Everything else dissolves as the conversation comes down to that needle point fact: That none of it was ever about him trying to win her. And she knew this, on some level, but… the lessons she learned at The Menagerie were burned deep into her bones, not easy things to shake. It was all too easy to assume the worst of the boy who had come back for her with the reputation of demon and monster attached so thoroughly to his name.

But Kaz had never raised her debt or played against his own rules just to cause her to fail. He was awful in his own rights, but he was never for even one second the kind of awful that Tante Heleen had been. He’d let her go— got her a ship and a crew so she could go.

Something sticks in her throat and she has to swallow around it before she can speak again. “You are many things, Kaz Brekker, but the most noble thing is you are true to your word.” Even when it has the potential to hurt him. He had been prepared to let her go. Trusting and doubting in equal measure whether she would actually return all the while.