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The assembly sat there, motionless, until Belrose snapped, “You heard him!” Turning away, she sank into her seat, staring down at the list of laws the King had forced upon her.

Shan stood, slow and wobbly, and it didn’t take long for Samuel to reach her side.

“Can he do that?” he whispered.

“He’s the Eternal King,” Shan replied. “There isn’t much we can do to stop him.” He had all the power, and in the end she had no choice but to play into his hands.

Even if it shattered her heart.

“We need to find Isaac.”

Chapter Forty-One

Samuel

After the Eternal King’s announcement at the Council of Lords, Shan had spirited Samuel away to the LeClaire townhouse, keeping him sequestered in her study.

Part of him resented that she kept him so close, as if she didn’t trust him not to do anything foolish if he was left unsupervised. But he had to admit that it was smart of her—if he’d been left alone, he might have tried to take to the streets, to mitigate what damage he could.

She knew him too well.

So she held him fast, keeping him safe as terror swept through the streets. The Guards were out there in full force, breaking up riots and filling the jail cells, using Blood Working where simple force was not enough. Despite the calm—the peace—he felt in Shan’s study, Samuel knew that the rest of the city was embroiled in a battle he couldn’t even imagine.

And worst of all? He didn’t even want to know the details. He was happy in his ignorance, focusing on the one thing they could control. He stood above her, watching as she took all the information they had—and didn’t have—and laid them along the floor, searching for hints and patterns they had missed. Everything they had on Isaac’s life, reducing it to nothing more than scraps of paper.

“Are we sure we should be doing this?” Samuel asked, finally voicing the question that had been hanging unspoken between them for hours.

Shan stopped what she was doing, the pen in her hand going limp as she stared ahead. “Because it’s Isaac or because you agree with him?”

“I don’t know.” Samuel pressed his thumbs into his temples, trying to ease the dull headache that had been building all day. “Both? He wants the same thing that we do, doesn’t he?”

“We don’t know what he wants, precisely,” Shan said, carefully.

She always spoke so carefully. Normally, Samuel admired that about her, but in this moment, it drove him mad. How could she be so calm through all this when here he was, seconds away from falling apart?

And for someone who had spent his whole life carefully keeping all of his emotions and dreams on the shortest leash possible, Samuel wasn’t sure how he was supposed to be handling all of this. He hadn’t allowed himself so much for so long, but now that he had a taste, he didn’t want to let it go.

“He wants the Eternal King gone,” Samuel whispered, even though they were safe in her study. He would never feel fully safe speaking treason.

“Yes, but…”

“But what, Shan?”

“But people are dying!” Shan snapped the pen in her hand in half, her expression twisted into something ugly, something fearful, and Samuel sank to his knees beside her. “He started a riot, and now…” Turning her face to the window, she sighed at the darkened night sky. “Now it’s curfew.”

He had been wrong. She wasn’t calm—she was furious. The same kind of fury that he had felt that morning, that all-consuming peace that was far more dangerous that any fire could ever be.

They were more alike than he realized.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, tucking her against him. She didn’t fight him, leaning into his embrace, and he could feel the minute tremors that ran through her. “Then he has to die?”

“He has to be brought in,” Shan murmured, so softly against him. “It’s the only way we can temper the Eternal King’s wrath. If we cannot stop that, then…”

“Dammit.” He reached up, wiping his eyes with one hand, and Shan just sighed.

“I know. But we bring him in, alive, and then we will see what we can do.”

It wasn’t much—it wasn’t a promise, it wasn’t the future he had started to hope for. But it was a chance.