Page 132 of A Steeping of Blood
“We’re going to get you out before that,” Jin said. “You don’t know me—”
“I do,” one of the boys said. His voice rough from unuse. “My sister fancied you years ago.” He stopped to hack a dry cough, and Flick looked around for water, coming up short. “You’re that Casimir bloke.”
Jin held back a groan, certain he knew where this was going. Now wasn’t the time to get a beating for breaking a girl’s heart, but was there ever a right time?
The boy narrowed his eyes at Jin. “Eh, he’s all right. I say trust him.”
Flick hid a smile but hurried them out of the cage. “The Ram’s having a party aboveground, which will give you the perfect cover to escape.”
The group looked at one another, skeptical.
“Just like that? And go home?”
Jin hadn’t thought that far, but an idea struck right away. “I have a friend waiting by the palace gates.”
“He will take you to the Horned Guard headquarters,” Flick said. “Where you can tell them what the Ram did to you. Because right now, the city thinks vampires are responsible for your disappearances.”
The girls and boys conferred among one another.
“No one will believe that,” one of the boys said, and Jin understood why he spoke with ironclad conviction: They had lived their own lives believing vampires were at fault for everything. It was their first time standing on the other side of it.
“They will soon enough,” Flick promised, locking eyes with Jin. “We’re going to make sure of it.”
52ARTHIE
The bodies of the three captives were seared in Arthie’s mind. It was one thing to know what the Ram was capable of, to see the effects of her monstrosity in the very bones of society, but it was another to witness it confined in so small a space, diluted to the essence of what the Ram was: evil.
Those three shots rang out in her ears over and over again, even as Matteo snuck her to an empty storeroom and locked the door shut. It was a narrow, musty space, lit only by the lantern he had grabbed on their way in and set on a barrel of what seemed to be gunpowder.
Arthie wanted to tell him they didn’t have to worry about the Ram now. She was out there, readying to meet her handpicked audience, masking her identity, masking her cruelty, masking away the heinous person that she truly was.
In the dark, Arthie saw the pleading in the captives’ eyes. She heard the girl’s warning, cut short by a gunshot. Calibore’s bullet, the pistol gripped tight in the Ram’s hand.
Arthie might as well have done it. Shot and killed three innocents in cold blood. And unlike the first time she’d slain three, she was lucid and sober, not inebriated by half vampirism.
“Arthie,” Matteo said softly. She lifted her eyes to his. “It wasn’t you. Those dead bodies inside that cage? It wasn’t you.”
“It may as well have been,” Arthie whispered. “Why do you think the Ram put me in there? She was waiting for me to succumb.”
The Ram didn’t know what Arthie had done as a child fleeing Ceylan, but she had seen the way Arthie’s body reacted to that spray of blood before she’d made that decision. She had assumed in a strange way that vampires were perpetually hungry—she had asked Arthie as much in the carriage.
Matteo pursed his lips. “Then she sorely underestimated you, but then again, she always has, no?”
It was true, Arthie wasn’t new to being underestimated. She was, however, new to being so thoroughly understood. She wrenched her gaze away from his. The room seemed to shrink, the distance between her and him taut, suddenly abuzz.
“Remember when I said I held your heart?” Matteo asked. “It’s how I know your strength. She can’t break you.”
He was waiting for a response, so she managed a nod, a trill shooting through her at his pleased smile. He licked his thumb and wiped a smudge of blood from her chin, the lantern drawing him in sharp relief. His hair was knotted at the base of his skull. She liked when he wore it that way. She liked when he wore his specs too, which she’d learned he actually needed for reading but didn’t always wear because he clearly thought them ugly. He was still dressed like a rogue, despite being in a palace, and he still couldn’t find his buttons. How he’d managed to keep the white of his elegant shirt spotless would remain a mystery.
“You’re right,” she said with a sigh.
“I usually am, darling,” he drawled.
She rose and winced at the squelch of blood. “I’m not exactly presentable for a tribute, though.” She spotted a rag on the barrel beside the lantern, and wiped the last of the blood from her hands. “It’ll have to do. I’m sure the Ram will understand.”
“You must know by now that I’m a man who takes care of his woman,” Matteo said grandly.
Arthie lifted an eyebrow. “Am I your woman now?”
