Page 38 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)
ARTHIE
Arthie tensed when Matteo gripped her arm as footsteps echoed down the quiet hall, but when she pulled her dagger back through the cell bars and listened, she recognized that gait. That cocksure stride.
Jin came into view in the dim light, and Arthie scoured his face, looking for blood-streaked skin, carnage-bright eyes, fisted hands. Instead, he looked calm and collected. Safe.
And he was holding a key.
“Did you hit your head?” she asked.
Jin flashed a grin, and if she closed her eyes on that sight, she could have imagined she was back in Spindrift, but then she saw his gaze. Haunted.
“Hello, sister,” he said quietly.
He shoved the key into the lock and turned it. He didn’t look to see if guards were present, he didn’t look ready to mutilate anyone in sight, and as the cell door swung open, Arthie saw two figures behind him.
The man was tall, trim, his dark hair streaked in white. Everything about him was exactly like Jin, but older. It was a surreal sight. But when Arthie looked at the woman, she saw where Jin got his crooked smile, the clever sparkle in his eyes, the jokester in his blood.
His parents.
Arthie stepped into the hall, Matteo right behind her, setting a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t know what it was about the touch that calmed her—any other time, she would have shaken it off and hissed at him for patronizing her.
His parents looked at her, and she at them.
“This isn’t the place,” Jin said in the expectant silence. Arthie couldn’t read him, and it sent a lash of fear through her. What had he learned?
He led the four of them to a room that was wide and looming, with a certain hollowness that echoed like a tomb. Jin’s father closed the doors behind them, and Arthie tensed when the lock fell shut.
“Jin,” she hissed.
“It’s all right,” he said. “This is where they brought me in.”
She turned to face the approaching footsteps.
“A Ceylani girl with fairy-floss hair. You’re the Casimir girl,” Jin’s father said in a voice that was both elegant and inquisitive, altogether a combination that made it one people would want to listen to.
Arthie pursed her lips to the side. “That’s me.”
“Then… that makes you the Casimir boy,” his mother slowly began, looking to Jin.
Arthie could tell he braced himself for a scolding.
It was instinct, she supposed. These were his parents.
It didn’t help that he’d been worried about their reactions from the moment he’d learned they were truly alive, but she hadn’t imagined the Casimir reputation preceded them past the shores of Ettenia.
His mother’s face softened with a laugh. “You two have been thorns in the Ram’s side for years now. We hear little about the outside world, but tidbits reach us eventually.”
Jin couldn’t tamp down his smile at that, but Arthie would take a tad more convincing. Her hand didn’t leave Calibore.
“And it’s a boon the Ram didn’t know as much,” his father said. “You couldn’t be both our son and a thorn in the Ram’s side.”
Had she known, Arthie didn’t doubt the Ram would have killed Jin—or attempted to, with a relentless passion.
But she had not, and it appeared she’d threatened the Siwangs and ended it there.
It seemed it didn’t matter to her whether Jin was alive, only that the Siwangs believed that he lived so they remained compliant.
As his mother said, they didn’t have ready access to the world outside of the fort to know otherwise.
“Arthie pulled me out of the fire that day,” Jin said, glancing at her. “I went through the house, looking for you both. She saved my life, and she’s been saving it ever since.”
“The sister you always wanted,” Jin’s mother whispered, her eyes welling with tears.
“I believe introductions are in order?” his father asked with a sniffle. “I’m Shaw.”
“Sora,” his mother said to her. “And who might this handsome man be?”
“Matteo Andoni, currently displaced and apprehended in a prison that doubles as an armory and laboratory at once,” Matteo said. “So I’d rather not chitchat.”
Arthie bit her lip at his curt tone.
“That’s how you sound too, you know,” Jin whispered to her.
“Are we to act as though everything is fine and dandy because they’re your parents, Jin?” Matteo continued.
To her surprise, Jin didn’t lash out at Matteo. He merely looked to the Siwangs for an explanation, and that set Arthie at ease. It meant he wasn’t going to toss caution out the window because they were his parents. She didn’t know why a part of her believed he would to begin with.
“No,” Shaw said softly. “We expect nothing of the sort. We are indeed responsible for the vampires housed here, silent soldiers awaiting the Ram’s commands for deployment.”
“How many?” Matteo asked, deathly still.
“Thus far, one hundred and fifteen. We took several in for testing every year, though last year saw the vast majority. In that, we had little choice.”
“There is always a choice.” Matteo’s voice was hard.
Arthie paused at the heat of his tone, at the anguish rolling off him in waves. The weight was almost tangible. He took the slightest step away from her.
It was a strange thing, the hurt that tunneled under her skin.
“Just as Lady Linden chose to kidnap those vampires when she could have been content with knives and guns. Just as the Ram chose to colonize what she had no right to touch. Just as she chose to make me what I am—”
“She?” Shaw asked.
Jin nodded. “Lady Linden and the Ram are one and the same.”
The Siwangs gasped in unison.
“And she made me into the Wolf of White Roaring to merge the two,” Matteo said.
Shaw sank into the chair behind him.
“I could have been one of those vampires,” Matteo continued. “I lived every day with the fear that I was next, to be kidnapped, drugged, stuffed in a coffin and brought to your Ceylani doorstep. Is that not a result of your choice?”
Jin lifted a finger, but Matteo wasn’t finished.
“I am those one hundred and fifteen vampires who suffered because you chose it.”
Matteo was breathing hard. Arthie studied him, the fear written on his face, the pain that he seemed to have little control over.
He’d spent the past twenty years in a cage of his own making, painting his emotions for the masses and speaking none of it, holding his truth behind debonair smiles and easy words.
And with his return to the outside world came fear, naturally amplified by decades of seclusion.
Shaw and Sora didn’t try to refute him.
Arthie’s voice was soft. “And now we have the choice to stop it. To find peace for yourself, the kidnapped vampires, all of us.”
Matteo said nothing.
Shaw looked as though he wanted to pull Matteo in for a hug, sending a surge of bittersweet sorrow through Arthie’s chest. She had long wished for her parents, and Jin had always wished for his, but who did Matteo have?
His parents had been as absent as Flick’s.
Penn had filled that void, it seemed, but he’d gone from missing to dead.
“I don’t speak to dismiss our deeds,” Shaw said. “I will not dare to ask forgiveness either. We’ve done what we could over the past decade to defy the Ram: delaying projects, purposely failing tests, extending timelines, but at the same time, we’ve committed our share of evil too.”
“We needed the Ram to believe us so we wouldn’t be replaced by someone as heartless as she is, and with our notes in hand,” Sora said. “It’s true we wanted Jin safe, but we also needed to stay alive ourselves, if only for as many vampires to have the best chance at—at escaping alive.”
Matteo said nothing. Jin didn’t either. Now Arthie understood the look on his face when he’d released her and Matteo from their cell. There was more to this matter than good or evil.
“In truth, we could have fled many times over recent years,” Sora added. “But we know the damage that would have caused—particularly after vampires were brought here.”
It was how she spoke of leaving the vampires that gave Arthie pause. She spoke of them with guilt more than duty.
As though she saw Arthie’s hesitance, Sora gave her a small smile. “For it was our silver inoculation that brought them to this point.”
They were hiding something.
Arthie didn’t know if she should care. Regardless of what they’d done, the present was still more important. The tribute would not stop, the guards here would not wait, and the Siwangs still had a part to play. They needed to move.
“We didn’t come here to have a moral debate,” Arthie said. “We have more pressing matters to attend to back in Ettenia, and you two are going to help.”
“Anything,” Shaw said. “We’ve—it’s embarrassing to say, but to remain sane, we’ve been working on a plan of our own—of escape for us and the vampires, and beyond.”
“Beyond?” Arthie asked.
“When we first made our discovery regarding liquid silver,” Shaw said, “we were invited to present our findings to the Ram and the Council.”
“The Council?” Matteo asked.
“Indeed,” Shaw said. “We’ve long believed they’re our only hope of toppling the Ram’s reign.”
Penn had wanted to appeal to them too. He had been searching for evidence, pooling together what he could. What larger piece of evidence could they provide than the Siwangs themselves, and work the Council already knew of?
Hope resurfaced within her, as eager as a rising tide at sea.
Jin gestured to a slender box on the table amid a medley of test tubes and notes. Nestled within was a vial attached to a capped needle. The liquid inside shimmered, molten and beautiful. “Is that it?”
Shaw nodded. “One dose of silver. Enough to subdue a single vampire.”
“To ask for your trust is selfish, but may we ask for a chance?” Sora asked. Her question was directed at Matteo, but Arthie knew she was asking them all in that moment, Jin included.
Matteo sighed but eventually nodded. For her own self, Arthie much preferred not having to command them at gunpoint.
She studied the silver dose on the table, unsure what possessed her to pick it up and slip it into her pocket. Precaution, she supposed. None of the others noticed.
“The sanatorium is filled to the brim with guards armed to kill on sight. We’ll have to be careful. Where is the rest of your group?” Sora asked.
“You’re looking at it,” Jin said.
Sora and Shaw exchanged a glance.
Matteo splayed his hands. “It’s just us.”
“And when have we not been enough?” Arthie asked.
“Though I’d like to preface our next excursion by saying we’re typically a lot better at our jobs than this,” Jin said. “We just didn’t know what to expect coming in here.”
“And what exactly is your job?” Sora asked as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“We’re criminals,” Arthie said, past ready to plot their escape. “The good kind, anyway. Just as you’re about to be.”