Page 74 of Mistress of Lies

“I’m trading that hidebound ancient fool for someone who can listen to change.”

He laughed, low and dark, and he might as well have slapped her across the face. “Nothing will change, not really. Maybe you’ll pass a few laws, maybe things will get better for a few decades, but once that pet Aberforth of yours is gone things will return to the same old ways.”

“He’s not a pet,” she snapped, and Anton just stared at her, unmoved.

“Perhaps not,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “After seeing you today he probably has some doubts about the validity of your claims. If you really cared so much about the Unblooded you would want to help them.”

“I am helping them!” Shan shot to her feet, stomping right up to Anton’s face. “I’m trying to keep them from getting killed.”

“You’re keeping them in their place,” Anton countered. “Used and exploited by the nobility who think them nothing more than cattle.”

“You are nobility yourself,” Shan spat, and Anton recoiled.

“I might have LeClaire blood,” he said after a moment of deliberation, “I might have their name and their money, but I am not like you.” He grabbed her, entwining his hand with hers so that her claws cut into his flesh, his blood spilling to the floor. “My blood is nothing like yours, and you and your kind will never see me as anything but fuel to be used.”

He shoved her back, so suddenly and forcefully that she almost fell. By the time she had caught herself, he was already gone, the echo of his words hanging over her like a weight around her neck, pulling her down and drowning her in a pit of despair.

The ice around her heart cracked just a little bit, but she caught the sob in her throat. She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t show weakness. He was angry, that she could sympathize with, but he was wrong. These Unblooded fools protesting in the streets and making their wild demands wouldn’t fix Aeravin. They’d only tear it apart.

Even if he didn’t understand now, he would soon enough. This was the only way forward, and she would fix things for him. He was still her brother, and she’d move mountains to keep him safe.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Samuel

“This is a bad idea,” Samuel muttered under his breath, low enough so that only Isaac could hear him. They walked side-by-side through a crowded street, both dressed in the cheap, low-quality clothing of the poor. Isaac kept scratching at the fabric, no doubt unused to its roughness, but for Samuel after weeks of silk and finery it felt like coming home.

This whole adventure was like coming home as they made their way down into the slums, where they were not surrounded by nobles or Blood Workers, but by Unblooded laborers and working people. The kind of people Samuel had grown up with, had lived and worked with, the people who were more like him than those his heritage revealed he was born to. And they were here to use them as nothing more than test subjects.

Perhaps he was becoming more like a Blood Worker after all, even if he couldn’t use their magics.

“It’ll be fine,” Isaac replied, just as quietly, and Samuel glanced at him. He hardly looked like himself in the simple shirt and trousers, and he had even gone so far as to smudge his face and hands with dirt and grease. “We can’t keep practicing on me.”

Samuel forced himself to look away—he had to keep reminding himself to not stare at Isaac. It was a messier, more unkempt version of the man he knew, but Isaac wore it surprisingly well. As if it wasn’t the first time he had disguised himself so. “This isn’t right,” he argued, even though there was truth to Isaac’s words.

It was getting hard to master his ability when his only subject was Isaac. He could keep forcing his will on him, seeing how far against Isaac’s own instincts he could push the man, but that was not all that the King wanted from them.

His ability was supposed to be subtle, insidious and undetectable, and one could not perfect it on a subject who was constantly on his guard.

Isaac knocked his shoulder against his, a friendly bump to anyone looking, but Samuel took it for what it was. Reassurance. When he was presented this idea, he hadn’t done it as Isaac de la Cruz, the surprising friend he had never expected to find, but as the Royal Blood Worker, doing the duty his position required of him. But he was here as a friend, as support, because he knew that Samuel could never do it alone.

And for that Samuel was thankful, even if he didn’t have the words for it.

“Here we are,” Isaac said, pulling him to a stop. They stood outside one of the larger taverns, where desperate people with hardly any coin came to spend what little they had on some alcohol to dull the pain. Samuel had never been there, not out of snobbery or disgust, but because he could not afford to let loose.

If anything, he was a little jealous of them.

Before he could argue—one last, hopeless attempt—Isaac was already pushing his way through the door, and he had to hurry to not lose the man in the crowd. For it was a crowd—the tavern was packed to the brim with Unblooded from all corners of the slums and despite their conditions, despite the harshness of their lives, there was a vibrancy here that Samuel hadn’t felt in ages.

They were alive and vital and spontaneous in a way the nobility weren’t, and a knot of tension deep inside him finally relaxed.

Isaac was grinning at him, the mood infectious, catching him by the hand and dragging him over to the bar. Isaac’s hand felt right in his, and he followed along automatically. For a moment it was easy to feel like they weren’t there on a secret training mission for the Eternal King, but simply as two men looking to get to know each other better. But that wasn’t the truth—nothing in Samuel’s life was a simple as that.

The bright burst of happiness he felt faded, so he just turned to the barkeep and held up two fingers. A moment later, two glasses of cheap ale were deposited in front of them and Isaac was slipping some coppers into the man’s hand.

“Okay,” Samuel said, leaning against Isaac. He knew what it would look like, but Isaac had asked him to be subtle, quiet, and no one would take a second glance at the two of them cozying up like this. And besides, Isaac wasn’t pushing him away. “Target?” he breathed, his mouth dangerously close to Isaac’s skin.

Isaac shuddered, but turned around, leaning back against the bar all casual as he studied the crowd around them. His free hand came around Samuel’s shoulder as he played with the hair that was coming loose from the bun at the nape of his neck, fully committed to this charade, and Samuel sucked in a harsh breath.