Page 25 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

ARTHIE

After two days at sea, Arthie still had to remind herself that she was in a ship, not a tiny boat again.

Every blink conjured blood sloshing against her bare shins, moving with the ocean’s current.

The skies had split open after she’d done what she’d done, and no matter how much water pooled inside her tiny vessel, she hadn’t sunk.

She had wanted to sink. To drown. She wished the sea would swallow her whole.

In the years since, Arthie hadn’t allowed herself to recall these long-deemed “moments of darkness”—not until she had retreated back into them after the Great Press Massacre.

If not for Matteo, she would have entertained them longer in the shelter of his canopied bed and the Athereum one after. She would have folded further into herself.

“That’s enough,” she told herself, and rose from the crate she was sitting on in the dark corner of the captain’s cabin.

“There you are.”

Matteo sidestepped the wide slant of light on the floorboards cast by the sun through the window and sat on the floor in front of her, propping an arm behind him.

“You’re hiding.”

“Am I?” she asked, pulling on her suit jacket.

“Unless you’re here protecting your skin from the sun, yes.”

She snorted. “I might be a vampire, but I’m no peaky. The sun doesn’t hurt me as much as it does you.”

“Arthie, Arthie,” he said with a sigh. “ I might be a vampire, but you’re always finding new ways to stake me through the heart.”

“As you can see, I’m getting ready to leave,” she said, but when he looked at her, his teasing replaced with something earnest, she sat back down on the crate with a sigh.

Waves lapped and crashed in the silence between them.

“I can’t stand up there and relive it over and over again,” she said eventually.

“Understandably. One isn’t out at sea very often,” Matteo said. “I couldn’t walk the streets of White Roaring for the longest time myself.”

His gaze drifted to the dust stirring in the light of the window.

Arthie never thought she’d find anyone like her, and she appreciated when he opened up to her, trusted her.

She couldn’t say she liked doing the same, but she tried.

He made the words easier. He was forced to be a monster, and he knew what it took to be peaceful.

“Ceylan will be a test, but you will ace it,” Matteo continued. “I know it.”

“I left right as the Ram was sinking her claws into the island,” Arthie said. “I don’t know what she’s done to it.”

Outside of what she’d heard about Ceylan—and almost every country Ettenia had colonized really—she knew little for certain.

From the streets near Ceylani and Jeevani shops, she’d heard snippets about streaks of poverty brought on by the newcomers and dwindling resources.

She’d heard of deforestation, and the way it had permanently altered, butchered , the very earth that made up the island.

She’d seen the skilled and the talented arriving on Ettenian shores for the promise of a “better life”—handing over their expertise to a place that had ruined the better life they already had.

The real and true happenings of other countries and kingdoms weren’t written about in Ettenian newspapers. Not enough cared.

“Whatever she’s done, you’re planning to undo, remember?” he asked.

There was no undoing what had been done, but he was right. Arthie would make change happen.

“And after? What will you do once you’ve saved the vampires and the Siwangs and dismantled the three parts of the Ram’s reign?” Matteo asked, tilting his head.

“What do you mean?” she asked, but a part of her knew what he was asking.

Matteo held her eyes. “Do you mean to kill her, Arthie?”

Arthie was no innocent. She had blood on her hands, and she wasn’t about to forget that fact.

She’d never outright set out with the intention of ending anyone, but the Ram was different, wasn’t she?

She’d meddled in and destroyed Arthie’s life.

She’d stolen her childhood, her home, her humanity —and Matteo’s too.

Even Jin’s. She deserved to die in the worst way possible.

So why, then, did Matteo’s question give Arthie pause?

Arthie hadn’t even realized she’d tightened her grip around Calibore until Matteo reached for her hand, as if he knew she was looking for comfort, as if he knew how to provide it, entwining his fingers with hers. Her hand felt small in his, sheltered. Safe.

Perhaps she’d hit her head and boggled her mind, because when had she ever cared about feeling sheltered and safe?

She yanked her fingers from his and pulled out her pocket watch, flustered yet again. “The captain says we’ll arrive any moment now.”

“Oh really?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s already—”

He snatched her watch from her hand, using the chain secured to her vest to pull her close. Arthie was not proud of the yelp that ripped out of her.

“Don’t rush me,” he whispered, catching her by the waist and cinching the remaining distance between them. She gasped, grabbing ahold of him to halt her fall.

His green eyes were hooded, bleeding to inky darkness as they traced her face, settling on her mouth and lighting her aflame. She might not have a pulse on a regular day anymore, but in that moment, she felt it all over. Pounding through her, an incessant drumming she couldn’t tame.

“Arthie, Arthie, Arthie,” he whispered, and she followed the sensuous curve of his mouth. “Go on now, tell me what time it is.”

Her watch was swinging back and forth against her leg, but she made no move to obey. He ran his hands up her sides, one settling at the nape of her neck, the other brushing the hair from her face.

He lifted a brow in question.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said.

“I believe I will,” he said darkly, leaning closer. “What time is it, Arthie?”

She gritted her teeth. He smiled as lazily as a lion regarding a mouse. He wasn’t going to let her be until she told him. She reached for her watch, shakily, and when she leaned to her side, exposing her throat, she felt the brush of his hair against her skin.

And then his lips.

He kissed her neck, pulling away and dropping another an inch higher, then another. Arthie thought she would combust.

“Well?” he asked on a scraping exhale she felt more than heard.

She struggled to thumb the latch. He watched her, drinking it in, enjoying every second of this torture. She needed only to turn her cheek and she could kiss him.

What’s stopping you?

Nothing. Nothing was stopping her. She was Arthie Casimir, and she seized what she wanted, no matter what was in her way.

Arthie turned her cheek. The warm lacquered wood framed him in opulence. She dropped her watch, threaded her fingers in his hair, pulled him to her.

And then she kissed him.

The most glorious groan escaped him, and she swallowed every morsel of the sound before he kissed her back. It was as intoxicating as the moment he turned her, as decadent as sipping blood, as victorious as pulling off a job.

His lips were soft, his kiss firm. He was cool to the touch, as vampires were wont to be, but he smelled the opposite, sending warm shivers down her spine.

He took command of her the way she imagined he commanded a canvas before him, painting a portrait of lust in shades of red and crimson, deep strokes of violet and amaranth. He bit down on her lip, drawing blood. He rasped at the taste and she wove her fingers tighter in his hair at the sound.

He gripped her waist, just one of his hands wide enough to span the width of her back, then he dropped his hold even lower to her thighs, igniting her.

She released his hair and reached for his shirt, doing away with the few buttons he’d bothered to fasten.

He lifted her up, grinning against her mouth until she kissed him into another groan.

She kissed him passionately, ardently, hard enough to bruise so that he would remember her forever.

She wrapped her legs around him, belatedly realizing the position that put her in.

She ground her hips against him with a gasp.

“Praecantrix,” he moaned against her mouth, as she shoved her hands into his shirt and traced the lean lines of his chest.

Shouts echoed above deck. He set her on a crate and every inch of her protested, but he pushed closer again, capturing her lips in another kiss until Arthie pulled away with great reluctance. He pressed his brow to hers. His eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them.

Land ho! the watch called.

It took Arthie a long, drunken moment to make sense of the words: They had arrived. Footsteps pounded up above, in time with her roiling, burning need.

“Who knew Arthie Casimir was such an expert in matters of kissing,” Matteo said, his voice hoarse.

She jumped off the crate, doing her utmost not to watch him button his shirt back up and adjust his trousers. Her insides burned. Every part of her wanted to turn back to him, fighting the dread that wished so desperately to leave now that they had arrived.

“You know I excel at all that I do,” she managed to say, and couldn’t decide if she was thankful or not when Jin threw open the hatch and called her name.