Page 80 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)
ARTHIE
At some point between putting a bullet in Matteo’s chest and now, Arthie had made room in her heart for him. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know when. Only that he had swept in and taken it, nestling into her veins even as she taunted and groused and pushed him away.
And now he was gone.
She knew, now, why the Ram had devised this night.
Arthie should have seen it—the fact that Lady Linden had turned Matteo so many years ago, having known about vampires when few others did.
The desire to own Calibore. The ease with which she decided to wipe out the entirety of high society and the Council.
Her actions would have dismantled an entire system that had been in place for more than a century. High society wasn’t easily replaceable. The Council aside, it would take years for a new line of wealthy, influential people to take the place of the current lot. Decades, even.
Only a vampire had that much time on their hands.
But it was her hatred of vampires that should have given Arthie the clarity she needed. Lady Linden had no real reason to hate them, especially not to the extent she had taken her hatred—from fearmongering to weaponizing them.
Lady Linden was the thing she hated: a vampire.
And so, Arthie pressed Calibore’s barrel into the back of her skull. For her parents, for Ceylan, for the colonies.
For Matteo.
She exhaled, nudging the barrel deeper into the blond strands of her hair. Her finger wavered on the trigger, the bullet poised to give the Ram what she desperately deserved.
And Arthie—Arthie couldn’t do it. She could not kill her. It would be easy. Pull the trigger and watch her bleed to death. The lords and ladies would not be opposed.
But Arthie was not the Ram, and in that moment, she remembered she could do far worse. As Matteo had said she could, for she was a weapon as worthy as Calibore. She would make Lady Linden wish for death, as Arthie had once. As Matteo had too.
Arthie shoved the Ram to her knees. Scant snickers echoed in the anticipated silence. She felt no such rejoicing, for as she stared at Lady Linden, she saw the Ceylani. She saw the innocents in the cage. She saw Jin’s parents. Matteo. Flick.
That little girl on a boat.
And the one who had gotten a second chance at being a daughter.
The Ram had only ever taken, and that was what she expected in this moment too. It was what she would want.
“Remember who spared you,” Arthie whispered, tears crowding her throat, and reached into her pocket for the silver dose something had compelled her to pocket in Ceylan.
She shoved it into Lady Linden’s neck.
Lady Linden looked up, horror freezing the icy depths of her blue eyes. She knew the risks of the silver inoculation. For the rest of her days, she would be forced to consume that which nearly a hundred vampires would need due to her decisions.
Or she would become a Ripper herself.
“No. Please,” she whispered to Arthie, and why wouldn’t she beg?
She had exposed herself to the people she wanted to murder in cold blood. Her guests were sneering, looking down on her, calling for justice for their own lives. She had no allies; she had no dead bodies who would take the happenings of this night to the grave.
She had nothing, and that, for a woman like her, was a fate worse than death.
The silver worked quickly: In seconds, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed. The lords and ladies gasped. Arthie tucked Calibore into her hair.
“Did you kill her?” a lady asked.
“As much as she deserved to die, no. Vampires are not the heartless savages she’s allowed you to imagine we are. I will leave what happens to her for you to decide, but I suggest you stop blaming us.”
Murmurs passed through the guests. She heard more than one instance of Arthie Casimir is a vampire? and a part of her seized up before she thought of all that she had done, all that she had accomplished, all that she would accomplish.
Arthie Casimir was a vampire. She was also a girl. An immigrant. A businesswoman. She had pulled Calibore from White Roaring Square, and become the savior those legends said she could be.
As that sergeant had said long ago in Spindrift, she was a king.
“Is that a threat, Casimir?” a lord called, and several echoed the sentiment.
Arthie paused. She was so accustomed to issuing threats that she was surprised to find that wasn’t the case this time.
“No, I’m trusting you.”
The doors groaned open, and Arthie saw a pair of Athereum vampires holding several of the Ram’s men at gunpoint by the mechanism that had sealed it in place. People began making their way to the exit, vampires keeping them orderly.
Jin turned to the Council and handed them the ledger. “A bedtime story for you, though it might give you nightmares.” He rubbed his neck. “Perhaps we’ll have a Heron for a monarch next, eh?”
“It’s over,” Flick whispered, staring at the woman who had raised her, the woman who had nearly ruined her. It was indeed over, but Arthie found little satisfaction in the fact.