Page 42 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

“You see yourself as so superior, but vampires were once human, just as much as you,” Flick said, drawing as deep a breath as she could muster. “You use them to advance your own interests, but you forget how similar you really are.”

The Ram kicked the crate out from beneath Flick’s feet without warning. Flick cried out. Her arms wrenched with her weight, and her vision began to fade black. Flick blinked, forcing herself awake.

“Do you think to lecture me, girl?” the Ram asked.

Girl.

Not Flick. Not Felicity. She was not even a bad daughter anymore. If Flick was having a hard time snipping away the last of the threads binding her to her mother—and only because her hands were bound—the Ram was eager to help.

“I know the tribute is a cover,” Flick managed to say, trying to swing forward and—and what? Flick didn’t know. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

The Ram looked bored behind her mask. “Oh? You ought to consider yourself fortunate you won’t be there when I meet your friends upon their return from Ceylan. Should they return, that is, from a fortress full of my men. Did you know that too?”

“They will return,” Flick swore. “They will return, and together, we will tear you down.”

The Ram scoffed. “And to think, I gave you everything.”

“Everything to you was still nothing to me,” Flick said. “I wanted a mother.”

“And I wanted a daughter.”

At some point, yes. Flick believed her mother did. That desire faded with her humanity. That desire was long gone now, gobbled by her greed and hatred.

“Then I reckon neither of us got what we wanted,” Flick said, and she was surprisingly content with that.

The Ram seethed, and slammed the door closed behind her, leaving Flick alone with her thundering heart. She had no way of getting in contact with Jin and Arthie, but she needed to escape. She needed to be there at the docks when they arrived to warn them.

The Ram’s patience was waning. The next interrogation wouldn’t go so kindly, if the blade she had left on the stool was any indication, but Flick refused to let the Ram’s tactics get to her. She had left it behind on purpose, to scare Flick.

Her body ached anew, tricked by the temporary relief the Ram had given her for a scant handful of minutes. Flick stared up. Like in her nightmare, her hands looked so far out of reach, as if they might not even belong to her.

She was used to being cared for, used to having maids attend to her every need—even when she didn’t want it.

Even when she’d decided to take matters into her own hands, she always knew somewhere in the back of her mind that help was waiting for her should she need it.

Even when she’d broken into the Athereum, she’d walked with the reassurance that Arthie Casimir would know what to do no matter what went wrong.

This time, Flick was alone. She was here due to her own decisions, of her own volition.

No one could save her but herself. It was both a harrowing and empowering realization at once. She fought her constraints again, exerting against the cuffs before trying to wriggle the chain over the hook.

Focus, Felicity , Jin said in her ear. Right.

She needed to assess the situation in front of her.

Above her. And when she did, her eyes threatening to burst out of her skull for straining them so, she noticed the curve of the hook ended high up enough that the chain links would require quite a jump to leap free. It was impossible.

She squinted up at the cuffs. Her head would not stop throbbing, the skin beneath her arms aching like she had rubbed it raw with a scrubber. The brass knuckles from Jin pulsed in her pocket, almost taunting her.

The cuffs were just wider than her wrists, leaving a gap where she could only fit two fingertips. She pressed her thumb tight and flush against her index finger, tugging downward with more force. Nothing. Her thumb wasn’t getting in the way though—the cuffs kept scraping against her knuckle.

What was it that Jin had said about bones and imprisonments? No, not what he’d said, but what he’d shown her when he dislocated his shoulder to demonstrate how he had escaped from the basement of a lord’s gambling den several years ago.

Flick had balked at the sight before a portion of her breakfast reversed back up to her mouth.

She stared at her hands now, at that knuckle bone.

With dreadful certainty, Flick knew she would need to do the same.

Works with any joint , Jin had said, casually popping his shoulder back into place with a jaw-clenched growl.

Flick’s eyes had widened at the pain in his eyes.

He responded with a shrug and a smile. Human bones are no different than a machine socketed together. We’re stronger than we think.

She exhaled a trembling breath. She needed to shimmy herself higher if she was to escape.

She had no other leverage against the weight of the cuffs pressed firmly against her wrists.

She tried to wrap her fingers around the chain links and pull herself an inch or so higher, but her fingers were too weak.

They faltered, sending a fresh wave of fatigue through her.

She grabbed her thumb and shoved, trying to push the joint inward, trying to pop it out of place the way Jin had with ease and precision.

She cried out from the pressure. Both hands ached from her efforts.

Think, Flick . If bones were that easy to pop out of place, it would happen by chance all the time.

She needed to pull herself higher, force a gap between her hand and the cuffs that sat tight against her bones.

At a muffled thud, she glanced at the door, but the knob didn’t turn and no one stepped through.

Only more noises. Flick held her breath, trying to discern them.

It was a scuffle. She heard a fist connecting with flesh, someone sucking air through clenched teeth.

Flick might not have been a vampire, but she grew up in a house where everyone was quiet, where staff whispered about her and her mother whispered about business behind the closed door of her office.

And Flick liked to listen.

It seemed there was another prisoner, one they’d begun to use brute force upon.

Flick needed to hurry. Before she could stop herself, she threw her weight to the side, swinging just high enough to throw her hand up and grab the chain.

The cuff slipped down her arm with a sweaty pop.

Gravity wrenched her back, teeth jarring.

“Step one, complete,” she told herself.

She braced the cuff against one wrist and shoved it against her other thumb. She cried out, clamping her mouth tight to muffle the sound. If she could catch whispers of happenings outside of here, the opposite could happen too.

Again, Flick.

No different than a machine socketed together , Jin had said.

She needed to stop shoving and be smart about it.

With another clench of her teeth, she slid the cuff down the side of her hand, the skin now raw and starting to bruise, until it slotted beneath the joint.

Then she sucked in a deep breath, scrunched her eyes tight, and pressed.

Color erupted behind her eyes, bright and blinding.

She felt more than heard her bone pop, and the cuff jerked off, forced by the weight of her hanging body, scraping her skin even further. Her arm was free. The chain clanged with joy of its own.

“Yes!” she cried out, forgetting to be quiet, before the pain of hanging from one arm shot through her, mutating her joy to a sob. “Can’t—celebrate—yet.”

Tears were streaming down her face, stinging her skin. It was impossible not to look at the weird angle of her thumb and retch. She swallowed the bile back down and did what Jin had done: snapped it back into place.

Returning a part of her back into place didn’t make the pain, surprise, or sound any easier.

Don’t think , she told herself, or she would spiral, and then she’d be hanging from a single arm. She didn’t need to know bones or the human body to know that would be worse.

With a huffed exhale, she slid the remaining cuff into place and pushed against her other thumb, momentarily distracted by the fact that her seconds-ago-disjointed thumb worked as though it hadn’t just been abused.

The distraction helped, she supposed. She wasn’t nearly as focused on her actions—the cuff yanked off.

Flick fell.

Free.

At last.

She tumbled to the ground in a heap, biting her tongue. Blood filled her mouth, dripped down her chin, mixing with the tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t move. Every inch of her was wound tight, the pain so great she was seeing double.

“You did it,” she whispered to herself. “You did it, Flick.”

She folded into herself.

She was sore all over, raw all over, and—she glanced at the door when that muffled thud sounded again—she couldn’t afford to rest. Her escape had just begun.

It took three tries before Flick could stand. Her legs were heavy; her arms were light. She looked at her hands with a gasp. They were pale, deathly so. Bloodless.

She needed to keep moving.

She stumbled to the Ram’s chair and tried to pick up the knife, but her hands refused to work.

They shook violently, her fingers so numb she barely felt the chair when she reached for it.

How was she supposed to escape without the use of her hands?

How was she supposed to forge anything anymore? Her penmanship— no .

No, no, no.

The abyss opened up beneath her, threatening to tug her into its depths. She couldn’t spiral down that hole. She had people to save. She had purpose, and that was enough.

What an excellent weapon , Jin said to her, but really she was the one thinking the words. So violent, love.

Indeed, she was. She saw red everywhere she looked. She understood Arthie’s rage. Flick reached into her pocket with shaking hands. She pulled out Jin’s brass knuckles— her brass knuckles—and, ignoring the quiver as best as she could, slid them over her fingers.

She had thought the dusters were boxy and heavy for a hand used to sliding on dainty rings, but her hands were different now. They were raw and rough, bruised and angry.

They fit perfectly.

Then she reached again for the serrated knife the Ram had left behind, consciously telling her fingers to close around its grip, and stepped to the door, slumping against it with a sigh of relief.

“No,” she told herself. “No time… for rest.”

She pushed herself off the door and saw the pitcher of water the Ram had given her. It was still half-full. Flick dropped to her knees and gulped it down—half of which drenched her shirt because her hands refused to cooperate.

Her gaze cleared a little then. She forced deep breaths through her lungs and tried the knob, but the door was locked from the other side. She couldn’t pick a lock, not with the way her hands shook. No, she would wait, and whoever came through that door would find their reckoning.

What if it’s the Ram?

What did that matter anymore? In these walls, Lady Linden and her daughter didn’t exist, because the Ram wore a mask and her daughter—

Well, Felicity Linden was dead.