[ There's a small smile mirroring the one she presses to his hair, curling the corner of his mouth. Another piece of armor, shorn away and placed at her feet. Later, he might be anxious about it. For now, though, it feels like the right time. He doesn't think he'll be able to tell her everything—his history here in Ketterdam is still bottled up, locked behind several doors on the inside.

The farmhouse and the fields beyond...it's a start.

Slowly, he places a hand on her thigh, drawing his thumb across the subtle stitching pattern on the sleep pants she's chosen. The motion is as soothing to him as her fingers in his hair, her nails just barely ghosting along his scalp. ]

Two towns over from Lij. Small enough it never got named. [ It could hardly even be called a town. Nor a village, really. More like a loose collection of houses and a general store. For anything else, they'd have to ride or take a carriage the eight miles down the road to Lij proper. ]

Bought the land back after my first big haul. [ It'd been stupid, really, to waste kruge on the deed. Even stupider, in the intervening years, to continue to make investments and trades listed under the false Rietveld name. At the very least, his sentimentality had served a purpose when they'd swindled Jan Van Eck out of everything he owned.

Still, he's held onto it this long. Might as well let Inej catch a glimpse of what his life had been like, before all of the misery had shattered him into pieces. ]

I think you'll like it. [ Kaz glances up at her then, imagining her sitting amongst the boughs of the tree he'd climbed as a child. She'd be much more graceful about it, of course. ]