A Tempest of Tea (Blood and Tea, #1)

by Hafsah Faizal

watched my mother and father die,” she said, softer this time. Perhaps it was the night that made it easier to unwrap truths. “I had no one else.” That last sentence was a lie. Between her parents and Jin, there had been someone else, hadn’t there? Someone who had cared and taken her in and called her his own. Until she’d run away.

We understand what it’s like to grieve with fire and not tears. What it’s like to do anything for those we love.”

“With the fall of the trees that once cursed our borders, he knew that another danger would fill its place: conquest.” “You mean colonialism,” she corrected him. By the people you worked for, was what she almost said. He met her eyes. “Is there much of a difference?” She thought of the boats teetering on Ceylan’s shores, the blood that dyed her mother’s sari a deeper shade of red. She thought of the people who remained there now, foreigners in their own homes. No, Arthie decided, there wasn’t.

Ten years ago was exactly what she had come to talk about. That past that she hadn’t told him about. That family she could have had if she hadn’t been afraid and run away. But he was in a hurry and had company. This was a different Jin, and now simply wasn’t the time.

He was looking at her as if there were no angry, violent men before him. As if it was only the two of them in the world. “Did he hurt you?” Flick didn’t know how to respond to the pure fury in his eyes. “Did he touch you?” Jin asked again. She shook her head.

But Jin was the one who fixed things. He knew what was broken, and it sure wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. Nope.

“It’s teatime, scoundrels.”

He clenched his teeth and glared, but finally relented. And he was so busy seething that he didn’t notice Arthie striding past the gates with his now-missing gun.

The others hadn’t thought to ask Flick for her weapons. She was armed with a longing that was killing her, and no one knew.

He looked at her as if she was something special, something more than a criminal with a gun, something more than a monster with a timer running out.

“Penn is, well, he was the only one who was there for me when I first turned,” Matteo said. “He’s told me a lot about you.” Arthie regarded him, trying to decipher how much was a lot and it made her realize: She cared what Matteo thought of her. It was a scary epiphany she did not wish to dwell on.

Anywho, what matters is that you’re here now.” “Here,” Arthie repeated. “Here,” Matteo agreed, “at the crossroads of your past and your future.”

Chaos erupted. “Come along, Felicity,” Jin shouted, snatching her hand, fully aware of how perfectly it fit in his. The two of them wriggled their way out of the row of chairs. “So sorry,” Flick shouted at someone, and when Jin looked back at Flick she wasn’t stricken with fear or worry, she looked delighted, excited. As if, perhaps, she could get used to this life.

Arthie faced him. “Penn.” He smiled at her. “Hello, daughter.”

She used to envy anyone who could pass as a peaky before she realized such a wish was a betrayal to herself.

“What’s an EJC Corpus? Are these weapons?” Ettenia lacked the resources to produce anything on a large scale. It was why they’d dug their claws into places like Ceylan for tea and cinnamon, Jeevant Gar for spices and textiles, Qirilan for silk and opium, far-off Morubia for gold and ivory. In many ways, the East Jeevant Company was as bad as the Ram. Penn’s voice was tight. “Of a sort. Starve the lion long enough, and no force can vanquish him. By my definition, that makes one a weapon, doesn’t it?” “Starve?” Flick asked with a frown. “I thought we were talking about the EJC’s exports.” Penn picked up his cigar. His face was grave when he nodded. “We are. The exports are vampires.”

“So this is why vampires have been going missing. None of this could be possible without help from the inside,” Jin said. “From the vampires themselves.” Penn nodded. “From the Athereum as well. For many, aiding the Ram and the EJC is their only security against being taken, while others are simply looking for a cut. I can’t fully blame them, for I’ve lost some of my best vampires.”

She tried to imagine being driven by a blinding hunger, trapped inside her own body as she tore through masses of people.

“My mother and I boarded that ship along with several of the ruling Sisters’ trusted immortals.” “Were they vampires?” Arthie asked. Matteo waved a hand. “They’re elven. Immortal, vain, think they’re better because they’ve seen it all.”

“What are you getting at?” Arthie asked. “The Wolf of White Roaring attack was fabricated in order to instill fear,” Penn said. “Vampires had lived in relative secrecy. For decades. Until the Ram decided otherwise, forcefully turning the Wolf of White Roaring into a half vampire and unleashing him upon the city so that the Ram could sweep in and save it. But no one knew that was only the beginning.”

Just when she thought the government couldn’t get any worse, the Ram had found a way.

Flick looked up with a gasp. “What do you do when you’re angry?” Her voice was tight, and the way she asked the question made Arthie think the emotion was foreign to her.

They knew the stories of the Wolf of White Roaring. Of the horrific attacks that cropped up from time to time across Ettenia. A vampire starved beyond reason was a machine with a single purpose: carnage.

Refusing to take no for an answer was certainly a peaky thing to do.

“If I have enough proof, they’ll be unable to refute it. As such, I’ve also uncovered a lead to the laboratory where the scientists first produced the silver doses.” “Wait,” Jin said, a hush to his voice. “Scientists?” Penn nodded. “Old friends of mine.” And then he tossed Jin a clove rock.

Arthie hid a smile, and he knew then: He wasn’t the only one who’d held out hope about them being alive. Knowing her, she would have kept quiet about it to give him less hope. In case the worst was really true.

Spindrift was founded on blackmail and threats. It only made sense that they would save it using the same.

Weaponizing vampires—people, for all intents and purposes—wasn’t an ignorable evil. Nor was leaving someone for dead.

“Arthie Casimir.” The voice was modulated, muffled by something in front of the speaker’s mouth. Like a mask. “And there’s the first reason I should kill you,” Arthie said. “You’ve been following me since Ivylock Street. What do you want?” “You have something of mine,” said the voice. Arthie tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “You’ll have to be more specific.” She heard a shuffle and the figure leaned into the moonlight, illuminating a gilded mask, shadows pooling into the pits of its eyes. The Ram. Fear dropped like a stone inside of her.

Flick tried to see the best in everything. If that couldn’t be done, she was sad or indifferent. Never angry. Or rather, never this angry. This was rage. She’d spent the entire night tossing and turning in her room at Spindrift. She couldn’t forge a signet ring or a document or even a doctor’s note without being treated like a dirty criminal, but her mother could do this?

And Spindrift went up in flames.

Because that was the nature of man. Born to nurture, determined to destroy.

All her life she’d spun a slow dance through a burning room, and the inferno had caught up to her at last.

She was sunshine in a bottle, and he was a storm in a boy, drawn to clear skies, reaching for her hand.

“You’re here to kill me, aren’t you? After what I did to you.” His gaze swept down her body, and he took a step closer. “If only that were true. I loathed you, Arthie. I hated you for the span of a heartache before I realized how much I craved you. And I know you yearn for me the same.”

“How long can vengeance last?” “An eternity. Until they suffer the same fate, until justice is struck.”

“I know what you are, Arthie,” he whispered. His voice held the barest of tremors. “I’ve known since the day I met you.” She pulled away from him, freezing as she searched the planes of his face. How? How could he know? Tell me, do you remember what it’s like to live? He grazed his fingers down the side of her arm, depriving her of her ability to think. “Let me help you.” She inhaled, devouring the scent of his blood, the fervor in his veins. It assaulted her. Drove her mad. She wanted to unleash her rage upon him. She wanted to crack open his rib cage and crawl inside of him. He loosened the sash of his robes and let them fall to the rug with a soft hush. He undid the trio of buttons on the top of his linen shirt and bared the unmarred skin of his throat. His eyes were as dark as her heart, a sea at dusk. “Let me bleed for you.”

Death bleeds red no matter the color of one’s skin. They called her father kalu Asoka because there was another Asoka in their village who was lighter-skinned. They called her mother netta Dasaka because she was the tallest one of the three in the village. But when they lay on the sand, eyes glassy, riddled with holes large enough to see the glint of the bullets, it was all the same. A pool of red. A pool of injustice. A pool of death.

One lone girl in a boat full of blood.

“Fascinating,” he said, more to himself than to her. “You’re alive, but also a vampire. I’ve been trying to find someone like him.”

Half here and now and alive, the other half lost at sea. Half human, half vampire. Her growth trickled to an end when she neared sixteen. Her heartbeat petered to a halt. She cast a shadow but not a reflection. For she wasn’t near death when she was fed a vampire’s blood.

She clung to the humanity she remembered, the remains of what had been stolen from her. Some nights, she screamed into the darkness until her body felt numb. She found other ways to stay busy, other emotions to feel. The color bled from the world, and life became a curse. Until she met a boy with a coconut.

“You need to leave,” she whispered. “Before … before—” “No,” he whispered back. “Destroy me.”

She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. To claim him. To devour the mystery of this boy from some faraway land.

Laith’s hands slipped down her body, gripped her ribs, her waist, higher, lower, everywhere. There. Her pistol. Arthie wasn’t hungry anymore. Her mind was not clouded by starvation, and suddenly, everything wrenched to a startling halt as the pieces fell into place. The way Calibore’s intricate filigree reminded her of Laith. Those accidental brushes of her pistol. His keen interest in how it worked. The story of the hilya his sister was sent to retrieve. It was Calibore. Her pistol was the hilya.

“No. A wound must be tended to before it can heal, but oh my sweet, what you will unleash when you’re freed from that tether.”

“Why save the world when you can have tea?”

She spent half her life fearing herself, fearing what she was capable of, peering into the dark alleys of White Roaring and looking for others like her. It was why she’d opened the bloodhouse, wasn’t it? So that a vampire like her wouldn’t have to brutalize the streets but could pay to drink from a cup.

Only the Ram’s eyes were visible, bright and cerulean. Flick’s heart stopped. She could barely gasp. She stumbled back. Jin was asking her what was wrong, but she couldn’t hear him. The room faded, the buzz of the press’s excited voices winnowing away. And Flick had a single, harrowing thought: She always did think her mother had remarkable eyes.

“I believe a vampire can subsist on coconut,” his father had once said. “And not blood?” Jin had asked, eyes wide.