Kaz and Inej parting
Get ready for lots of Kanej feelings in this one, and the next.
Inej spends almost the entirety of the books contemplating her freedom and what she’ll do when she finally walks away from Ketterdam. In the show, at one point it looks like her alternative would be to go back to the Menagerie, something she would rather die than do. When she tries to leave the Crows in Episode 7, Kaz isn’t quite ready to tell her goodbye, but he doesn’t offer any parting words either.
“That’s it? After everything, there’s nothing else you want to say to me?” Inej asks. “What else is there?” Kaz responds cynically. The pain and resignation on Amita Suman’s face as she turns away does the rest. He does stop her to tell her she was right about Alina’s powers, unable to truly let her go. Inej asks him what he believes in, if not Saints, and Kaz finally admits that the only thing he has faith in are them, because no one has ever watched over him like Inej has. He promises he won’t let her go back to the Menagerie, and Inej agrees to stay.
In the book, the two have known each other longer and they are more aware of each other’s limitations. Inej knows not to expect anything from Kaz, and when she tells him, in one of the book’s most beautiful scenes, “When we get back to Ketterdam, I’m taking my share, and I’m leaving the Dregs,” Kaz looks away and tells her she should, that she was always too good for that place. But he also reaches out and tries to tell her something: “Inej — if we don’t make it out, I want you to know…”
Only Kaz never finishes that sentence, and Inej knows not to be disappointed. The difference in the show is that Inej has decided to leave because she can, not because she has to. Her freedom is finally hers. “She had aim now, her heart had direction, and though it hurt knowing that path led away from him, she could endure it.”
About a hundred pages later, after the Ice Court heist is successfully concluded and the danger of death isn’t looming over them, the Dregs revisit the topic of Inej leaving. She speaks of her plan to hunt slavers, to find her family, and Kaz finally takes that impossible step and asks her to stay with him. This scene also feels like we’re coming full circle from the scene in Episode 7, but Inej refuses this time. She’s forging her own path, and she’s done being anyone’s spy. And yet, when they are saying goodbye at the end of Crooked Kingdom, she promises that one day, she will come back.