Page 35 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

ARTHIE

Arthie didn’t wait for the guards’ shock to wear off and remember her and Matteo—she grabbed his arm and tugged him into one of the pockets of shadow between the columns holding up the fortress’s archway.

There was no shortage of guards throughout the fort, and as the men shoved Jin away, Matteo choked another, smaller guard unconscious with an arm around his neck and undressed him with haste, giving the uniform to Arthie to button up over her clothes.

They hid him behind a stack of crates labeled cinnamon with the EJC logo branded into the wood. Arthie ignored the rage that flooded her veins at the sight and transformed Calibore into a hairpin, tucking as much of her mauve locks away before pulling the guard’s cap tight over her head.

“Don’t lose sight of them,” Arthie whispered to Matteo, and they hurried across the yard in the direction of the wave of guards leading Jin around a bend.

They kept their heads low and shoulders relaxed as though they belonged.

Arthie stopped to snatch up Jin’s umbrella.

She wasn’t going to leave such an important part of him behind.

Matteo nearly tripped, straightening with a curse as a red canister rolled to its side with a clang. “Why are there so many canisters everywhere ?”

He was right. They lined the covered walkway that ran the perimeter of the fort, going on for as long as Arthie could see.

“Fuel. Oil, I think. For the ships that port here,” Arthie answered. Jin was getting away. She tipped her hat down and kept moving. “Not now. They’re going to the sanatorium.”

The sanatorium looked like a miniature version of the fort with its gray-brown stone. As the guards neared, the grand doors groaned open.

“I don’t know if walking in plain view is a good idea,” Matteo murmured.

“We can’t let Jin out of sight,” Arthie said. Especially not when the men referred to him as though he wasn’t human.

The guards marched into the sanatorium, prodding and pushing Jin along. They passed through the threshold, Arthie and Matteo on their heels. There were plenty enough guards marching around, making it easier for the two of them to blend in.

Before the doors shut behind her, Arthie glanced back outside to where a woman stood in a sari the color of blood. Her mother—no. Her mother was dead, and Arthie’s mind was playing tricks on her.

Still, Arthie met her eyes, and the woman squinted at her through the sun with a strange expression, as though she couldn’t quite place Arthie and the clothes she wore.

Why are you here? Arthie thought those eyes asked. Why have you returned?

And then the doors closed, sealing them inside.

“Odd place,” Matteo murmured as Arthie tried to shake the woman’s uncanny scrutiny from her mind. Why are you here? Why have you returned? Had the sea not asked her the same question when she’d arrived? She forced herself to study their surroundings.

The sanatorium was a lot smaller than Arthie had thought it would be.

It looked less like a facility housing vampires and more like a bank, with a welcoming foyer, windows, and lacquered wood, complete with a vault-like door near the back wall.

The ceiling pitched high, with a mural and lavish lights.

Evening sunlight poured in through the windows, painting a cheery display.

Out of place, stacked along the side wall and awaiting export, were crates stamped with the EJC logo.

“Tea,” Matteo said beside her.

Arthie knew one of Ettenia’s greatest exports out of Ceylan was tea, but it was different seeing it in person, and it wasn’t until Matteo brushed a finger down her arm, sparking a current in her veins, that she released her clenched jaw.

Behind the polished counter, a stately man wore a false smile and a short top hat.

He nodded as the cluster of guards continued to that vault-like door in the back, dragging Jin between them.

Arthie and Matteo followed, as closely as possible.

The man didn’t look fazed in the slightest. He held up that fake smile and pulled a latch.

And the door began to open. It was imposing, standing with a sense of foreboding and finality. Arthie could hear mechanisms dislodging inside, groaning awake like a beast from its slumber. She quickly whipped her head away when one of the guards glanced back to the wide windows.

The door ground to a halt, and the guards continued inside in varying degrees of excitement: some hushed, some scared they’d found a vampire roaming the streets, others all but thumping their chests in a display of pride. Arthie considered thwacking one in the back of the head with Jin’s umbrella.

“Onward?” Matteo asked, eyeing the door with dubiety.

“Onward,” Arthie replied without breaking stride.

And the vault door shut behind them. It swallowed the last of the Ceylani sun, leaving them in wan light. A series of gears rolled and the door sighed as it locked into place once again. Their exit was barred, sealed shut like a tomb.

Arthie and Matteo exchanged a glance.

“This looks more like a sanatorium. A miserable one at that,” he said, taking in their surroundings beyond the short hall.

Indeed.

The structure was even larger inside, not because it sprawled or rose high, no.

It was built deep into the ground. As warm as it had appeared from the outside, the inside was anything but.

It was cold, sterile, and lifeless. The very air felt forlorn, and Arthie was about to agree before Matteo yanked her into the shadows of an alcove.

“Why—”

He pressed a finger to her lips, dragging a shiver through her, and nodded to where they had just stood.

A pair of guards had pulled away from the group, circling back in suspicion.

Matteo pulled her flat against him, and she forced away a memory of another moment like this. Atop the Old Roaring Tower.

She shivered and craned her head back. “This was entirely unnecessary.”

“Oh, does it bother you?” he whispered back, one corner of his lips ticked up, and he peeled his body away from hers just enough to create a gap between them.

Arthie felt like a magnet that had been forced to flip around, hovering close but not close enough. She shoved herself to him, grinning at the spark that shone in his green, green eyes.

“Do I appear bothered?” she asked, breathless. The guards had disappeared. “Let’s go.”

It took far more effort than she would have liked to pull away and step back into the hall, their footsteps light, their senses vigilant.

She kept her distance, clenching her jaw when she heard the scuff of Jin’s shoes while he was dragged yet again, and the snicker of the guard who did it.

He was still covered by a wretched, scratchy sack, and for what? To scare him? To irritate him?

The short entrance corridor led to another, this one suspended above the underground levels.

Farther ahead, a large, ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling off a thick chain, crystal shards swaying just barely, lending to the eeriness of the place.

Arthie glanced at Jin’s umbrella in her hand.

He had snatched it from the jaws of the fire as it greedily swallowed up his past. He had carried it with him since that fateful day, for years upon years, hoping he could be half the man his father was.

Only to learn his father might have become half the man he was.

“Where do you think the guards are taking him?” Matteo whispered.

“They said they have use for him,” she replied. “I took that to mean they’ll toss him with the other vampires.”

“What kind of twisted place is this?” he murmured, looking around, and then answered his own question. “A place secure enough for the EJC to do what they want, while retaining their pristine Ettenian image.”

It was a concept Arthie hadn’t considered: To her, the EJC was entirely evil, from its meddling in the affairs of vampires to its theft of resources across the colonies. To others, the EJC wasn’t so bad. It was working for Ettenian society, bringing them the wonders of the world beyond its shores.

“I don’t see a single exit point other than that door,” Arthie noted.

The guards kept walking until the walls on either side of them gave way to cells, one beside the next.

They were narrow, as far as Arthie could tell, but long, so the single light suspended from the center of the ceiling made it impossible to see all the way inside.

That didn’t stop her from feeling eyes on her more than once.

They turned down another corridor, their footsteps loud. Every sound was hushed. It gave her the strangest sense, as if the entire sanatorium was waiting with bated breath for a blow.

A sound stopped them in their tracks. Ahead, the guards kept moving, unfazed, snapping at Jin to continue when he too skidded to a halt. It was a keening, almost unending, utterly haunting.

Matteo’s face turned grim. “Vampires. The sound of a starved man.”

And Jin was about to join them.

Arthie nudged Matteo as the guards turned down the hall. They seemed to be slowing, as if they’d reached their destination. She tightened her hold around Jin’s umbrella, feeling the weight of Calibore in her hair, and peered around the corner.

Only to find every single guard waiting for them, guns raised.

The captain’s shrewd eyes were bright with satisfaction. “I told them this would be the best way to lure you two in when you’d disappeared.”

Every inch of her itched to draw Calibore, but she knew when the odds weren’t stacked in her favor. Matteo reached for her arm as if he’d had the same thought.

“Nothing to say this time?” the captain goaded. “Lock the pair up.”

The cell was stifling, and Arthie was certain it was designed to be. The halls fell silent once the guards left, and Arthie had the feeling she wouldn’t be seeing much of them anymore. It was clear the corridors were rarely frequented, for isolation was as much a prison as a cell.

Matteo immediately began to pace the narrow space, still dressed in the Horned Guard uniform. As was she, the smell of the guard’s sweat stinging her nostrils.

The silence was deafening. She pulled the hat from her head and tugged Calibore from her hair, waiting for it to transform into her pistol, but it didn’t budge.

She was too worried about Jin, too worried about the island, too worried about too much.

She couldn’t focus on her connection to Calibore.

She couldn’t think straight. She wanted to press it against the Ram’s temple and demand answers from her.

Dangle her secrets in front of her face and watch her squirm.

“Come on, you wretched thing,” she snapped, shaking the hairpin in her hands, looking away and then looking back at it again as if that would make a difference.

She stifled her scream, before pressing her back against the wall at the end of the cell, sliding down until she sat on the cold, relentless floor.

“Arthie,” Matteo said with a sigh when he saw her curled into herself. He settled beside her, knees up like hers, arms crossed. He brushed his fingers along the side of her arm.

There was a time when she would have moved away and thrown him something snide. All this room, and you decide to sit here ?

Now she leaned into his touch. She never imagined the threads that would connect them: They had suffered at the hands of the Ram, the EJC, and Lady Linden. They had ravaged their surroundings as newly turned half vampires.

And then he had turned her, kneeling over her in his canopied bed, pressing his lips to her skin, his tongue, and then his fangs.

He saw the shift in her eyes, the tilt of her chin as the memories resurfaced from that night.

“You are a naughty thing, aren’t you,” he whispered, brushing his fingers up to her shoulder and then lower, tracing her side, leaving a line of fire she wanted desperately to spread through every inch of her.

Arthie tracked his movement, relishing the heat of his eyes on her.

He leaned closer, tilting his head to press a kiss to the side of her nose, another above her eyebrow, another at her temple.

A shiver ran down her spine, and Arthie discovered that one of her favorite things was the feel of his smile curving against her skin.

She tilted her chin, meeting his lips with her own. It was a softer kiss, one laden with the weight of their surroundings, the anger and pain and hatred they shared.

“There you go,” he whispered, pulling away. In her lap, Calibore was a pistol again.

Oh.

Arthie paused, torn. She had never needed anyone before.

For anything. Is it so bad to rely on others?

She shifted Calibore from pistol to dagger, black filigree shifting to the hilt, blade bright in the darkness.

Calibore could only shift into weapons, bladed hairpins included, and a dagger was the closest thing to a lockpick.

“I knew getting into a cell with you wasn’t a bad idea,” Matteo said with a grin, rising to his feet and helping her up beside him. Did a current zap through him, too, every time he touched her?

Arthie flicked a brow. “You’re so certain I won’t leave you behind, are you?”

Matteo sulked, and Arthie looked away from the perfect pout of his lips.

She finagled the dagger into the keyhole, pausing when she felt something else just inside the lock. A strange mechanism, different from any lock she’d seen before, more delicate. Arthie ran the pad of her finger up the tiny panel. Fine wires were bound and wrapped inside it.

She wriggled the tip of the dagger, trying to work the pins with at least half the expertise Jin used, but she heard the rough scrape of her dagger jumping off to the side more than once.

Shouts echoed from down the hall where they’d taken Jin. Time was running out.