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His voice carried over the square, his power flowing over the crowd, sweeping over them as everyone turned to him. Samuel forced back the urge to flee, terror creeping up the back of his neck as he realized the precarious position he was in, but as he caught the Guards shaking off the moment of stillness he had bought, he knew that he had to do something.

“Please,” he said, words coming fast and unfiltered. “I know that this is a shock, that this injustice cannot stand. But rioting is not the answer. There are those of us who will see this corrected. Do not throw your lives away.”

For a moment silence reigned, and he thought that just maybe it worked. But then he felt something cold and wet collide with his cheek, sending his head snapping to the side. Raising his hand, he pressed it to the mess dripping down his face.

It was rotten fruit.

“Fuck you, Aberforth,” a voice hissed from the crowd.

Samuel used the back of his hand to wipe away as much of it as he could, trying to avoid grimacing. Trying to fight the spike of anger that rose in his chest, tempting and insidious. “Please,” he began again. “Give me a chance. I am one of you—”

“You are not one of us!”

Another fruit was lobbed at him, this one striking him hard in the chest, sending him staggering a couple of steps back.

“Traitor!”

“Blood Whore!”

“Coward!”

More insults and projectiles came his way, and Samuel crossed his arms in front of his face as the Guard helped him off the table. The crowd had erupted again, even more incensed than before, but Samuel didn’t have time to dwell on that. He reached for the body—wanting to do something, anything, to keep Dunn from being overrun—but a cadre of Guards had appeared around him, forming a protective triangle as they pushed their way through the rioting crowd, shoving people to the ground and stomping over them as they ferried Samuel to safety.

There was the great heaving sound of the table being overturned, followed by the harsh sound of glass shattering. Screams filled the air, and as he tried to turn around one last time the Guard on his left just shoved him forward and out of the square, away from the violence that he had been unable to stop.

Quiet and a little bit broken, Samuel stopped fighting. The people were right—he wasn’t one of them, not anymore.

No, he was Lord Aberforth, protected by his own personal group of Guards as he was guided to a carriage that he did not recognize. The same Guard who had found him pushed him into the carriage, gave it a quick once over, and then shouted something to the driver.

And he was off, carried swiftly to safety.

Samuel slumped in the seat and cried.

Chapter Forty

Shan

Shan paced back and forth, her hands clasped behind her back as she tried to process the discoveries of the morning. She had watched the unveiling from above, one eye on the crowd and the other on Isaac, all the better to keep an eye out for threats. Foolish, in the end. Isaac was never in any danger at all.

After his revelation, after the shock wave hit, Lady Belrose had gathered the remaining members of the Council and all the Lords and Ladies she could summon, calling them to an emergency session at the Parliament House. The riots that had started in the square were only growing, and the government needed to step up and do something.

Belrose had brought Shan along in her own carriage, muttering something about needing her for the next step, but Shan barely paid attention to it.

Her mind—her heart—was elsewhere.

She had been placed, ironically enough, in Lord Dunn’s office to wait for the session to begin. Sequestered away to wait as the other Lords and Ladies trickled in, a slow process as they evaded the riots and demonstrations that were breaking out across the city, a fire that had started and was growing out of control.

The door suddenly opened, and she turned, about to ask if they were ready to begin, but it was only Samuel, weary and strangely covered in rotten food. He was ushered in by a distressed footman, who simply bowed and then slammed the door on them.

“Oh, Samuel,” she said, stepping forward and holding out her hands. “What happened to you?” She knew that he had been in the crowds below, but she hadn’t once feared for his safety. She trusted him enough for that.

But this mess? This she didn’t understand.

He took her hands gratefully, claws and all, his shoulders hunching in on themselves as he whispered, “We’ve made a terrible mistake. Looked in the wrong place.” He closed his eyes, as if by avoiding saying it they could avoid the truth. But they had both been avoiding the truth for too long. “It was Isaac.”

“I know,” she said, squeezing his hand, though pain lanced through her like ice, leaving her numb. Suddenly, everything fit together. The way the murderer had known who to target, the advanced Blood Working that had been used in the murders. The fact that Kevan Dunn, noted for his anti-democratic stances and his commitment to keep the Unblooded in their place, was the final nail in the coffin.

It could only have been Isaac, and he had just as much reason to hate Aeravin as she did.