Page 83 of A Steeping of Blood
She grabbed her thumb and shoved, trying to push the joint inward, trying to pop it out of place the way Jin had with ease and precision. She cried out from the pressure. Both hands ached from her efforts.Think, Flick. If bones were that easy to pop out of place, it would happen by chance all the time. She needed to pull herself higher, force a gap between her hand and the cuffs that sat tight against her bones.
At a muffled thud, she glanced at the door, but the knob didn’t turn and no one stepped through. Only more noises. Flick held her breath, trying to discern them. It was a scuffle. She heard a fist connectingwith flesh, someone sucking air through clenched teeth. Flick might not have been a vampire, but she grew up in a house where everyone was quiet, where staff whispered about her and her mother whispered about business behind the closed door of her office.
And Flick liked to listen.
It seemed there was another prisoner, one they’d begun to use brute force upon. Flick needed to hurry. Before she could stop herself, she threw her weight to the side, swinging just high enough to throw her hand up and grab the chain. The cuff slipped down her arm with a sweaty pop. Gravity wrenched her back, teeth jarring.
“Step one, complete,” she told herself.
She braced the cuff against one wrist and shoved it against her other thumb. She cried out, clamping her mouth tight to muffle the sound. If she could catch whispers of happenings outside of here, the opposite could happen too.
Again, Flick.
No different than a machine socketed together, Jin had said. She needed to stop shoving and be smart about it. With another clench of her teeth, she slid the cuff down the side of her hand, the skin now raw and starting to bruise, until it slotted beneath the joint. Then she sucked in a deep breath, scrunched her eyes tight, and pressed.
Color erupted behind her eyes, bright and blinding.
She felt more than heard her bone pop, and the cuff jerked off, forced by the weight of her hanging body, scraping her skin even further. Her arm was free. The chain clanged with joy of its own.
“Yes!” she cried out, forgetting to be quiet, before the pain of hanging from one arm shot through her, mutating her joy to a sob. “Can’t—celebrate—yet.”
Tears were streaming down her face, stinging her skin. It was impossible not to look at the weird angle of her thumb and retch. Sheswallowed the bile back down and did what Jin had done: snapped it back into place.
Returning a part of her back into place didn’t make the pain, surprise, or sound any easier.
Don’t think, she told herself, or she would spiral, and then she’d be hanging from a single arm. She didn’t need to know bones or the human body to know that would be worse.
With a huffed exhale, she slid the remaining cuff into place and pushed against her other thumb, momentarily distracted by the fact that her seconds-ago-disjointed thumb worked as though it hadn’t just been abused. The distraction helped, she supposed. She wasn’t nearly as focused on her actions—the cuff yanked off.
Flick fell.
Free.
At last.
She tumbled to the ground in a heap, biting her tongue. Blood filled her mouth, dripped down her chin, mixing with the tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t move. Every inch of her was wound tight, the pain so great she was seeing double.
“You did it,” she whispered to herself. “You did it, Flick.”
She folded into herself.
She was sore all over,rawall over, and—she glanced at the door when that muffled thud sounded again—she couldn’t afford to rest. Her escape had just begun.
It took three tries before Flick could stand. Her legs were heavy; her arms were light. She looked at her hands with a gasp. They were pale, deathly so. Bloodless.
She needed to keep moving.
She stumbled to the Ram’s chair and tried to pick up the knife, but her hands refused to work. They shook violently, her fingers so numbshe barely felt the chair when she reached for it. How was she supposed to escape without the use of her hands? How was she supposed to forge anything anymore? Her penmanship—no.
No, no, no.
The abyss opened up beneath her, threatening to tug her into its depths. She couldn’t spiral down that hole. She had people to save. She had purpose, and that was enough.
What an excellent weapon, Jin said to her, but really she was the one thinking the words.So violent, love.
Indeed, she was. She saw red everywhere she looked. She understood Arthie’s rage. Flick reached into her pocket with shaking hands. She pulled out Jin’s brass knuckles—herbrass knuckles—and, ignoring the quiver as best as she could, slid them over her fingers.
She had thought the dusters were boxy and heavy for a hand used to sliding on dainty rings, but her hands were different now. They were raw and rough, bruised and angry.
