Page 56 of A Steeping of Blood
She was yanked down several more turns before she was pushed through a doorway and shoved in a chair.At least they didn’t bind me to it.No sooner had the thought occurred than someone came back over and bound her wrists behind her. Voices rose, ricocheted; a door clicked closed.
And then it was quiet.
She strained against the ropes, but they were thick and chafing. The binding didn’t budge. Her breathing echoed in what felt to be a fairly empty room, and she had a sudden, startling thought: If something happened to her, if shedied, no one would know. No one would know where to find her body, or what had happened.
Stay calm, Jin had told her.We’re more doomed to fail when we’re in a panic.
It was strange, she supposed, to go from a life where death was something far out of reach, not as imminent as an exquisite new gown or a walk through the gardens, to this. Death had never weighed at the forefront of her mind before the Casimirs.
The door opened and closed again, and Flick cinched her thoughts, willing her mind to quiet and her pulse the same. A single pair of footsteps rang dully along what sounded like hollow floorboards, more like a storeroom than an estate or anyplace fancy.
Flick gasped when the hood was ripped from her head without warning.
As her eyes slowly adjusted to her new surroundings, she noticed that she was wrong: She hadn’t been alone in the room. There weretwo black-clad men near her. Had they been hoping she would talk to herself? Rat herself out somehow and make their lives easier?
Focus.
Her mind wasn’t racing because of the men; it was racing because of the third presence. That single pair of footsteps that had entered, a pair as familiar as her own name.
Lady Linden. The Ram.
Flick met her mother’s eyes, those blue eyes she thought so remarkable. The rest of her features were hidden by the gilded mask of the Ram.
The last time Flick saw her, it was at the Athereum’s meeting hall. She’d watched her mother sweep into the room, and then her men follow. She didn’t flinch as they murdered those people.
Flick hated the fear that flooded her. She wasn’t in any more danger than when she was apprehended, so why did she fear her mother?
Maybe because I’ve lived with that fear my whole life.
That stopped now.
Flick chewed on the inside of her cheek. She felt, suddenly, like a bottle of fizzy water that had been shaken up and the cap popped off, everything roiling and roaring and eager to lash out.
Hello, Mother, she wanted her to say.Take off that mask; you’re fooling no one.
Flick bit her tongue and swallowed her words, thorns and all. But why? Those were the actions of the old Flick. This one had learned she owed her mother nothing. This one had learned from Arthie Casimir to keep secrets close until it was time to exploit them.
“What do you want?” Flick asked. The room was fairly small, void of furnishings except for Flick’s chair in the middle of it and a single chest in the corner. The walls were gray, the floorboards wide, unlacquered planks.
Flick didn’t have a clue as to where she was.
Her mother’s eye twitched. Strange, she’d never had an eye twitch before. Was she bothered by her daughter being apprehended? Flick almost cracked a laugh. No. Her mother was content enough to lock up her daughter in her own house.
She held out Flick’s satchel, turned it upside down, and emptied its contents onto the floor. Flick’s supplies, from her pens to her notebooks and even her map, tumbled to the ground. The Ram bent down and picked up Flick’s notes on the mystery building.
Damn it all, Flick.
“Where is my ledger?” the Ram asked. Her voice sounded different through her mask, rougher and more modulated. She could pass for a woman or a man. How much effort did she have to put into being the monster that she was? And Flick had thought Spindrift had their hands full transforming from tearoom to bloodhouse every night.
Her eye hadn’t twitched because of how Flick had been treated. But because of how Flick had acted: her gall, her continued escape from the Ram’s forces, her possession of what was the Ram’s.
The Ram didn’t care a lick about Flick.
“First you misplace your ledger, then you misplace your foes. What’s next? Your mask?” Flick said, barely holding back a smirk. This time, she let the words bubble out of her. “You’ve become awfully irresponsible lately, Mother.”
The air siphoned out of the room. The men blinked in confusion, looking between themselves and then at the Ram, and ultimately at Flick.
As though what she said was impossible to believe.
