Page 131 of A Steeping of Blood
He pried them from Flick’s white-knuckled hands. Inside the cage, he counted nine others, each giving Arthie a wide berth.
Because there were three dead bodies around her.
A roar broke the hushed quiet—Matteo. He shoved past Jin to the bars. “Arthie? Arthie look at me.” His fangs were extended, his claws sharp. He looked at the people in the cage. “What happened to her? Oi! Did you not hear me? Speak!”
The captives stared with wide eyes. They were still bound; they couldn’t speak if they wanted to.
“Matteo, stop shouting at them!” Flick cried.
Jin tried key after key. None of them fit. He threw the ring aside and drew out his lockpicks, working the lock until it finally snapped open. Jin swung the door wide. The hinges groaned. The caged girls and boys didn’t move, frozen in fear.
Matteo only saw Arthie.
“You came,” she whispered.
He rushed inside, dropping in front of her, running his hands over her face, her neck. He was looking for a bullet hole, for the jagged edge of a stake. “Laith found us. Are you hurt?”
Arthie shook her head. “She’s coming back. I need to turn them for Calibore. I need to turn them so they’ll live. She—she took Calibore and shot them.” Her voice was a rough, broken whisper. “I didn’t do it.”
She was staring at the dead. Two girls, one boy. Three bodies. And Jin knew she wasn’t here in the cage anymore, no. She wasn’t in the bunker, or even White Roaring. She was a young girl adrift at sea, in the little boat that was no different than a cage, surrounded by the bodies of the three people she had mutilated.
Arthie might not have killed them, but in her mind, she had.
“She’s not going to kill them,” Jin said. “We’re getting them out before she returns.”
And for that, they needed to move quickly.
“Calibore,” she kept saying over and over, barely acknowledging their presence.
Matteo helped her to her feet. “We’ll get Calibore back. Right now, we need you.” He paused, looking at the captives, but Flick handed him the Council mask.
“We’ll take care of them,” she said softly. “You need to get her masked and ready for the tribute.”
“Laith, cover their exit,” Jin said when the Arawiyan stumbled inside the room. He nodded, leading Arthie and Matteo away.
Arthie looked small. Like the child she had never been allowed to be because of the Ram. Because of the EJC.
“Jin,” Flick murmured, brushing his arm.
He nodded. Right. They had work to do.
Flick turned back to the cage. The captives regarded her warily, and Flick lifted her arms, as if to show them she was unarmed.
“I promised I’d come back for you,” she said gently. “And I did. We’re here to get you to safety.”
Jin was yet again amazed at how a woman like the Ram raised a girl like Flick, whose very nature was nurturing, kind. Caring.
“Were any of you turned?” she asked.
The girls and boys shook their heads, sharing glances that made it clear they feared more than once that they had been close.
“There’s nothing wrong with being turned, but never against one’s will,” Flick said.
She didn’t care about the hem of her gown soaking up the blood in the cage. She didn’t care that there were dead bodies mere feet away from her; Flick climbed into the cage and began untying their bindings, freeing their arms first before the ropes around their mouths.
Jin moved to help, approaching them as carefully as one would a spooked animal, even as every inch of him itched to hurry, to check on Arthie, to rush back to the palace gardens in time for the doors to the tribute to open.
“The Ram,” one of the girls whispered. “The Ram will come back for us.”
