#pre six of crows

[onlythinksbooks]

Hello, hello!

Chapter 2: Carnival Shadows

is up incase you wanted to give it a read.

<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/57143026"><strong>Crows before crows</strong></a> (4024 words) by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheresmypineapplebro"><strong>wheresmypineapplebro</strong></a><br />Chapters: 2/?<br />Fandom: <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Six%20of%20Crows%20Series%20-%20Leigh%20Bardugo">Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo</a><br />Rating: Not Rated<br />Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings<br />Relationships: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa, Kaz Brekker & Jesper Fahey, Jesper Fahey & Inej Ghafa<br />Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Jesper Fahey, Pekka Rollins<br />Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Book 1: Six of Crows, Not Beta Read, Kanej - Freeform<br />Summary: <p>Random collection of Inej's days with the Dregs.<br />Her first All Saints' Eve with the Crows.</p>

Thank you so much for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, etc!!!

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

Jesper: Oh fuck you, merchling

Wylan: Fuck me yourself, coward

Jesper: oh

[arillusionist]

grishaverse dashboard simulator

🤯 conspiracy-theories follow

theory: the sun summoner is definitely still alive. all we know is that she “gave up her life to save ravka” but how? have YOU ever heard of a grisha dying from using their powers?? it just doesnt make sense.

🌝  ruinsruiners follow

Bitch shes a SAINT. All saints die. Move on lmao

🐺 awooga10384 follow

alina was different and u know it just bc she was a “saint” doesnt mean she had to die op is right and ur being an asshole get off their post

☀️ starkovers follow

not you calling her alina like you know her personally… put some respect on her name bruh

🐺 awooga10384 follow

wait til u find out not everyone is religious and ravkan and doesnt use sankta labels n shit

☀️ starkovers follow

the way i literally never even mentioned religion… the lack of reading comprehension on this site is insane

3,377 notes

⛴️ wraithupdates follow

Friendly reminder to DNI if you think the Wraith and D*rtyh*nds are together! We do not welcome you guys on this blog :)

61 notes

🌤️ saintlydays follow

drew some fanart of sankta anastasia i hope you guys like it!! i drew her with a bleeding eye because shes the saint of sickness and when my mom was sick her eye started bleeding for like 2 days straight lol but i prayed to sankta anastasia and she made my mom get better even though her eye is permanently damaged and my sister and dad could not recover and they passed away after like 5 days of pain (we stabbed them to put them out of their misery)

#sankta anastasia #saint anastasia #saint #sankta #saints fanart #sankta fanart #sankta anastasia fanart #saint anastasia fanart

3 notes

🍺 giddyuphorsey follow

tired of yall stereotyping kerch as a dark and gloomy place… not all of us live in ketterdam or in the north in general. its extremely offensive to us so please fucking stop.

💎 ravkasbeauty follow

womp womp

4,018 notes

❓ grishapolls follow

🔥inferni-heart follow

Sturmhond is a privateer…

🧟‍♀ razorskull follow

who gaf

🔥inferni-heart follow

Shut up you dirty kerch ketterdam gang member money worshipping heathen 

🧟‍♀ razorskull follow

it was never that deep but okay..

201 notes

🦴 shadowsandbones follow

not trying to b racist or anything but why do grisha always act like they’re better than anyone else… and why doesnt anyone ever call them out…

1,121 notes

🦐 merchingaway follow

JUST FOUND OUT THAT WYLAN VAN ECK’S BOYFRIEND IS DIRTYHAND’S EX LMFAO WHATTTT

🫠 theseventhsoldier follow

guys im shu can someone please tell me that dirtyhands is not what i think it means… i keep seeing that name all over this app and im so confused

🦐 merchingaway follow

trust me its not but based on this new info…

981 notes

💣 boomboomboom follow

JUST TRIED A ZEMINI PIE FOR THE FIRST TIME MY LIFE IS FINALLY COMPLETE 💞💞💞💞💞💞

17 notes

🪴 green-skies follow

Funny how people keep hating on Kerch when Fjerda is RIGHT THEREE

💎 ravkasbeauty follow

as a heartrender whos grisha mom got captured by a fjerdan ship: womp womp

🧙🏾‍♀️ zowaaaa follow

also op is kaelish so like… why tf are they talking lmao

💎 ravkasbeauty follow

right!! also fjerdans are barely on the internet (too many grisha here for them lmao) so its not really funny bc they cant see it

☀️ starkovers follow

kerch on the other hand… most chronically online mfs i’ve ever seen

12,347 notes

[theriseandfallofshittyurls]

playing with colour

[reinanova]

you know a show/book/media did something right when the fandom writes fanfics that are an extension of canon, rather than a rewrite of canon

[fantastic-nonsense]

me, randomly dropping the next chapter of the knife fic on a Wednesday morning after months of no updates? it's more likely than you think!

When Inej left the golden halls of her personal hell days after her fifteenth birthday, she flinched at the shadows. Two years later, the Wraith of Ketterdam made others flinch at her shadow instead. There were countless moments that forged the woman she would become, endless memories of late night stakeouts and heart-pounding fights that marked her time with the Dregs. But the remaking of Inej Ghafa began with a knife and an order to “be useful.” Or: The story of how Inej acquires her knives, keeps her faith, and reclaims herself in the two years between leaving the Menagerie and the job that changed her life.

Chapter 4: Sankt Vladimir

She could help him. She knew she could. She was bigger, stronger, with better weapons and more fighting experience. But this wasn’t her fight, and the boy wasn’t a Dreg.

Put herself in danger to save a rival gang member, or ignore the fight below her? 

Inej decides to save a child in the middle of a gang war. It goes poorly.

[Read the fic from the beginning on Ao3!]

[ruins-and-rewritez]

RIP Matthias Helvar you would have loved communist era Russia

[barrel-crow-n]

Kaz and Pim in front of Jesper's room, in the Slat, after he didn't answer the door

Pim: Huh, maybe he's not here? I hope he's alright...

Kaz: Don't worry, Pim, I've got a key to his room

Pim, bewildered: Wh- wait, wh-why? You shouldn't have keys to anyone's room!

Kaz: Nah, I've got keys everywhere, and you've all been fine. By the way, I may have left something in your room today, so let me know if you find it! You're not afraid of centipedes, are you?

Pim: KAZ! That's literally my only fear, WHY would you do this?!

Kaz: What? It could be a totally unrelated question! You'll never know until it's too late...

[sleepless-crows]

i personally think freddy did an amazing job bringing kaz to life with what he was handed but the writers still haven't managed to accurately depict kaz

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: blood, descriptions of wounds, possible gore, veins, weapons, violence, implied past sa references, death, choking, descriptions of dead bodies, a lot of blood, surgery (? - I'm not sure so I'm putting it just in case)

AO3 link

Chapter 19 - Nina

Nina had not been fired. It was about the closest thing to a highlight in her day.

She had no idea what Kaz had said to Feliks and she wasn’t about to try pressuring it out of him; she’d take any win she could get. And the Saints knew she needed a win or two now. She had to coax Inej back to lying down on her flat little pillow, and after a few moments of incomprehensible disagreement had passed between them - Nina in half, slightly confused sentences and Inej mostly in pained groans and attempts to sit back up - Nina pressed her hand against Inej’s forehead and gently calmed her.

“Breathe,” she whispered, speaking Ravkan as she usually did when they were alone, “Just breathe,”

Nina had learnt Suli at the Little Palace but had never had much opportunity to use the language in practice, and although she had spoken it with Inej on occasion she always felt that she wasn’t quite good enough at it to keep pace. As she thought about she supposed she would never get better at it if she never conversed with a native speaker, though then she shook herself free of the ridiculous direction her mind had wandered in. 

“I can’t stop the pain completely,” she told Inej, “I can only ease it some,”

A real Healer might be able to do a better job of it, but Nina’s work with emotions at the White Rose helped. She pulled her hand slowly away from Inej and the girl shuddered, closing her eyes for a moment before her gaze flicked up to Nina. 

“What happened?”

“Oomen,” Inej breathed, “The Black Tips. Nina…” 

She winced, screwing her eyes shut, flinching as though to reach for her leg and then collapsing onto her back again. After a moment and another, denied, offer to alter her tension and her pain, Inej let Nina run her hands over the wounds on her leg. It didn’t feel good. The puncture above her knee Nina had thought she would just be able to knit closed, but the flesh felt tough beneath her fingers and when she applied gentle pressure with her thumb the muscles of Inej’s leg spasmed wildly. She gasped in pain, fists closing tightly over the quilt she was scrunching into her hands.

 “Sorry! Sorry,” Nina breathed, leaning away, “It’s damaged the ligament,”

It might be worse than that - Nina couldn’t tell yet. If the ligament was ripped all the way through, Nina may not be a good enough Healer to give Inej her full range of movement back when she sewed the pieces together. Moving up to Inej’s thigh didn’t feel a whole lot better. She was still bleeding but the flow was slowing, and as far as Nina could tell in an initial brush over the internal bleeding wasn’t as bad as the external was. But she couldn’t see the wounds properly yet, and the knife was still sticking out of Inej’s leg. That concerned her too; there would be more blood to come when she removed it and it was so deep into Inej’s leg that only the thinnest slither of metal was still visible, glinting in the sunrise creeping through the window. 

“What…” Inej pursed her lips, “What will that mean?”

“It’s gonna hurt like hell whilst I fix it,”

But Nina couldn’t do much until she could see Inej’s wounds properly. She found a blanket and a pair of shears, then stepped outside so that Inej would cut herself out of her trousers and cover herself with the blanket alone, and as she closed the door behind her she was surprised to find Jesper and Kaz just slightly further down the corridor. They weren’t quite shouting at each other but it was definitely an argument, and as Nina approached she saw Kaz’s eyes flashing with something dark in response to something she hadn’t quite overheard.

“I would never-”

“What, Kaz?” Jesper hissed, “Because I don’t know where you draw the line, and neither does she. There is nothing that we can safely believe you would never do and if you let her think that-”

“What are you doing?” asked Kaz, suddenly looking up at Nina.

Jesper turned to see her, his cheeks glowing, breathing hard.

“I need to know what happened,”

“I didn’t see,” said Jesper, “By the time I got back she was already injured,”

“Who was it?” growled Kaz.

“Why do you care? So you can make them pay you back for the money you might lose on her?”

“Jes-” Nina tried, but fell quiet as quickly as she’d started.

“What would you do, Kaz? If she couldn’t be the Wraith, anymore?”

There was a brief moment of silence. Kaz’s flat, shark-like glare flicked briefly between them, and then he turned sharply and began to march away. The clacking of his cane against the creaky old floorboards shrank away into the sounds of the house, and Jesper breathed loudly. 

“He wouldn’t -”

“You weren’t here, Nina,” he said, shaking his head, “You didn’t see her when - when she first got out of that place, I don’t -” Jesper ran a hand over his face, “Does he not see what he’s doing? He can’t make her feel like that again,”

Nina breathed. She didn’t think Kaz would ever do anything to hurt Inej, but she also knew that nothing she or Jesper could say would make Inej feel any safer. What else could she do? Pray to Saints she didn’t believe in for the power to fix Inej’s knee well enough that the Wraith could still do her job was starting to look like the last remaining option. She knocked on the door and Inej called her inside. 

“I’m going to have to take the knife out,” she said, slowly, “I can knock you unconscious whilst I do it, if you want, but-”

“No,”

Inej shook her head.

“Okay,” Nina nodded, slowly, “You might want something to bite,”

The fabric in between Inej’s teeth did little to dampen her screaming, but that came later. First, Nina closed what she could of closing the other puncture wounds around the knife, closing the skin where there wasn’t internal bleeding and trying to mop up what she could of the blood with a damp cloth so she could actually differentiate the problems from the congealing masses of crimson. There was so much blood. Inej must be close to passing out - she had definitely paled, and Nina thought the knife coming out might be the final straw.

“Tell me about the job,” she said, doing her best to keep Inej talking, “What were you doing?”

“We…” Inej hissed a sharp intake of breath, “We were there for Wylan,”

“Kaz is still going after Wylan?”

“Change of plans,” Inej managed, gripping the duvet again, “I don’t… really know what he wanted originally, but Jesper -” she broke to groan as Nina tugged hard to manipulate her flesh.

“Jesper…?”

“Jesper convinced him Wylan would be able to do demo. He realised something was… something was off, about Wylan’s father. Turns out this whole music school thing is a trick to-”

Nina winced, because she knew that gasp of pain had been her fault. She’d applied slightly too much pressure.

“Sorry,” she said, but Inej only shook her head, “Keep talking,”

“It’s a hit,”

Inej’s voice was drooping into a mumble and Nina had to make her repeat herself to be sure she’d heard right.

“It’s a hit?”

“Van Eck wants his son dead,” Inej confirmed, “I didn’t have time to find out why,”

Nina shook her head - but she didn’t have time to dwell on it for too long. She found some fabric for Inej to bite down on, and swallowed hard as she placed her hands either side of the knife handle.

She had to make quick work of things when she drew the blade free. The femoral vein was buried somewhere deep within the muscle of Inej’s thigh and though Nina couldn’t feel any perforations when she reached out with her power she didn’t trust her judgement as well as she would a Healer’s. She’d have to Heal Inej from the inside out - and quickly. Inej’s scream was still echoing as the knife clattered to the floor, dripping blood onto the wooden boards, and Nina’s fingers began to dance to a tune nobody else could hear. She felt Inej’s pulse change and knew she’d fainted from the pain, but she was coming around again within a few seconds. Nina worked as quickly as she could and Inej’s taut muscle responded about as well as she could hope, but in the back of her mind she was still more concerned about her knee. 

“Nina…”

She looked up, fingers hovering in place over half-closed skin and the throbbing flesh beneath.

“I can’t… Can you make me sleep? Please?”

“Of course,” Nina drew her fingers sharply towards herself to finish the motion she was partway through, then leaned away.

Her hands were covered in blood and she tried to wipe as much of it off in the little water basin and along the cloth she’d brought in with her, but both of them had long since turned a murky red. She shook the excess water off her hands. It didn’t take long to settle Inej into sleep and suddenly the room felt very empty, very cold. Nina breathed, listening to the ever-present cacophony downstairs without really managing to hear any individual conversations, just the edge of the odd word.

“- still?”

“...owes me, don’t…”

“- tell you!”

“- Leopard,”

Nina shivered. She’d heard what had happened to the girl who wore the Leopard cape at the Menagerie when she got back today - no, not today, yesterday morning. Dawn was well on its way now, and Nina needed to shake off this tiredness and keep her focus on Inej. She worked steadily, but her mind drifted back to what Adrian and Petra had told her. Nina had heard a girl went missing from the Menagerie around the same time she and Inej started the botched university job, but she hadn’t heard who it was or any further details. Apparently she’d been discovered in the dark hours of early morning, left lying half-dressed on the steps of the Menagerie with extensive bruises around her throat. 

“Maybe she tried to run,” said Petra, “and the Peacock caught her,”

Adrian shook his head.

“She was gone two full weeks. That’s gotta be long enough to get away if she ran on purpose,”

Nina wasn’t quite listening by that point. She hadn’t known until now which of the Menagerie’s girls had vanished. But it was her, the Leopard, the girl Nina had watched from across the canal two weeks ago as she sat up on one of the ugly sofas and slipped her hand into that of a red-caped Mr Crimson. Nina had seen her, watched her. And now she was gone. She didn’t know why it was quite this gutting, but Nina felt like her insides were being scraped right of her. She had seen her. Right before she disappeared.

Not disappeared. Disappeared was too passive. It made it sound like there wasn’t somebody to blame.

Nina stayed in Inej’s room for a long time after she’d patched up her leg. She’d done her best to fix the ligament in her knee and she thought it felt smooth enough, but there would be no real telling until Inej tried to use it again, and though the flesh on her thigh was still tender the skin was closed and the wounds didn’t seem to be bruising beyond what Nina had already cleared up around the exit point of the knife, but Inej had lost a lot of blood and Nina didn’t know what she was supposed to do about that. Still, Inej had not passed out from blood loss. She’d fainted from the pain but that was normal, and she was only unconscious now because Nina had put her that way. Yet somehow she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing something wrong. She didn’t know enough to do this right, her cut-short education was finally failing her. She imagined the smug look on Zoya’s face at the knowledge that she was right, that Nina should not have been sent out early no matter how much she begged.

“Congratulations,” she muttered drily to the dark, as she knelt to pick up the discarded knife, “You were right once again,”

She wiped the excess of Inej’s blood off the blade, thinking she could do her best to get some of it off the floor though she’d probably need ammonia to clean it properly, and realised that there was a small engraving on the metal. It was a little hard to see and even as she rubbed the cloth over it she knew it was all but futile without proper cleaning supplies because the blood had seeped into the design and dyed it red, but it seemed to be a single rose blooming along the base of the metal. Nina ran her finger over it for a moment, then stood and placed it on the side. She gently pulled Inej’s boots off, placed some folded clothes at the end of the bed to prop her feet up in vague hopes of keeping blood flow consistent and healthy, and gently pulled the folded corner of the blanket down over Inej’s injured leg before she left the room and closed the door behind her. 

She would wash her hands properly, she would get some water, she would get something to eat. Then she would come back and sit with Inej until she woke up, and hope that she had done enough. 

Jesper waved her over as soon as she stepped downstairs, and she scrambled a little through the crowd to reach him. No-one in this place would look twice at her for being covered in blood, but the hem of her right sleeve had now begun to actively drip so she decided this conversation would be a short one before she hurried off to soak her arms in soap and warm water. She also definitely needed to wash them before she ate anything, and Nina was famished. 

“How is she?”

“Doing pretty well,” said Nina, gratefully accepting the drink Jesper offered her and not really caring when she smeared blood onto the glass, “She’s asleep now - I’ll go back in a minute, but I just-”

She was cut off by someone calling Jesper’s name, and both of them turned to see the doors open over Anika and Roeder as they hurried inside. For a long moment no-one said anything. Jesper looked back and forth between them, as though in the second he looked away something might have changed, and then eventually:

“Where’s Wylan?”

[savstan1]

if i were to ever write a fic for sqh i would sooo totally want one of the points (maybe not main but like?? subtextual??) be that as sqh is like actively doing well and happy he gets more & more weight on him bc it’s what he deserves. i also think for a lying liar who lies something small like that would just be interesting and to be seen thru by that little tell and loved..urgggh

[incorrectquoteslobby]

Matthias: Look, last night was a mistake Nina: A sexy mistake Matthias: No, just a regular mistake

[bitchthefuck1]

i decided to reread the books as comfort and i love this from the beginning about a Zemeni ambassador's murder "Kaz hated a puzzle he couldn’t solve, and he and Inej had concocted a hundred theories to account for the murder - none of which satisfied." Kaz being a nerd over impossible crimes and theorizing w Inej is so great

It's honestly one of my favorite of his character traits, that insatiable need to figure out how something works. Also I love the mental image of he and Inej in his office late in the evening tossing theories back and forth trying to figure out how the hell the killer pulled it off

[mistylakeee]

Sometimes I just think of pre-soc Kanej and how they would just hang out in Kaz’s room all the time simply enjoying each other’s presence *sighs*

[fantastic-nonsense]

Third chapter of the knife fic is up! Come get your Inej angst and angsty pre-Kanej feels!

When Inej left the golden halls of her personal hell days after her fifteenth birthday, she flinched at the shadows. Two years later, the Wraith of Ketterdam made others flinch at her shadow instead. There were countless moments that forged the woman she would become, endless memories of late night stakeouts and heart-pounding fights that marked her time with the Dregs. But the remaking of Inej Ghafa began with a knife and an order to “be useful.” Or: The story of how Inej acquires her knives, keeps her faith, and reclaims herself in the two years between leaving the Menagerie and the job that changed her life.

Chapter 3: Sankta Anastasia

The morning after she killed a man for the first time, Inej walked out of the Slat to buy a new knife.

[Read the fic from the beginning on Ao3!]