Page 12 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

Chester sat up straighter than a child’s pop-out toy, eyes lighting with excitement. “Is that not aces?”

Matteo responded with a shaky laugh. He was looking at Flick and Jin, and for the first time, Arthie realized he cared what they thought. At some point between them showing up on his doorstep with threats and now, he’d begun to value their opinion.

“The Wolf of White Roaring,” Flick whispered.

Arthie was waiting for Jin’s response.

“And?” he finally deadpanned, in a tone so far from that deep, inquisitive interest he once exuded that it made even Arthie flinch.

“And—and I’ve killed scores of people,” Matteo said. “I’ve—” he stopped. Arthie could very nearly hear his throat closing up.

“I know what the Wolf of White Roaring did,” Jin said.

Flick gave him a glare and then looked at Matteo, choosing her words carefully. “Not—goodness, not to write away the deaths that happened that night, but if I’m to guess, my mother’s to blame, isn’t she?”

When Matteo didn’t answer, Jin took a deep breath.

“We know how the Ram rose to power,” Jin said. “Penn himself confirmed the Wolf’s massacre”—he had the decency to look apologetic when Matteo winced—“was brought about by the Ram, no?”

Matteo looked at the floor.

“You’re still the same crucial member of this crew you always were,” Flick said softly.

“It changes nothing,” Jin added. “I don’t know if I’d call it aces, but I’ll be judging you the same way I always did.”

“With scorn?” Matteo ventured.

“Of course,” Jin replied loftily.

Matteo couldn’t hide the hint of a smile. “Much obliged.”

And suddenly, Arthie felt as though she was watching the conversation from the outside, as though they had formed an understanding and acceptance she couldn’t comprehend.

She wanted Flick and Jin to accept Matteo, but seeing it was different.

Seeing it made her wonder if she should have allowed Jin the opportunity, at least, to accept her.

“But why?” Flick whispered.

Matteo glanced at Arthie. “I’ve been thinking about it since you asked me, and now that we know who the Ram is, I might have an idea.

Lady Linden was in the papers because of a scandal surrounding her family years before that night.

Her father had been exposed for having an affair with a high official, and everything they had—their ventures, their social standing, whatever else—came crashing down.

Her mother killed him and shortly spiraled, leaving Lady Linden to pick up the pieces. ”

Flick stared in wide-eyed shock. She hadn’t known.

“Murder runs in the family,” Jin said.

“Indeed. I’ll never know for certain, but my mother was once an official.

She took leave from her job shortly around the Linden scandal.

I often wondered if she was the one Lady Linden’s father had that affair with, and it seems more plausible now.

By choosing me to become the Wolf of White Roaring, Lady Linden was enacting some form of twisted revenge,” Matteo explained.

He remained unsure, but to Arthie, the Ram choosing him arbitrarily was less believable than the Ram enacting vengeance on the child of someone who had ruined her own childhood.

“She was in the papers often as she restored the family name in the years after.”

It was no surprise, then, that Lady Linden remained obsessed with her image to this day.

“Gathering what she needed for her rise to monarch, no doubt,” Arthie said. “You were the last piece of her plan.”

“And I’d had no hope of retaliation until the lot of you turned up,” Matteo said quietly.

It was Chester who reached for him first. He squeezed between the others and threw his arms around him. Jin exhaled through his teeth; Flick looked at her hands. Arthie thought of her last moments in Ceylan.

The Ram had hurt them all.

“And retaliate we will,” Arthie said, before she tilted her head at Matteo. “But is it retaliation that you want?”

Matteo thought on it for a moment. “I suppose I want peace. I want to live again.” He lowered his voice, directing his next words at her alone in a tone that was pensive, imploring. “With you. For you. And if retaliation is what you want, then I want it too.”

Arthie swallowed, breaking away from the ferocity in his eyes, heightened by the knowledge that the others were watching. Did she hear him correctly? Did he want what she wanted, simply because she did?

“Which is to say, we need to find your parents, Jin,” Matteo said, granting her relief.

“I’m sure you’ve seen the streets. Horned Guard are everywhere, fear mounting against vampires once again.

She’s riling the people up, turning them into vigilantes.

Worse, she’s done kidnapping vampires alone; she’s taking humans too. ”

“I heard,” Jin said, pinching his lips. “Was destroying half of White Roaring’s press not enough?”

“The more anger toward vampires, the better,” Arthie said. “We were there that night. She doesn’t care for humans any more than she does vampires. We’re the same to her.”

“If the Ram knew to turn you into the Wolf of White Roaring, how do you think she knew about vampires before the public did?” Flick asked, clearly still tangled in the history she’d learned.

“I don’t know,” Matteo said quietly. “I’ve often wondered that myself. Pondering over the Ram can be infuriating at times.”

“We have more pressing matters to attend to,” Jin said.

Matteo nodded. “Now that we know your parents are alive and a part of the Ram’s operation to weaponize vampires, they’re a crucial part of taking her down.”

“Are they?” Jin asked. “Penn only said they created an inoculation for humans that was being used on vampires. We don’t even have confirmation that they’re alive .”

“Penn got confirmation,” Matteo said. Arthie didn’t know if she wanted Jin to know that so soon.

“So he lied?” Jin’s brow furrowed, then he shifted his umbrella from one hand to the other, his next words a whisper. “They’re alive.” He turned to Arthie and looked away. “They’re—why would he lie to us? After the trust we ourselves placed in him?”

Arthie had wondered the same.

“I don’t think blaming him will do us any favors,” Matteo said. “Is this not a good thing? You almost sound like you’re trying to argue against finding them.”

“I’m against using them,” Jin snapped. “You’re referring to them as if they’re round two of the Ram’s ledger, as if they’re an inanimate object we can retrieve and use to do our bidding.”

“They’re as much a tool to the Ram as the ledger was,” Matteo countered. “A far more substantial one at that.”

“And you’re deciding to make this about you,” Arthie said to Jin.

Jin went perfectly still. The lanterns set on various crates cast his unmoving shadow along the wall.

“Yes, I think I am,” Jin began before Matteo lifted his hands.

“What did I say only a moment ago?”

But Jin wasn’t finished with her. “Just as you made the past ten years about yourself.”

His tone was so curt it was almost comical. Somewhere in the fishy mess, Chester chortled, but Arthie didn’t think it was funny.

“Everything we did over the past ten years was for us ,” Arthie flung back. “Spindrift, our cons, stealing Calibore. Did you not benefit as much as I did?”

There was more she wanted to say. More that bubbled to her lips but she fought down, like how she’d spent just as much time trying to find his parents, following leads, reaching out to people she could trust, if only because of the blackmail she had on them.

How Spindrift had started as a way to distract him, not her.

“I’d know how to answer that if I knew you,” Jin replied.

Any response Arthie could have thrown back shriveled in her suddenly parched throat.

There was no one else alive who knew her as well as he did, but how could she tell him that? How, when his eyes were bright with anger, when everyone was staring at them, waiting to hear what she would say next?

“Maybe I was right not to trust you,” she said instead. “Look at us, now that you know the truth. We’ve never been further apart.”

Jin snorted, as if he’d been waiting for something more. “Of course you’d say something like that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You only ever deflect and hide and swallow how you truly feel. All that talk of vengeance and getting back at the peakies for what they’d done to you? It’s become your shield. A drug you keep taking to numb everything else.”

Arthie pulled back as if he’d slapped her. She tried to do what he said she did best: to tamp down her emotions, to bottle them back up, but she was beginning to spiral; that bottle was starting to fracture, leaking from every crack.

They’d fought before. They might not have been siblings by blood, but they were in every other sense of the word. They’d fought over everything and nothing. None of those fights made their bond feel so fragile; none of them made the act of amending seem so distant.

None of those fights had ever been so loud and truly, terribly angry.

“I almost died that night because of this shield,” she said, and then her voice dropped. “You didn’t even come to see if I’d lived.”

A line feathered along his jaw at that. “As if you did much more than turn me and flee. You might as well have left me for dead.”

Arthie stared at him. “Left you for—”

“That’s enough!” Flick snapped, stepping between them.

The storeroom fell silent. She was breathing hard, her blood roaring under her skin.

Arthie could hear it. “Stop. Both of you. I know you’re hurting.

I know you’re angry, but haven’t you always said, Jin, that Arthie has her reasons?

And haven’t you, Arthie, always said that Jin felt more deeply than anyone else you’ve known?

Is that not enough to understand each other? ”

Jin crossed his arms, his answer spelled out clear as a rare, cloudless Ettenian sky.

Flick sighed and waved the ledger between them. It was open to a page marked with a card, the ribbon fluttering loosely.