Page 142 of A Steeping of Blood
Arthie shoved the Ram to her knees. Scant snickers echoed in the anticipated silence. She felt no such rejoicing, for as she stared at Lady Linden, she saw the Ceylani. She saw the innocents in the cage. She saw Jin’s parents. Matteo. Flick.
That little girl on a boat.
And the one who had gotten a second chance at being a daughter.
The Ram had only ever taken, and that was what she expected in this moment too. It was what she would want.
“Remember who spared you,” Arthie whispered, tears crowding her throat, and reached into her pocket for the silver dose something had compelled her to pocket in Ceylan.
She shoved it into Lady Linden’s neck.
Lady Linden looked up, horror freezing the icy depths of her blue eyes. She knew the risks of the silver inoculation. For the rest of her days, she would be forced to consume that which nearly a hundred vampires would need due toherdecisions.
Or she would become a Ripper herself.
“No. Please,” she whispered to Arthie, and why wouldn’t she beg?
She had exposed herself to the people she wanted to murder in coldblood. Her guests were sneering, looking down on her, calling for justice for their own lives. She had no allies; she had no dead bodies who would take the happenings of this night to the grave.
She had nothing, and that, for a woman like her, was a fate worse than death.
The silver worked quickly: In seconds, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed. The lords and ladies gasped. Arthie tucked Calibore into her hair.
“Did you kill her?” a lady asked.
“As much as she deserved to die, no. Vampires are not the heartless savages she’s allowed you to imagine we are. I will leave what happens to her for you to decide, but I suggest you stop blaming us.”
Murmurs passed through the guests. She heard more than one instance ofArthie Casimir is a vampire?and a part of her seized up before she thought of all that she had done, all that she had accomplished, all that shewouldaccomplish.
Arthie Casimirwasa vampire. She was also a girl. An immigrant. A businesswoman. She had pulled Calibore from White Roaring Square, and become the savior those legends said she could be.
As that sergeant had said long ago in Spindrift, she was a king.
“Is that a threat, Casimir?” a lord called, and several echoed the sentiment.
Arthie paused. She was so accustomed to issuing threats that she was surprised to find that wasn’t the case this time.
“No, I’m trusting you.”
The doors groaned open, and Arthie saw a pair of Athereum vampires holding several of the Ram’s men at gunpoint by the mechanism that had sealed it in place. People began making their way to the exit, vampires keeping them orderly.
Jin turned to the Council and handed them the ledger. “A bedtimestory for you, though it might give you nightmares.” He rubbed his neck. “Perhaps we’ll have a Heron for a monarch next, eh?”
“It’s over,” Flick whispered, staring at the woman who had raised her, the woman who had nearly ruined her. It was indeed over, but Arthie found little satisfaction in the fact.
60ARTHIE
It was a quiet morning, one Arthie hadn’t seen too often as of late. The paper announcing the Ram’s removal from office, her numerous scandals, and a recounting of the Tribute to the Written Word three weeks ago sat on a table beside a collection of paints and brushes soaking in a glass, awaiting their master.
He would never return.
Arthie spent most of her days here in the studio inside Matteo’s house. Turmoil still lingered on the streets and Sidharth had warned her it might not be safe, but Arthie could handle herself.
The Council had resumed control in the Ram’s ousting until they could appoint a new leader. They had agreed it best to keep the Ram’s identity as a vampire from public knowledge, for it was hard enough washing away the stain she had placed upon vampires as it was.
The humans she had kidnapped returned to their homes, the truth revealed, but despite the Council’s attempts to curtail the public’s anger, it lingered. It had stemmed from debilitating fear, making it easy to sell one’s sanity to the Ram’s cause. They wouldn’t so quickly believe vampires to be safe any more than they would see the wrongs in colonizing countries beyond Ettenia.
Arthie wasn’t worried. Like all things, their fears would settle with time as new ones arose. Such was the nature of man. She had seen it in Spindrift day after day as the posh and the privileged sat down for tea despite the open secret of what happened there after-hours.
