The Ram’s eyes were cruel when she turned to face Flick fully. She stormed closer, but Flick wasn’t afraid, even if she was chained and unable to defend herself. She held the Ram’s gaze and screwed her jaw tight, challenging her.
“You’re one of them,” Flick said.
“What did you say?” the Ram asked, her voice deathly low.
“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 abad daughteranymore. 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, butFlick 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.
