Page 31 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

“It’s peculiar for you to sound disappointed in my actions when you’re diddling the entire empire, Mother,” Flick said, relishing the dregs of satisfaction when her mother winced at her choice in language.

“I always assumed the EJC straddled moral lines, but I didn’t know how far that went.

I didn’t know that when I learned you were abusing vampires, I could be horrified by anything more, and then you walked in wearing that mask. And now you’re kidnapping humans too.”

Flick stopped there, despite the lengthy list she wanted to run through, calling out what her mother had done.

Whatever she did say, the Ram did not refute, not even the kidnapping of humans off the street.

Flick didn’t know why she was surprised: The Ram had just killed two men in front of her, simply because of something Flick said.

“Come back home,” her mother said, almost tiredly.

That wasn’t the response Flick was expecting, not in the slightest. She regarded her mother with suspicion, even as the instinctual responses bubbled up in her throat.

Yes.

I’m sorry, Mother.

I’ll return to you.

“Please, Felicity,” her mother added.

Instinct disappeared and disgust took its place.

The sound of her name out of her mother’s mouth was what had made Flick want to change it—even before she’d been locked in her own house like a prisoner.

The beseeching was a farce. There was another reason her mother was as close to begging as she’d allow herself, and it had nothing to do with Flick’s run from home.

“Why?” Flick asked, and it felt like a transgression somehow.

Lady Linden—the Ram, her mother—blinked, because Flick rarely questioned her.

“I’m your mother, Felicity,” she said, taken aback. “Your real family. Do you not miss me?”

Flick considered the question. She missed what she thought she had, and if she’d never had it to begin with, was there anything to miss?

Everything motherly about her mother had been whittled away to reveal the mask beneath—an ironic thought. Flick had always believed her mother had slowly lost interest in her, as one did when a shiny toy became dull with age, but was it Flick who had changed?

Her mother made a sound in the back of her throat. “What have I done wrong to deserve this? Your behavior is utterly atrocious.”

“Utterly atrocious?” Flick almost burst out laughing, but her mother was oblivious.

“I fed you, clothed you in the best White Roaring has to offer, hired the best tutors, but time and time again, this is how you treat me, Felicity.”

That bit was true. Flick did get the best. She was fed and clothed and sheltered in one of White Roaring’s best neighborhoods. Arthie had never had such a thing. Jin had it taken from him.

She ought to be grateful. Flick looked into her mother’s eyes and saw a shift from imploring to satisfaction, as if she was guiding Flick in a direction of her choosing.

Did she not recall using this tactic before? She’d made this very same attempt to guilt and persuade Flick into believing that no one but her mother truly cared for her. And if Flick did that, well, she’d be trusting her mother. She’d be willing to tell her everything.

“What do you mean?” Flick asked in the most coy manner she could summon. “How have I treated you?”

Her mother blustered at the question. “Ungratefully! You behave like a rebellious child. It is unbecoming.”

What was really unbecoming was the snort Flick just held back.

Her mother was meandering woefully off script, and it had only taken Flick talking back. It was almost fun .

“What could you possibly have out there that you don’t have here with me?” her mother asked, and she sounded on the verge of tears. If Flick hadn’t been bound, her first instinct would have been to go over to her and offer comfort. A hug, or a pat on the back. Something.

No, no, no.

“Mother, I—”

“You what, Felicity?” Lady Linden pressed.

Why are you doing this? Flick wanted to ask. But what reason could ever be enough to justify her atrocities? Greed had no fill. Greed was a bottomless pit, and Flick wouldn’t contribute.

“You act as though you missed me, as though you love me, but over the past few years, you’ve barely treated me as a daughter,” Flick said.

“Grudges are never good, Felicity. Don’t bring up the past.”

The woman was insufferable.

“Is the passage of time forgiveness?” Flick replied. “You want your ledger. That’s why I’m here.”

“Among other things. I want you back too,” Lady Linden replied gently. That was a bald-faced lie. An afterthought, at best. “That Casimir girl is dead, as far as I know, isn’t she? As is that boy you fancied. In all honesty, Felicity, it’s presumably a good—”

“He’s not—”

Flick stopped the moment the words blurted out of her, but it was too late. Never before had she wished oh so dearly to reel back time. Mere seconds would have been enough.

Understanding crossed her mother’s face, and Flick realized with bitter dread that she was right.

This entire conversation was a farce. She had been luring Flick with words, trying to get her to speak and reveal where the others were and what they were up to.

This wasn’t a mother asking her daughter where she’d gone wrong; this was a woman questioning someone she saw as inferior.

Someone with whom she shared no ties of kinship.

This was an interrogation of a prisoner, and Flick, despite knowing as much, had failed.

“He’s not dead,” Lady Linden said, in a tone that said she should have known.

“No, I was going to say he’s not the boy I fancy,” Flick corrected, but it was too late to fix her mistake.

Lady Linden latched the door closed and set her mask on the chest. “You never were a good liar, dear.”

How did her mother know of this? How did she know that Arthie had died to begin with? No one but Laith and Matteo had been there when it happened—and Laith was dead. Wasn’t he?

Her mother slowly turned back toward her, and Flick swallowed as fear lifted the little hairs off the back of her neck. If she thought her mother had been cold before, she was mistaken. Her eyes were now devoid of life, heartless in a way that made Flick shiver.

“Where are they?” Lady Linden asked. No, she wasn’t Lady Linden anymore. She wasn’t her mother anymore.

This was the Ram.

Flick didn’t know how to respond—insist that they were dead? Say she didn’t know? Lie and say… what?

“I told you—”

The Ram cut her off. “It would be best if you didn’t waste my time, Felicity.”

The twin trails of blood gleamed by the door, threatening her. Flick wouldn’t fall for it.

“Don’t call me Felicity,” Flick said as carefully as she could, struggling to stop seeing the woman in front of her as her mother.

“Oh?” the Ram said. “Is that not your name anymore? Did you forget who gave—”

Not this again. “Even if I had wanted to, I could never forget anything you’ve given me.”

And Flick didn’t know if she wanted to. Arthie had been through trials and struggles of her own, and she was better for it. Her every hardship had made her stronger, smarter, more brilliant in every way.

“You should put your mask back on,” Flick goaded. “Go on, hide yourself from the people whose praise you strive to receive.”

She didn’t know why, exactly, but it filled Flick with immense joy when the Ram’s mouth tightened and she glanced over at the chest to make sure her mask was still there and not somehow in the hands of the girl bound to a chair in front of her.

“I don’t believe you understand the gravity of your situation,” the Ram said. “You’re alone. They don’t know where you are. They can’t swoop in to save you.”

Flick furrowed her brow and looked into the Ram’s eyes. “I wasn’t hoping to be saved. I didn’t realize I needed to be afraid for my life. You”—she added a stutter for good measure—“you’re my mother.”

The Ram stared back for a long, unending moment in which Flick’s heart threatened to leap out of her chest.

“Then you will tell me, your mother, where they are.”

There was no point in trying to pretend her tongue hadn’t slipped anymore. Flick needed to make sure she didn’t do it again. Arthie and Jin were trusting her.

“They’re as angry with me as you are,” Flick lied. “No one tells me anything.”

“And Calibore?” the Ram asked.

Flick blinked at her. “Calibore?”

Her answering sound of exasperation was no different than when Flick took too long to dress before an outing. “The pistol the Casimir girl carried with her. Where is it?”

Flick narrowed her eyes, taken aback. She assumed she was here just because her mother wanted the ledger, but why the sudden interest in Arthie’s pistol?

Did she know it was capable of killing vampires?

Of course she did. Penn had died in front of her—in front of all of them, when Laith had squeezed the trigger.

Or did she know it was more than that? Arthie told them Laith had come for the pistol on orders from his king, who was slowly gathering every magic-imbued Arawiyan artifact that had been spread throughout the world. Did the Ram hope to utilize it against the desert kingdom?

“How would I know, Mother?” Flick asked.

The way Flick said Mother was how her mother said Felicity .

That was why it irked her so much, Flick realized. She hated the way the syllables dug into her eardrums, the way the name sat over her like an ill-fitted coat.

The Ram’s lips thinned. She snatched up her mask and secured it over her face, pulling up her hood to cover her tightly bound hair before wrenching open the door and barking orders in the hall that Flick couldn’t make out.

And then the door clicked closed, a promise of more to come hanging in the air.