Page 33 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

FLICK

When Flick was younger, her mother would often get angry and leave Flick to stew in her own thoughts, until everything she hadn’t said bubbled up in tears. This room was cold and empty, trying to squeeze the same emotions into her as the hours ticked on and on, but Flick refused.

Instead, pride simmered in her chest. She was learning her mother, and in doing so, she was learning herself. Perhaps. She didn’t know for sure. She was trying to stay positive while her eyes remained glued to the door.

What she needed was to escape. She didn’t have a watch, nor was there a window to see if the sun had risen, but it felt as if an age had passed. Had the Casimirs made their way into the fort? Into the sanatorium? Were they safe?

Focus on yourself, Flick , she scolded. She strained against the bindings around her wrists again, but they wouldn’t budge, and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking enough for her to properly figure out where one knot ended and the other began.

Flick slumped back in her chair.

Those twin streaks of blood shone bright against the floorboards.

She was grateful Chester, Reni, and Felix hadn’t been with her when the Ram’s men found her.

Right now, Flick was certain the one thing keeping her alive was the fact that she had the ledger—and perhaps the fact that she was the Ram’s daughter.

Seeing her mother as evil was harder than she thought. Her entire life, her measure of good was tied to how her mother felt. If her mother was happy, that meant Flick was good. If her mother was upset, Flick had done something wrong.

Flick had always been an obedient daughter, but if her mother wasn’t a good person to begin with, what sort of scale had Flick followed her entire life? And to think, she’d once been ready to undermine Arthie and Jin simply for her mother’s pleasure.

She looked up as the doorknob rattled, and she imagined the revelation rattling into her just the same: Felicity Linden would be obedient no longer.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t only her mother who entered. Four black-clad men followed her inside, and the wan light of the lamp they set on the chest glinted off her mask.

No one spoke.

One of the men brought in a small silver tray, something like pens clattering atop it, another carried a heavy crate that Flick thought safe to assume wasn’t full of pastries. A pang shot through her, and the weight of her brass knuckles pulsed in her pocket.

“It’s been a day since your arrival, Felicity. Have you anything to share?” the Ram asked.

Flick said nothing, but she felt a lick of pride when the Ram didn’t look surprised. Her resilience was gaining a reputation, at least. But goodness, a day . That meant the Casimirs had been on Ceylan for at least as long.

“The manacles,” the Ram demanded, her eyes locked on Flick. “I’ve been told she forges for the Casimirs. She values her hands very much, and I don’t see her using them to the fullest extent after this.”

It took everything in Flick’s power to keep the emotions from showing on her face. My hands. She had a job to finish. She had invites to forge before the tribute.

“Unless, of course, you share the answers I seek,” the Ram continued.

Flick held her breath quick before her fright could betray her.

At the Ram’s nod, the men swept toward her.

She felt powerless, helpless. She wanted to shout at the men that they would be next to die, but they knew that already.

She could see it in their eyes. What would Jin do?

He’d goad the Ram, even as he was strung up, even when hope was in short supply.

Flick was not Jin. And yet, the words trickled out of her anyway. “Whatever will the people think when they learn the Ram is torturing a young girl for information you only assume she has?”

There’s a time and place to fight , Jin had said.

This was the time for fighting. Flick waited until the men made her stand, waited until their grip on her eased when they thought she wouldn’t fight back.

She ripped her hands free, wanting to pull her brass knuckles over her fingers and punch something.

Something told her to save them—she couldn’t best four men on her own.

Instead, she kicked at the crate they’d brought in that had seen better days.

It rammed against the nearest man’s shins, but where could she go? What could she do?

She hadn’t found the place she’d sought out—she’d been dragged here. She hadn’t found the answers she wanted—she was trapped in a room with four trained men and her mother.

The fight drained out of her. The men clamped metal cuffs around her wrists. They were wide and heavy, the chain fat. Flick wasn’t breathing so much as gasping. They kicked the crate back toward her and shoved her on it.

The Ram marched closer. “Where is the ledger?”

Flick found no remorse in her mother’s eyes, no sympathy, and she did her utmost to not give her any emotion back.

“The Casimirs took it from me,” Flick said. Had she somehow planted a seed of worry in her mother by revealing that Jin and Arthie were alive and well?

The Ram didn’t believe her. She waved a hand. “Hang her up.”

Nothing else mattered then. Not the plan, not the Casimirs, not Flick being a bad daughter or a good one.

Only the fact that, without a doubt, she was going to suffer.

“You will pay for this,” Flick said, but her voice was small. Her strength had scattered into the recesses of her mind.

The men looped the chain to a hook in the ceiling, forcing her to extend her arms as high as they would go. The links slid with eerie, haunting clinks until it was done. Flick’s arms quivered in protest.

“Stop,” she whispered. “Please stop.”

The men stopped in some semblance of pity, but when they glanced at the Ram, she only nodded, and Flick knew the worst was yet to come.

Then the men pulled the crate out from beneath her feet.

A scream tore from Flick’s lungs. She gasped for air as the ground disappeared.

Her shoulders shrieked. The metal cuffs dug into the bones of her wrist, the knobby bones of her thumbs, her skin.

She was suddenly lightheaded, and she wished she could hold back the tremors that ran through her, to stop herself from shaking and her wrists from chafing.

She was hanging.

Please , was what she wanted to say. Stop this , she wanted to beg. I can’t take it , she wanted to admit. But Flick refused to beg even as she whimpered.

The Ram tilted her head. “Such steel, Felicity. And for what? For a pair of orphans who haven’t even come to your aid.”

“Better an orphan than an unwanted child,” Flick said, her voice strained.

She had been wanted, once. She wasn’t a child the Ram birthed; she was chosen by her. Adopted, for some reason, before the Ram decided she didn’t quite care anymore.

The men likely assumed she was prattling nonsense because of the pain.

Flick didn’t know if she meant the words, really, but she felt them just then.

She wished, more than anything, that the Ram had never been her mother, and when she looked into those blue eyes now, framed with gilded metal, she saw that it didn’t matter whether Flick believed it.

Her mother did.

And the satisfaction that washed through Flick, from her stretched and aching arms to the tips of her toes, was insurmountable. The Ram turned on her heel and stormed from the room. The men looked at one another and a pair of them left while the other two remained, taking up position by the door.

Tears streamed down Flick’s face, hot and angry and spurred by the pain.

No one was coming to save her. What would Arthie do, or Jin?

What would—why could she not do anything herself?

Why did she need them? She craned her neck up as much as she could.

The hook suspended from the ceiling didn’t snap closed.

It didn’t have a lock or closure. It was open, ending with a sharp curve, made for easy use.

And you only need the manacle chain link to jump the hook, love , Jin said in her head.

That was exactly what she needed. If only she still had that crate beneath her to use as a launchpad to leap off. It would be a lot easier to throw up her arms and get the chain over the hook then.

You wouldn’t be in this situation either , came Arthie’s words in her thoughts.

And Flick realized: Arthie’s and Jin’s voices in her head weren’t memories or things they’d said to her before.

They were Flick’s own thoughts. She wasn’t incapable of functioning without them.

She’d learned from them. She’d taken the best of Arthie’s and Jin’s cunning and strength and made herself better in turn.

Having their voices in her head made her a little less lonely, really, and there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with that.

She tried shuffling the chains as best as she could through the pain numbing every inch of her form, until her arms quivered even more and she couldn’t muster the strength to keep craning her neck upward.

The men were watching her.

“Are you going to just stand there and stare?” she snapped.

They turned their attention to the floor.

Flick blubbered. Her arms were going numb now. She could barely feel her thumbs. The Ram had said she wouldn’t be able to use her hands all too well if she was ever freed, and Flick sincerely hoped that wasn’t true.

Another sob lodged in her throat. She wanted to sink into a ball on the floor and weep. No, she wanted to thrash; she wanted to scream.

And perhaps because she was alone and there was no one to stop her, or because she was angry and hurting and had come to so many realizations at once, she did just that. Flick screamed.

It wasn’t smart, she knew deep down inside. She should have reserved whatever energy she had left, but she couldn’t.

Flick screamed again, a sound unlike any other she’d made before. She thrashed, the clinking chains a melody to her voice, and then she slumped forward, empty of life and breath, and everything went dark.