this bit in crooked kingdom will always stand out to me.
"you square your shoulders before you start a move as if you're about to perform, like your waiting for the audience's attention."
she looked slightly affronted at that. "and what's yours?"
kaz thought of the moment on vellgeluk that had nearly cost him everything.
first off, i love that kaz pays so much attention to inej even when she's not looking, to the extent that he notices tiny details like the movement of her shoulders (which would have happened in battles, where kaz would have undoubtedly been concentrating on his own opponents too!)
second, kaz thinks inej is his tell (which it certainly was in vellgeluk, when rollins saw kaz's concern for inej which led to her kidnapping). but i feel like it goes deeper than that.
we see kaz use love as a tactic all the time. he stakes a hugely important heist purely on matthias' love for nina, he uses it against geels, smeet and his daughter hanna, and, of course, pekka rollins in the end. obviously it is against van eck where he fails, because he overestimates his love for wylan.
this post was partly inspired btw by this post, go have a read if you haven't already!
what makes this so sad is that kaz just simply cannot believe that a father would discard of his son so hastily. he believes in van eck's love for wylan, even after wylan himself says it isn't relevant.
kaz places a huge importance on familial love despite the cynic in him, which i think is beautiful (and desperately heartwrenching), and i've always wondered how many of his tactics stem from his own yearning and insecurities. kaz seems like the last person who would care about love, but leigh bardugo subtly reveals his dependence (and desire) for closeness through his constant use of it.
and this quote really sums that up. kaz thinks his love for inej is his weakness, his tell, because that's the thing he would exploit in other people. it's what he's been conditioned to believe in, as he's seen the worst of the world and has no reason to believe love exists but yet he does, he relies on it and still places such a huge importance on it despite everything. he's scared of love, scared of the overwhelming impact of it, but he still admires it.
and i think that's why i love the open ending of crooked kingdom, we don't see it but we get hints that kaz will overcome his underlying fear of love through inej. i would like to believe that he comes to think of it as a strength, rather than a weakness. because of inej, he changes his perspective on love as something to be cherished rather than exploited.
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