Page 8 of A Steeping of Blood
He picked at the lint on the covers. “I heard… cries from inside and knew I shouldn’t be there. Instead of trying to help, I was thinking of myself, thinking of how I should run. Before I could, men rushed out of the building, grabbed me, took me in. I remember that distinct smell of a hospital ward, and something sharp pierced my neck beforeI was fed what I now know was blood. The last I saw was the Ram’s mask, and then I woke up on the streets.”
That was nowhere near how Arthie was turned into a half vampire herself.
“There have been other rampages, you know,” Matteo said. “Never to the same scale, never publicized and made into propaganda either. She turned me and dropped me in the middle of a busy street for her own selfish agenda.”
He sounded tired. He met her eyes, and the torment in his gaze was so great that if Arthie wasn’t as grounded as she was, she would have imagined she was there with him just now. Back in his past, reliving that haunted memory. Arthie knew it could not have been easy to tell her any of this.
“Why you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Matteo said. “Perhaps I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
No, there was more to it than that. Arthie knew how certain people worked, and as elusive and secretive as Lady Linden was, she was the sort of person who did nothing without a reason. There was always awhy. She wouldn’t have decided to turn Matteo at random.
“And mind you, she wore that mask before she was even crowned. She was protecting her identity, playing this game of duality,beforethe Council gave her what she wanted. I just don’t know how she knew of vampires when very few did. I certainly didn’t. But turning me was a reckless, risky move, and she had to have had a good deal of vampire knowledge in order to do it.”
“We know that people in search of power and status will use anything to get what they want,” Arthie said. But why vampires when there were so many other ways to achieve what the Ram had? That, Arthie didn’t know.
Matteo scoffed. “She certainly found both.”
Every Ettenian, immigrant or otherwise, knew how the Ram rose to power, crowning herself as monarch shortly after the Wolf of White Roaring went on his rampage. The empire was in disarray and Ettenians were afraid. When the monarch at the time did nothing, she did. She placated the people, she promised restrictions, gave the public law and order where there was none. She had been prepared, speaking with a surety no other would, a surety that could only come from having a solid knowledge of vampires. She was Ettenia’s savior, and she was rewarded with the title of monarch because of it.
“That’s what the unrest out there reminds you of,” Arthie said as she realized. “The days after.”After your rampage, she wanted to say.
Matteo nodded, pursing his lips. There was a correlation there, Arthie knew. The turmoil might not have been part of the Ram’s original plan, but she was certainly making use of it.
“I tried going back to the facility with Penn later, but it was gone. Empty. As if I imagined it,” Matteo continued. “While she went ahead and knocked me down to climb to this empire’s highest position.Imade her what she is today. And now I learn she’s Lady Linden? Ipaintedfor her.”
Arthie had never heard such anger in his voice, so much emotion quivering in his tone.
“At some point, I went home,” Matteo whispered, lost in a memory. “I killed my father. Not because I hated him, Arthie, but because he tried to hurt me. Then my mother. I couldn’t stop myself. I was so painfully hungry and angry at once. It wasn’t even a true hunger in the sense of the word. I neverfed. Just craved. It was as if I was trapped inside my body—”
“Watching it happen with no control,” Arthie finished softly. “I know.”
“And you’re the only one I know who does,” he said with a small smile.
It should have stirred something positive in her. It should have deepened their companionship because someone else understood her. Instead, it unsettled her.Because you’ve never had anyone like that before.
“You see now, don’t you?” Matteo asked, pinning her with his emerald gaze. “She’s still our enemy.”
“I never said otherwise.”
“No, but you were allowing yourself to be distracted by our predicament. Blaming yourself when in truth she is wholly at fault.”
Arthie didn’t know how true that was, but she said nothing.
“We didn’t fail that night.”
Her eyes flicked up in surprise.
“I know that’s what you’re thinking,” Matteo said. “But you’re a new version of yourself. As are Flick and Jin. I’d wager even I am. As powerful as we might think Lady Linden is as both the Ram and head of the EJC, we’re ignoring how powerfulwe’vebecome. We haven’t given ourselves the chance to unleash it.”
Arthie’s thoughts were typically separated into clear lines, each one connected to its pertinent information. They were buried beneath a fog now. She had indeed called the massacre and the days leading up to it a failure, but Matteo was right. They’d successfully infiltrated the Athereum, they’d learned the Ram’s true identity, they’d successfully retrieved the ledger, the Ram’s most incriminating possession. Theyhadn’tfailed. Admitting defeat was exactly what the Ram would want.
But Arthie couldn’t shake the feeling that she had failed when it came to Penn and the members of the press who had died that night. She had failed when it came to Flick, when it came to Jin.
Matteo pulled open the drawer beside the bed and took out something shiny. Arthie’s heart lurched at the sight. Calibore.
“You found it,” she said, taking it from him.And cleaned it, she thought. There wasn’t a speck of blood on its grip, the silver as pristine as the etched black filigree.
