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But nothing had prepared her for this.

Her stomach turned, bile making its way up her throat as she studied the corpse. The remains of the woman—for it was a woman, no more than five and twenty—were all that was left of a once vital life. Her eyes were shut, her hair fanned out underneath her head. Shan ran her fingers across the strands, golden, yes, but brittle to the touch, as if all the life had been sucked out of it. Her skin was little better, papery and thin, over desiccated muscles that been drained down to the bone.

There were deep cuts in her forearms and thighs where the blood had been carefully drained. It wasn’t like the King’s sacrifice, which was done with brutal, ruthless efficiency. This was slow, methodical—academic. The multiple wounds meant the blood was likely being drawn for some arcane purpose, but Shan hadn’t the faintest idea what. And with the way the cuts were made, it would have been done while she was still alive, and it would have been excruciatingly painful. But the end results were the same.

It was as if someone had taken all the blood and moisture and squeezed it out of her, leaving behind only this broken, brutalized body.

“Were you able to identify her?” Shan asked.

“Jessica James,” Alessi said, softly. “Unblooded. She owned a bookshop in the dock district.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, and a cold pit settled in her stomach as she asked, “What bookshop?”

Alessi stepped aside, flipping through a file that she had left on an adjacent table. “Pages.”

Shan clenched the edge of the slab—it was the proprietress of the shop her brother liked to frequent, the one who had imported a variety of Tagalan books for him. Histories, novels, books on mythology—all things they had lost when their mother had fled.

He would be heartbroken to hear of her passing.

“How unfortunate,” Shan said, with a forced air of calm as she made herself relax, her fingers popping off the table. “Were you able to discover anything else?”

“With Blood Working?” Alessi shook her head. “Nothing more than the obvious—she was drained for power. We did a mundane autopsy just as a well, to cover our bases, but the results were the same.” She gestured to the Y-incision on the corpse’s chest, where they had cut into her with their scalpels and rooted around in her body, looking for clues.

What a disgusting way to do medicine, Shan thought as she studied the rough stitches that had sewn poor Jessica back together like a broken doll. And people dared to call Blood Working unnatural?

Still, she had to try. Raising her hand, she let one claw hover over the corpse. “May I?”

“You can try,” Alessi said, shrugging. “There is very little blood left, though.”

Shan took Jessica’s hand in hers, sorry for adding to the desecration that had already been done, but there was no other choice. She drew the tip of her claw against the inside of the corpse’s wrist, where the pulse would have been on a living body, digging for the slightest bit of moisture. Of blood.

Alessi watched with a sharp eye as she rooted around, pressing through the skin and the ruined flesh to the bone. When Shan removed her metal claw from the dead flesh, there was the slightest stain on it—the color of rust.

It would have to be enough.

She sucked her claw into her mouth, her whole body rebelling against the blood that hit her tongue, bitter and acrid. Her senses screamed out—dead, dead, dead—but more than that, it felt corrupted. This was vile, wrong and against the few laws of nature that Blood Workers still adhered to.

Shan turned and spat on the floor, desperate to get the taste out of her mouth, and Alessi rushed to her side, pulling a flask from her jacket.

“Here, Shan,” she said with surprising kindness, as she held the open flask to her lips. Shan tipped it back, the burn of pure liquor spilling past her lips and washing away the remains. She coughed and sputtered, turning away from the corpse and shaking. “It is vile, isn’t it?”

“It’s wrong,” Shan agreed, and Alessi stepped back, her face shadowed. “What?”

“This is what happens with the King’s sacrifices,” Alessi hissed. “They are just the same, and yet we praise him for it.”

Shan shook her head quickly, glancing around even though she knew they were alone. “Alessi! Be careful when you speak treason.”

“I speak the truth!” she spat back, and Shan shivered at the pure hate there. But the anger passed quickly, replaced with a calm that was far more terrifying. “Just remember your promise to me.”

“I will,” Shan swore. “We will see justice for these souls.”

Alessi shook her head. “I meant the King. He’s the real monster we need to fear.”

Shan held her breath, not knowing what to say. “You know that I am working towards all of our goals.”

Alessi shook her head. “Yeah, I know. Now you’d better get out of here before the shift changes. I’ll put things to right.”

For a second Shan hesitated, knowing that she should say something, anything, to comfort Alessi. To let her know that she wasn’t in this alone. But that wasn’t her way, and besides, Alessi was a good bird. She had never failed her before. Shan just flipped her hood up and stepped towards the door. “Let me know if anything else happens and keep an eye out for my instructions.”