Page 72 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

JIN

Jin ducked as the whisper of metal sang by his ears. The machete swung for him again, arcing toward his nose. He threw up his arm, knowing he couldn’t move fast enough, bone-chilling dread washing through him before the man dropped like a sack.

Laith was standing behind him, blades dripping blood.

And in that split second, Jin’s limbs froze as a new sound rocked him to his core.

Flick’s scream.

“Go!” Laith shouted. Jin didn’t need to be told twice. He ran from the fight, slamming his umbrella into the knees of one more attacker before he tumbled into the hall. Flick was frozen at the door. She was unharmed, which meant Arthie—no.

Jin refused to finish that thought.

He pushed past Flick, and his brain registered everything in parts. The cage was even more sickening in person, as wide as the ones the circus sometimes flaunted with trapped tigers. Blood drenched the silver rods and the floor around it.

Girls and boys were inside, begging through bindings around their mouths, reaching out between the bars. The Ram was nowhere to be seen, but Arthie was there.

Oh, Arthie was there, all right.

Seated in the middle of the cage. Coated in blood.

“She’s—she’s—” Flick stammered.

“She’s alive,” Jin assured her. He didn’t know how his voice sounded as stable as it was. “Give me the keys, love.”

He pried them from Flick’s white-knuckled hands. Inside the cage, he counted nine others, each giving Arthie a wide berth.

Because there were three dead bodies around her.

A roar broke the hushed quiet—Matteo. He shoved past Jin to the bars. “Arthie? Arthie look at me.” His fangs were extended, his claws sharp. He looked at the people in the cage. “What happened to her? Oi! Did you not hear me? Speak!”

The captives stared with wide eyes. They were still bound; they couldn’t speak if they wanted to.

“Matteo, stop shouting at them!” Flick cried.

Jin tried key after key. None of them fit. He threw the ring aside and drew out his lockpicks, working the lock until it finally snapped open. Jin swung the door wide. The hinges groaned. The caged girls and boys didn’t move, frozen in fear.

Matteo only saw Arthie.

“You came,” she whispered.

He rushed inside, dropping in front of her, running his hands over her face, her neck. He was looking for a bullet hole, for the jagged edge of a stake. “Laith found us. Are you hurt?”

Arthie shook her head. “She’s coming back. I need to turn them for Calibore. I need to turn them so they’ll live. She—she took Calibore and shot them.” Her voice was a rough, broken whisper. “I didn’t do it.”

She was staring at the dead. Two girls, one boy.

Three bodies. And Jin knew she wasn’t here in the cage anymore, no.

She wasn’t in the bunker, or even White Roaring.

She was a young girl adrift at sea, in the little boat that was no different than a cage, surrounded by the bodies of the three people she had mutilated.

Arthie might not have killed them, but in her mind, she had.

“She’s not going to kill them,” Jin said. “We’re getting them out before she returns.”

And for that, they needed to move quickly.

“Calibore,” she kept saying over and over, barely acknowledging their presence.

Matteo helped her to her feet. “We’ll get Calibore back. Right now, we need you.” He paused, looking at the captives, but Flick handed him the Council mask.

“We’ll take care of them,” she said softly. “You need to get her masked and ready for the tribute.”

“Laith, cover their exit,” Jin said when the Arawiyan stumbled inside the room. He nodded, leading Arthie and Matteo away.

Arthie looked small. Like the child she had never been allowed to be because of the Ram. Because of the EJC.

“Jin,” Flick murmured, brushing his arm.

He nodded. Right. They had work to do.

Flick turned back to the cage. The captives regarded her warily, and Flick lifted her arms, as if to show them she was unarmed.

“I promised I’d come back for you,” she said gently. “And I did. We’re here to get you to safety.”

Jin was yet again amazed at how a woman like the Ram raised a girl like Flick, whose very nature was nurturing, kind. Caring.

“Were any of you turned?” she asked.

The girls and boys shook their heads, sharing glances that made it clear they feared more than once that they had been close.

“There’s nothing wrong with being turned, but never against one’s will,” Flick said.

She didn’t care about the hem of her gown soaking up the blood in the cage. She didn’t care that there were dead bodies mere feet away from her; Flick climbed into the cage and began untying their bindings, freeing their arms first before the ropes around their mouths.

Jin moved to help, approaching them as carefully as one would a spooked animal, even as every inch of him itched to hurry, to check on Arthie, to rush back to the palace gardens in time for the doors to the tribute to open.

“The Ram,” one of the girls whispered. “The Ram will come back for us.”

“We’re going to get you out before that,” Jin said. “You don’t know me—”

“I do,” one of the boys said. His voice rough from unuse. “My sister fancied you years ago.” He stopped to hack a dry cough, and Flick looked around for water, coming up short. “You’re that Casimir bloke.”

Jin held back a groan, certain he knew where this was going. Now wasn’t the time to get a beating for breaking a girl’s heart, but was there ever a right time?

The boy narrowed his eyes at Jin. “Eh, he’s all right. I say trust him.”

Flick hid a smile but hurried them out of the cage. “The Ram’s having a party aboveground, which will give you the perfect cover to escape.”

The group looked at one another, skeptical.

“Just like that? And go home?”

Jin hadn’t thought that far, but an idea struck right away. “I have a friend waiting by the palace gates.”

“He will take you to the Horned Guard headquarters,” Flick said. “Where you can tell them what the Ram did to you. Because right now, the city thinks vampires are responsible for your disappearances.”

The girls and boys conferred among one another.

“No one will believe that,” one of the boys said, and Jin understood why he spoke with ironclad conviction: They had lived their own lives believing vampires were at fault for everything. It was their first time standing on the other side of it.

“They will soon enough,” Flick promised, locking eyes with Jin. “We’re going to make sure of it.”