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“Fine,” she ground out. “I wanted to protect you, but it seems you won’t have it.”

Anton rolled his eyes. “Do you really expect so little of me? I cannot abandon Aeravin now. Not when it needs me.”

Turning away, Shan wrapped her arms around herself, digging her nails into her own skin as she forced the truth from her lips. “It’s not that.”

“If it’s about the new laws, do not fret. I will not let myself be caught.”

“Of course,” she said, tightening her grip. “But that is not it either. Remember how the King tasked us to find this murderer? Well, you can see how well that went. Samuel and I have wasted too much time, and the King has given us an ultimatum. There will be consequences for our failure.”

“And that worries you?” Anton laughed. “He may be the King, but you’ve never let yourself be threatened before.”

“He didn’t threaten me!” Shan looked up at him, fighting the sudden tears in her eyes. Tears of anger, tears of frustration. Telling him hurt more than she expected. Telling him made it real. “He threatened you.”

“He what?” Anton froze, all the cocky humor and brazen attitude slipping away, like water running down stone. “Why?”

“Why do you think?” She buried her face in her hands, fighting back the great sobs that shook her entire frame though she didn’t utter a single sound. It was a silent sorrow that threatened to tear her apart, but through it all Anton remained by her side.

When at last it was over—minutes, hours, days later—she lifted her head, feeling spent and dry. “It’s all about leverage,” she explained. “Father taught me that. It’s why every secret, every bit of information, was important. You never knew when it would be useful. And the King… he reminded me that I am not immune from this myself.”

Anton didn’t look away. “And you’re saying that I am your weakness?”

Shan hung her head. “You’re one of them. You’re my brother. Everything I do is for you. For us.”

“And that’s why you want me to leave. Not because of the laws, or my work. It’s so he can’t get to me.” He pulled at his hair. “There you go again, making decisions for me.”

“I am protecting you!”

Anton stepped away from her, and she felt his absence like a physical wound. “You’re protecting yourself… and diminishing me. Just because I’m not a Blood Worker doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

She glared. “I am the head of this family.”

“Even so, it’s not your choice to make. I am my own person, capable of making my own choices and taking my own risks. And it’s time you accepted that.” He shrugged, as if it was that simple, but his mouth was drawn into a hard line and his hands were clenched at his sides.

“Anton, I was just—”

“I am not a child anymore,” he said, softly, and the calmness hurt more than any amount of rage or anger could. “And I know you’re just trying to take care of me in the best way you know how. But I can’t—” He choked on the words, and Shan knew that everything between them had finally broken—completely, totally, irrevocably. “I can’t keep living like this. We’re going to spend the next few days focusing on Isaac, and you’re going to bring him in. But then I am moving out.”

She just closed her eyes, letting the pain wash through her. “I see.”

“I’m not going to interfere with your plans,” he said, softly. “I know you think it’s best. And I trust that you won’t interfere with mine.”

Shan didn’t say anything—she didn’t have to. For all the ambition and darkness she held in her heart, she knew that the one person in the world she would never be able to turn against was her brother.

And, thankfully, he felt the same.

When he left her, Shan just stared down at her hands, wondering when everything had started to fall apart.

The door to the parlor slammed open, and Shan woke with a start. The faintest bit of morning light was starting to stream through the windows, and she realized that somewhere in her pain and her loneliness she must have drifted off to sleep.

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she turned to find Bart there, panic on his face. “There is something you need to hear. Immediately.”

“You can’t go alone,” Anton said, catching her outside her bedroom. She had changed remarkably fast, but her brother was just as quick. “You don’t even know where they took him.”

“I can track him,” Shan said, shoving past. Her ears hadn’t stopped ringing since Bart had told her the message—Samuel had been taken, kidnapped. Her bird in the Aberforth house had discovered it that morning when she had gone to start the fire in the Lord’s chambers. A sign of a struggle. Blood on the floor.

It could only have been Isaac. The King wouldn’t have resorted to kidnapping, and who else would want him? Only the man who played both their hearts.

She was the biggest fool of all, letting Samuel leave in the first place, exposed and unguarded, but she’d deal with that later. She needed to save him, first.