“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

His voice was low—measured—but the doorway framed him like a threat. A shadow draped in black, eyes unreadable, but watching you like you were a puzzle he couldn’t stop picking apart.

“They’ll start thinking I have a heart.”

He didn’t smile. Kaz Brekker didn’t do soft. But something flickered in his gaze—something too human, too dangerous.

Then he stepped forward. “...And you,” he murmured, voice dropping just enough to feel like gravity, “you’re making it very hard for me to prove them wrong.”

A pause, heavy with all the things he wouldn’t name. “Keep talking like that,” he said quietly, “and one of us is going to bleed for it.”