Page 93 of A Steeping of Blood
The flames crackled in her hand.Are you sure?It seemed to ask. Arthie looked up at the fort one last time. She had never been more certain of anything in her life.
“Stop!” someone shouted from the fort gates. Bloodworth. He was aiming a gun at her. “I will kill you.”
The barrel of his gun looked strangely insignificant after what she’d done. She had come to Ceylan through her dread and fear, she hadreunited with her brother and freed scores of vampires. Arthie wasn’t afraid.
“Then bury me shallow, for I will return,” Arthie said, and threw the torch to the damp earth.
It ignited instantly. Bloodworth fired, and Arthie ducked, pulling Shaw and Sora down with her before she heard the overseer’s hasty retreat. So much for killing her. He couldn’t even brave a little fire.
Only it was no little fire. It rose higher and higher, roaring, hissing and moaning in the salt-heavy breeze. Arthie stared into its depths, and in it, she saw Spindrift. She saw Jin’s home.
She saw her parents, her life.
Her guilt that had begun as a child.
And some part of Arthie came to a sharp and startling halt. Somewhere inside of her, some deep and dark place she’d shut away and tucked beneath all her happenings, from bookkeeping to tracking inventory to keep Spindrift’s doors open, from snarking at the Horned Guard to stoking her vengeance when she read the day’s paper, there was a bowl of guilt. It had overflowed and turned rancid, hatred leaching into her veins and breeding a version of herself that she refused to accept.
That was why she’d survived on what meager coconut water she could get her hands on. That was why she’d opened the bloodhouse at Spindrift, lying to herself that it was for money and nothing more.
She took that bowl and turned it over, letting the flames eat it away.
“Arthie!” someone shouted. It was her mother, her father, Matteo, Jin, Shaw, Sora. The voices and faces blurred into one. She looked into the trees, into the darkness, trying to find whoever had called her, butit was too dark to see and she needed to keep the Siwangs safe, the coin in her pocket be damned.
That was when she heard it: a green dart whizzing toward her. No, toward Jin’s parents, silhouetted against the shadows.
“Shaw! Sora!” Arthie shouted, and pushed them out of the way.
And then Arthie was falling. She remembered nothing else.
30FLICK
Flick didn’t have to wait long for the door to her prison to open. When it did, she was ready, brass knuckles snug over her injured fingers. She had stretched her aching arms until they didn’t feel like foreign things attached to her shoulders.
She braced for the Ram, but it was one of her black-clad men. A knot loosened in Flick’s chest, and she held herself very still, not wanting to spook him too soon. When he noticed she wasn’t hanging from the manacles, he was already mostly through the door. Flick threw her weight against it, slamming it shut before he could back his way through.
The lock fell, but Flick wasn’t worried.
He had a key on him, and she intended to take it.
Her heart was pounding in her chest. The man whirled toward her, but Flick was ready. She threw a punch, imagining Jin’s presence behind her, guiding her fist, loosening the tense length of her arm, lending her the strength the manacles had stolen from her.
She hit the man square in his chin with her brass knuckles.
He sputtered. Her breathing was the only sound grating in her ears. He stared at her for a beat before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell like a sack of potatoes.
That, love, is a glass jaw.
“Did I kill him?” she asked the empty room. She could feel thepressure in her chest building. Her exhales were coming out in tiny bursts.
Calm down, she told herself.You were ready to kill the woman you once called Mother.
And there was no time to waste. She had lost track of the hours and when Jin and Arthie returned from Ceylan; she needed to be there—unless they had failed.
She refused to let herself dwell on that alternative.
Arthie would claw her way out of any grave her enemies fathomed to place her in, and she’d make sure Jin was by her side. She never failed. Which was another reason why Flick needed to be there at the docks when they returned. To warn them, yes, but if they noticed she was missing, that she wasn’t in the Athereum, they would rain destruction on the Ram, plans be damned.
One might have called it haughty to think such a thing, but Flick knew with utmost certainty that the care Jin and Arthie had for her warranted nothing less.
