Page 50 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

ARTHIE

When Arthie opened her eyes, Shaw was in her face, peering at her through a monocle.

Sora was beside him, wringing her hands.

Arthie sputtered, trying to shrink back, but her head slammed into a slab of wood and she growled.

Matteo took his place, their voices muffled as if they were speaking from far away and not inches from her.

Her body stung, her limbs weighing heavy and laden.

Worse, she couldn’t think. Her head felt stuffed full of dirty tea rags.

“You saved us,” Sora whispered. “You—silly girl, why?”

“What’s wrong with her?” Matteo asked.

Wrong? There was nothing wrong with her. She was tired and beat. She had just fled a sanatorium with a Ripper vampire and endless guards.

“She was shot with a green dart,” Shaw said.

Oh. That wasn’t good. Did she look as terrible as she felt? She tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out. The last she remembered was Shaw and Sora and a torch.

Someone said something Arthie couldn’t hear, and Matteo snapped in response, “Well, remove it from her system, then.”

“Where—where—” Arthie stopped. A fire was scorching her skin from the inside. The fire! Had she imagined those beautiful flames engulfing the fort and the screams as people fled to the wilderness?

She didn’t realize she’d asked the question out loud.

“You set fire to it, darling,” Matteo said. “And we escaped. A good number of the vampires, Jin, his parents. We’re on the ship back to White Roaring.”

His tone was soft, gentle, telling her the world wouldn’t crumble if she didn’t remain in charge. A hot tear burned down her face.

They made it. They were leaving Ceylan. So soon . There was a shuffle, and when Arthie tried to open her eyes to see what was happening, she saw colors, blending into one another, bursting in intermittent splotches.

“Get this out of her, Shaw,” Matteo snarled.

Shaw was murmuring to himself. “The consistency of vampire blood is much thicker than that of a human’s. The serum was meant to mimic a mosquito’s venom—eating away and poisoning a vampire’s blood faster than they can replenish it. The full dose is in her system, and she is quite small.”

Arthie groaned. Her head throbbed.

“A transfusion is the only way, boy. We’re nowhere near the equipment necessary for such a thing.”

“A transfusion would stop it from spreading?” Matteo asked, tone perking. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.” Then she heard Shaw’s voice turn aghast. “What are you doing?”

“Giving her a transfusion,” came Matteo’s curt response. “As vampires do when we turn you humans. We don’t need equipment or a fancy education for it.”

“If you ingest—”

“I won’t. Go take care of the others,” Matteo said, and Arthie tried to protest. Her head might have been stuffy, her brain functioning at a percent of what it should have been, but she didn’t like the warning in Shaw’s voice that Matteo was ignoring so hastily.

Matteo lifted her by her shoulders, again with a gentle touch. She tried to pull away, to refuse whatever he was about to do.

She was powerless against him.

“Arthie, look at me,” he said, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear. She thought she shivered. “No? Then tilt your head, darling.”

She tilted her head. Why was she obeying him?

“There we go.”

He moved closer. She could smell him, even if her eyes were refusing to let her see the smooth skin of his face, the emerald of his eyes that reminded her of the lush Ceylani trees beneath a bright sun.

He kissed her throat, so softly she thought she imagined it.

That wasn’t part of what a vampire did to turn another.

That had nothing to do with transfusion of blood.

This was his fear of losing her. Before she could ponder any further, he drew her shirt away from her shoulder and smoothed his tongue over her skin.

She heard the stutter of his exhale, and it sent heat rushing through her limbs, straight to her core.

And then his fangs punctured her shoulder, right where the dart had deposited its green venom. Pain ruptured through her, building, rising, cresting like a wave until it drowned her, and the world went dark once again.

When Arthie woke, she was in a cot. She didn’t feel so terrible anymore. Still a little stuffy, but the fire that was clawing its way out of her had been snuffed to cinders, leaving her empty.

The ground beneath her rocked, and she started reaching for her pistol before she remembered she was back at sea, the crashing waves returning them to Ettenia.

A terrible loneliness ached in her chest. Loneliness?

Arthie was never good with her emotions.

Perhaps it wasn’t loneliness, but it felt that way, in a sense.

She would have liked to see the island one last time as they sailed away.

To stare at the fire she’d cast inside the walls of the fort, to see Ceylan’s sandy shores and know that, this time, she wasn’t a child anymore; she wasn’t bereft and alone.

She wasn’t leaving her people to a horrible fate again.

This time, they would rebuild, restart, and replenish their losses. They could drive out the Ettenians now that they had the upper hand.

A sound scraped beside her where someone was fiddling ever so quietly.

“Matteo?” she asked.

“It’s me,” Jin said, and she sat up, scrunching her brow when her head spun.

“Is Matteo—?”

He nodded. “Just fine.”

Arthie breathed a sigh of relief. He might have assured Shaw that he was capable of the transfusion, but it was Shaw’s tone that had unsettled her.

Her eyes were working now, and she was equally relieved to see that Jin had escaped unscathed except for the bandage around one ear and the bruise swelling the right side of his lower lip.

“You’re all right. I was worried.”

He laughed softly “I am. I—I thought we were going to lose you.”

“And that’s funny, is it?” she asked, swinging her legs over.

“What’s funny is that you nearly died, but you were worried about me.”

Arthie shrugged. “That’s what big sisters do.”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “I’m the older one, in case the Ceylani sun made you think otherwise.” Then his features turned serious, his brow pinching with apology. “You nearly died for my parents.”

It would have been worth it, she realized. She had always wanted to make him happy. “In case the Ceylani sun made you think otherwise, I don’t die.”

“I used to believe that,” Jin said with another snorted laugh. “You came between me and death so many times I’ve lost count, but ever since I learned you were a vampire, you’ve never been more fragile.”

“That’s not insulting.”

But he was right. She’d nearly died twice since she’d turned him and revealed, at the same time, that she was a vampire. She’d never been more in danger of dying before then.

“Are we on track to return in time for the tribute?” Arthie asked.

Jin glanced at her. Back to business , the look said. “We were, until we hit stormy waters. I think Vane said we’ll be arriving a day later.”

That wasn’t ideal. Not at all.

Jin leaned back with a sigh. “I could use a streusel right about now.”

“I’m sorry,” Arthie said.

“That I died? I can’t blame you for that particular bit.” His words were light, but the bitterness was there. He was here, alive in every way, but at the same time, he wasn’t. He would never age, he would never savor. He would never be human again, after knowing nothing else for years.

“I deserved your anger,” Arthie said finally, for she didn’t know how to speak of his new fate just yet, not when she had lived as a vampire for a decade and still hadn’t come to terms with it herself.

“I was too much of a coward to trust you with the truth because I was too much of a coward to acknowledge it myself.”

He nodded, looking to the lantern flickering on the chest against the cabin wall. “I can understand that. I haven’t… had a proper conversation with my parents yet.”

“They love you, Jin. I see it in their eyes. You can hear it in the way they speak your name. You’re still you. Vampire or human, that doesn’t change that.”

That, at least, she knew for certain.

“You ought to listen to that yourself.”

Perhaps she did. Shouts from above deck echoed inside. “How many made it?” she asked.

Jin shook his head. “Only eighty or so. Vane helped get everyone on board. The guards were relentless. The vampires were weak to begin with, but there were others too angry to even stop fighting and escape with us.”

Too angry. Their vengeance had claimed them. Arthie didn’t know how she felt about that.

“What about the ones who did make it? Are they angry too?” Arthie asked, reaching into her pocket where the silver dose sat small and innocent, as though it hadn’t set a worldwide operation into motion.

“Ready to tear the Ram apart, for certain,” Jin said, sitting back down in the chair. “They were happy to see the fire, but they’re certainly not pleased to be back on an EJC ship, and they’re calling for blood.”

Arthie no longer sought vengeance for herself alone anymore.

This was bigger than her now. Bigger than her dead mother and father and her humanity.

This was for Penn and the vampires stolen away and weaponized.

This was for Jin and his parents, for Flick.

For Matteo and the life he could have lived if the Ram hadn’t made him into a pawn for her own affairs.

No, vengeance had steeped in her blood long enough. It had changed, grown, morphed. It was retribution now, and it would find its end with the Ram.