Page 65 of Mistress of Lies
Shan laughed, and he heard her step closer. “And here I thought Isaac was a clever man. What’s the matter, Samuel? Are you shy?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Samuel muttered, throwing his cravat over his carefully folded jacket. “I’m fine.”
“If it helps, this is all for purely academic purposes,” Shan said. “Nothing untoward at all.”
Samuel stopped himself from calling bullshit on that. She was clearly drawing some amusement from it. But he would not let his nervousness show any more than it already was. “I’m fine, Shan,” he repeated, with far more confidence than he felt, and he quickly pulled his shirt over his head and added it to the pile.
When he turned back around, Shan stood staring at him, her hand at the base of her throat as her eyes roamed. Samuel didn’t say a thing as she took him in, the weight of her gaze as heavy as a physical touch, the silence thick and impenetrable between them.
At last she forced her eyes back up to his, her mask in place as if nothing had happened. “Please, have a seat over here.” She drummed her fingers on a table that was just a slab of metal, cold and unyielding, and Samuel slid into one of the sterile metal chairs that surrounded it.
“I hope you don’t mind sharing a little more blood,” she began, and he made a face that had her laughing. “Don’t worry. I have a safe.” She pointed towards one of the bookshelves. “Hidden back there, behind a series of wards keyed to my bloodline. Only Anton and I can access it. It’s not foolproof, but it’s pretty damned good. If you don’t want to, I’ll only take what I need for immediate tests, while you’re still here, and burn the remainders. But… you gave Isaac your blood, correct?”
He could already tell where her argument was going, and his resolve was crumbling like a wall of sand. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s make it so I can be truly helpful, don’t you think?” Shan looked at him, and he nodded. “Also it’s easier this way. Now we don’t need to keep coming up with excuses for you to visit me.”
“Ah, my company isn’t wanted, then?” Samuel pouted, and Shan smiled slightly.
“You know that’s not true. But we both have reputations to think of.”
Samuel rubbed the back of his neck, annoyance rising. “I’m getting pretty tired of hearing that advice. I can make my own decisions.”
“Yes, you can,” Shan admitted. “But you still need to be careful. People will start to think we’re lovers.”
“Won’t that help you?” Samuel asked, then felt heat rise through him. He cursed his pale skin—he knew without seeing it the sight it must have painted—but continued digging himself deeper. “Your reputation, I mean. Not that I’m some great—it’s just that I’m an Aberforth—” She watched him sputter on with a smile, until he eventually shut up and buried his face in his hands with a groan.
“You’re not wrong,” she admitted, “but it could hurt other opportunities—especially yours. As you said, you’re an Aberforth. And an Aberforth can do so much better than a LeClaire.” She lined up a row of vials in front of him. “Ready when you are.”
He didn’t know what to say—that despite the fact that he barely knew her, really, he’d still take her over any of those other Blood Workers. When she looked at him, she didn’t see only a title, or a power, to be used, but the man behind them. And damn it all if that little thing didn’t make all the difference. Besides, he didn’t care if he could do better, whatever that meant, because she was already better than all the others combined.
He just held out his arm to her. “Take as much as you need, but you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Shan’s smile was so brilliant that he felt as dazzled as if he had looked directly into the sun. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Reaching up, she pulled the white ribbon from her hair, the dark waves falling down past her shoulders, making her look strangely soft and ethereal.
He kept his focus on her as she went to work instead of the needle and the blood. He concentrated on the soft way she touched him, so different than Isaac, but just as burning. Her touches were feather-light, almost teasing, guiding where Isaac’s were grounding, and she worked in a quiet way that soothed him as the blood flowed.
As the second vial filled, she looked up at him. “Not too bad, right?”
“Not really,” Samuel admitted. “Just… strange.”
Shan glanced aside. “Sometimes I forget how different it must be, growing up without Blood Working. How strange and macabre it must seem.”
“Seem?” Samuel laughed. “Shan, this is the very definition of macabre. You take blood and use it to control and twist a person to your will.”
“Is it any different from what you can do?”
Frowning, Samuel replied, “No, but I wouldn’t call my ability comforting, either.”
Shan only shrugged. “Not all Blood Working is so dangerous. We can heal, reunite families, create the strongest protective wards. There is a lot of good in my power.”
Samuel hummed in response, remembering the details of what Isaac had shared with him, what Blood Working had allowed him to achieve. And yet, there was still so much harm being done. “But at what cost?” he asked, even if he didn’t know the answer himself.
“Is it better to be weak?” Shan countered. “To have no power, no control, nothing to offer?”
“Shan.” He moved his free arm, reaching to brush her hair away from her face, and she leaned ever so slightly into his touch. Her skin was so delicate, and he found himself wishing he could explore it further, find all the other places where she was soft and warm. “I refuse to believe you are just your magic. You are brilliant and cunning and even without all this, you have gathered enough power to threaten a kingdom.” His smile widened. “And you did find me.”
“Perhaps.” She straightened her back, moving away as she focused on filling the vials. His hand fell limply to the table—he didn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t touching her. “But I don’t know if I could have become that woman if I didn’t have Blood Working to guide me.”