Page 2 of A Steeping of Blood
She was dying. Fading with the night.
“Hold this,” he ordered, grabbing whatever cloth was close and pressing it against her wound to uselessly staunch the bleeding.
If anyone doubted the difference between half and full vampires, they only had to look at her now: Every inch of her body was fighting to stay alive. Holding on to the remnants of what made her human.
“We’re at my house. After Penn—” Matteo stopped as his throat closed. There were many threads that connected Arthie and Matteo, and Penn was the strongest, wrapping around and around until their bond was irrefutable, even if Arthie had never known of it.
Penn had been the one to take him in when Matteo had stumbled onto his porch on Imperial Square. Penn was the one who calmed Matteo down, who cleaned the blood from his fingernails and taught him how to retract his fangs.
He was a father to Matteo in a way Matteo’s own had never been.
“There were the gunshots,” Matteo continued, “and you turning Jin, and when I saw you pick up Penn’s revolver and run after Laith, I couldn’t let you go alone.”
“He shot me,” Arthie whispered.
He. Laith. From the moment Laith had walked through his front door, Matteo had his qualms about the Arawiyan turned high captain of the Horned Guard.
But Arthie, brilliant and whip-smart, sounded as though she’d never seen it coming. Shock coated her every word. She was bleeding,dying. She’d seen Laith kill Penn in cold blood, and she still couldn’tbelieve it. As if the two of them had formed some sort of bond of their own when she’d drunk his blood. Or long before then.
“Yes,” Matteo said, winding his pain tight inside the word. “And he killed Penn.”
“I know.” Her eyes fluttered closed and then opened again. She almost looked guilty for a flash of a second.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
She wasn’t asking about Penn. Was Matteo imagining the emotion in her voice? The hope that he was alive, the fear that she might have killed him?
Between the Ram barging through the doors of the Athereum’s meeting hall to this moment, Matteo remembered very little. It was as if the blood he drank had crowded his vision, narrowing it and shrouding everything in a hazy, dreadful red.
But he did remember Laith.
The boy had been slumped against the wall, crimson blossoming over his white robes, a lot like the flowers he kept shoving in Arthie’s face. He wasn’t moving. There was clearly a hole in his chest, but Matteo didn’t know if it was lethal. Truth be told, only she would know if he was dead, even before she’d fired the revolver.
“Did you want him dead?” Matteo asked.
Because if Arthie had wanted him dead, he would be.
“Does it matter?” she asked, not answering the question.
It did, but he couldn’t say that without sounding selfish. He watched for her reaction, trying to decipher if the pain he was witnessing was physical, emotional, or both. Her jaw quivered. Her breath stuttered, and a soft sound of anguish escaped her.
“Your wound is fatal,” he said. It didn’t matter if Laith had been trying to kill her or not—she was too petite for the bulletnotto hit anything important.
She laughed dryly. “You don’t say.”
Arthie Casimir might have been dying, but that mouth had never been more alive.
He froze when she looked into his eyes and said, with utter conviction: “I can’t die.”
Matteo knew what she asked of him. It was what he wanted to do. Desperately. Why else had he taken the precaution to rush through the night after her? Why else had he bundled her in his arms and brought her here?
It would cost him nothing to turn Arthie into a full-fledged vampire, but it would cost her everything. He looked at the ghost-white pallor of his skin. He closed his fist, still unused to the strength of his undead bones years later. He exhaled, knowing full well that even the act of breathing was something he’d selfishly held on to for no reason other than as a reminder that he’d onceneededto breathe.
Matteo had spoken to Arthie about accepting herself, but there were days in which he wondered if he’d ever done the same.
She was half vampire, yes. She still had to drink blood like a vampire did; she still had almost every undead limitation placed upon her. But she was still half human. To be a vampire meant a life that went on forever. To be human meant cherishing its temporariness. There was value in such a thing, a certain bittersweet longing that persisted with each passing day.
The waves of her short hair were as delicate as the wheeze escaping her mouth, strands feathering the black silk pillow beneath her. He adjusted the cushions, rearranging the drape of her sari, tucking the coverlet under her side, knowing full well that each second that passed was another of excruciating pain for her. He couldn’t keep stalling.
