same way. If there was slightly more color in her cheeks than usual, Kaz willingly chose to ignore it for his own sake. “They make you look older.”
Matthias, ever blunt, frowned. “They make you look
less
threatening.”
Clearly, as they would all discover later, the general public highly disagreed with that statement.
Jesper gasped. “Kaz! We have to get you different frames! Maybe something with thin silver rims? No, gold! Oh, Saints, what about—”
“Jesper,” Kaz interrupted, voice flat. “If you keep talking, I
will
make sure your guns mysteriously disappear.”
Jesper mimed zipping his lips, but the amusement in his eyes was still infuriating.
The Barrel, however, was an entirely different beast. People weren’t sure what to make of him. Some assumed he had an injury, a temporary impairment that made him vulnerable. Others whispered that maybe this was a sign of him softening. A few idiots even dared to test it, assuming his new accessory made him weaker.
The first man who tried to snatch his cane learned otherwise. So did the next three.
By the end of the week, the whispers had changed.
“Have you seen Brekker’s new look?”
“He still scares the piss out of everyone.”
“I heard he took a guy’s kneecap clean off while adjusting them on his face.”
Kaz allowed himself a small half-smile. First the gloves, then the cane, now the glasses, would people ever get bored of trying to discover what demonic traits must hide beneath them? Well, they worked to his advantage anyway. Let them wonder.
But there were times when he didn’t have them. Like now.
“This should be it,” Wylan said, glancing at the map in his hands. “Kaz, what does that sign say?”
Kaz squinted at the faded lettering above the alley entrance. The silence stretched. Blinked. Squinted harder.
“…Merchling, your guess is as good as mine.”
Wylan turned to him, incredulous. “You can’t—?”
Kaz exhaled sharply. “It’s
blurry
.”
There was a long pause before Wylan snorted. “Wow.”
Kaz leveled him with a look. “What.”
Wylan shrugged, grinning. “It’s just nice, you know? That for once, I’m not the only one struggling to read something.”
Kaz frowned, but Wylan just shook his head, stuffing the map away, not giving him a chance to retort. “Come on. I’ll use the general map, you glare menacingly. We’ll get there eventually.”
The worst moment, however, wasn’t public, wasn’t something the others could tease him for. It was after a fight, when the adrenaline had drained from his veins and left him raw, exposed. He was back in his room, sitting on a stool with his leg stretched out, sleeves rolled up, peeling his gloves off with slow, deliberate movements. Exhaustion pressed against his ribs, but he ignored it, focusing instead on the way his fingers curled stiffly as he worked the leather away.
He barely registered the sound of the door opening. A wraith’s entrance was never meant to be noticed, but Kaz would always stay attuned to her. His hands stilled for a moment instinctively as Inej stepped into the room, moving with that quiet, measured grace that made him feel like he was the one off balance. He continued removing the gloves entirely and placed them on his desk. The medical kit in her hand told him she had come for him, and something in his chest clenched at the thought.
She knelt in front of him, unrolling the bandages with practiced ease. She didn’t speak, and neither did he. There was no need. She knew if he didn’t want her there, she wouldn’t have gotten past the doorway. He watched her as she worked, the flickering candlelight casting shadows along the curve of her jaw, the determined press of her lips. Her hands hovered, cautious and steady, never quite touching his skin as she cleaned the blood from a particularly deep cut on his forearm.
Kaz exhaled sharply through his nose, feeling the sting. But it was nothing compared to the ache spreading low in his stomach, the way his breath threatened to tangle when she was this close. It was easier for his mind to stay connected to himself when she was present.
Inej was careful. Always careful. She never lingered too long, never pushed past the boundaries they both understood too well. And yet, there was a softness in her touch, in the way she smoothed the bandage over his skin without letting her fingers brush his own. She stood up, her stance now taller than Kaz, sitting down. Inej looked down, past her nose at him. He pushed his urge to turn his head away from her side, and stared up at her.
Then, she hesitated.
Kaz felt it before he saw it, that fraction of a second where her movements faltered. His gaze flicked up to her face, confusion pooling behind his ribs.
Then, her fingertips ghosted along the edge of his glasses, lifting them gently from his face.
His breath caught.
The absence of their weight left him feeling strangely bare. His vision blurred at the sudden shift, the world behind her losing its sharp edges. Almost putting Inej in the sole focus of his vision, the only thing he could see clearly in a way that could be called ironic. But none of that mattered because Inej was looking at him. Really looking at him.
“One of the lenses is cracked,” she murmured, turning them over in her hands. Her voice was soft, but not without concern. As if she’d just discovered some hidden wound he hadn’t thought to mind.
He hadn’t even noticed.
He should have. Kaz Brekker always noticed.
His throat worked around the dryness there, but his voice still came out quieter than he meant. “I have spares.”
Inej glanced up at him, her expression unreadable. Then, slowly, her lips curved into something small, something real. “Of course you do.”
She set the broken glasses down beside him, her fingers lingering just a breath away from his own. He could feel the warmth of her presence, even without contact. It was maddening. It was everything.
Inej continued working, smoothing another bandage over a slice left in his forearm.
Kaz flexed his fingers against his knee, grounding himself, keeping the waters at bay. But for the first time that night, he forgot about the sting of his wounds, about the fight, about everything that wasn’t her.
He could barely breathe, and for once, he didn’t want to.