Page 7 of A Steeping of Blood
What about Jin?asked a little voice in her head. She buried it deep.
She scoffed. “I know exactly how I arrived in Ettenia. There’s nothing more you need to tell me about it.”
The blood on her sari had dried, matting to her skin. She had no reason to stay here, not when he was spewing words likethat.
“You misunderstand,” Matteo said quickly as she began to stir.
“No, youthinkyou understand,” Arthie said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “No one does. No one, but—”
She stopped herself. Of the innumerable stories and secrets she’d collected in Ettenia, only one came close to hers. There were other half vampires, of course, other bouts of killing, but only one story showed her what she could have been, had her incident been on land instead of a boat stranded at sea.
She might have even been worse.
“The Wolf of White Roaring?” he asked, a stillness in his voice.
Yes. She gathered her sari and sat up straight, swaying from the blood loss, from this new version of herself. How much did he know of her? How much did he know of what had happened on that boat when she was just nine years of age?
“Wait, Arthie. Please. He’s exactly whom I wanted to speak about.”
“Oh, and why’s that?” she asked, her back to him. She scanned the room for her pistol, searching for some semblance of herself, herpastself. But then she remembered: It was still lying on the floor of the Nimble Street apartment, in a pool of blood with Laith.
“Because,” he began, and she had the sense he was bracing himself for his next words, “he and I are one and the same.”
Arthie froze, certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.
Matteowas the Wolf of White Roaring?Hewas the one who had exposed vampires to the public’s fear and wrath, and in so harsh a view because of a rampage in which he brutally turned the streets red? That didn’t make sense. He—he was as much a murderer as she was. Thenumber of bodies she’d mutilated was far less, but had there been more than three people on that boat, when would she have stopped?No, a voice reminded her, for she’d killed others too, at Penn’s house.
Perhaps shewasworse.
She turned back around to face him, regarding him anew. The delicate structure of his bones, the soft pout of his lips. The compassionate green of his eyes, now that the crimson had faded. He looked nothing like what she thought the Wolf would look like.
“But you—”
“Paint? Draw?” he asked. He laughed softly. “Come now, Arthie. You know better than that. I’m certain the evil Ram waters the peonies in her garden. Many well-mannered wives dip biscuits in their tea while dreaming of butchering their husbands. We contain multitudes.”
He was prattling like he hadn’t just tossed at her one of the biggest secrets she’d ever learned. She sat back down on the bed. Once, she would have leveraged such a thing in every heinous way she could. Was this why Penn had encouraged her associations with Matteo before his death? Was this why Penn had been unafraid and unaffected by her nine-year-old acts of violence?
The Ram had done this to him. That much she knew. Penn had said as much, but he hadn’t given any indication that it wasMatteo. She was struggling to catch up. “Penn—Penn knew it was you.”
Matteo nodded. “I somehow ended up on his doorstep that night. I didn’t know where to go, where to turn. He took me in, knowing I was a half vampire, and eventually turned me into a full one.”
Arthie saw the way his gaze flickered. Pain, shame, regret.
She could not imagine Matteo in a place so low. He was too quick to smile, to jest. He was lauded and praised; his paintings sought after by the masses. He wasflourishing. She never would have guessed that he of all people would be the Wolf of White Roaring.
A little part of her was in awe of him, yet another emotion she rarely felt.
He’d assimilated a lot better than she ever could, but she would be naive to blame it on herself and not the social standards that praised the color of his skin.
Arthie had long believed the Wolf of White Roaring attack had been fabricated—not the attack itself but the circumstances surrounding it, and Penn had confirmed as much himself. He’d also told them who was responsible: the Ram.
“Why did the Ram choose you? Were you ill?”
Had the Ram wandered the beds of a hospital and chosen Matteo for her needs? Arthie could think of nothing else. She had been ill when the Ettenians came to her home country of Ceylan and her parents had taken her to the one “doctor” who could help, unaware that his cure would wreak a permanent change to every fiber in her being.
“Ill?” Matteo asked, and then laughed when he realized what she meant. “No. I was of perfect health, really.
“My father only ever cared about how well I was doing with my tutors, and my mother was always more concerned with how he felt than how I ever did. So I spent much of my time elsewhere. Wandering the streets, sitting under trees with a pencil and a pad. One day, back smarting from my father’s lash, I took a walk through the woods and found some sort of facility, tucked into the autumn trees. It looked like it had been placed thereforme—I had walked that route a thousand times and never seen it before.”
