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This was a mistake.

But it was too late to turn back now, so he pressed against him, savoring the warmth from his body that he could feel even through the unnecessary layers of clothing between them. Isaac kept toying with his hair, and Samuel bit the inside of his cheek, using the pain to ground himself.

This was just a ploy: there was no potential here, he had already learned that lesson with Shan. “Isaac,” he said again, warningly, but it came out as more like a groan.

And the bastard had the gall to smile.

“Easy, I’m looking,” Isaac said, softly. “It would be easier if you agreed to scam the barkeep.”

“No,” Samuel replied emphatically. Practicing it on the Unblooded was bad enough—taking money from someone who needed it was even worse. Isaac didn’t push him, though, just raked his nails across his scalp, back and forth in a soothing motion.

Samuel hated that such a touch was effective, but the immediate bristle of anger that had risen in him faded right away.

“Fine, fine. There.” He followed the line of Isaac’s gaze to a group of rowdy young people—around their age or younger—who were attracting the attention of a large corner of the bar. “Let’s go see what that’s about.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Samuel asked, but Isaac only grinned.

“Be adaptable. Maybe stop a fight.” He didn’t give Samuel a chance to argue as he dragged him across the tavern, pulling him through the crowd as they got closer to the commotion. But the closer they got, the slower Isaac moved, and it only took Samuel a moment to realize why.

This wasn’t a bar fight. This was a political rally.

“We have been silent long enough! The Bloodsuckers can’t keep us back if we join together!”

The leader of the group—a young boy, hells, he couldn’t have even been nineteen—was waving something around in his hand. Another one of those pamphlets. His friends were walking through the crowd, passing them out, and it wasn’t long before a young girl had pressed one into Samuel’s hand.

The paper was thin and cheap, the typeface smudged and offset. But the title blazed across the front was clear enough.

A DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF

THE UNBLOODED

Samuel ran his thumb across the paper, tracing the letters of the author’s name—or, rather, the moniker they wrote under. The Friend of the Unblooded. Of course. He swelled with pride as he flipped through the pamphlet—at the demands they were making.

Removal of the Blood Taxes.

Representation in government.

Protections in the workplace.

All things that Samuel knew from experience that the Unblooded needed, and all things that he wanted to fight for. And here they were, without the seat in the House of Lords that he had, without the money that he had been gifted, without the political power that he had stumbled into, fighting for it themselves.

Perhaps he was unnecessary after all.

But Isaac glanced back at him, and the pride he felt popped like a bubble as something more serious replaced it. He wasn’t Samuel Hutchinson anymore, able to simply support his fellow Unblooded. He was Lord Aberforth, and he was training for a duty he never wanted, to do what the crown needed.

What the Royal Blood Worker needed.

What Shan would have asked him to do.

What the King would want from him.

This was the very thing he had been training for. To gather information, slyly and subtly, to help the nobles. To give them the ammunition they’d need to stop this movement before it ever had the chance to grow. All he’d need to do was talk. Talk to this young boy, this brash leader, and find out where the pamphlets came from. Stop the movement before it grew into something more. But he knew what the Blood Workers would do to them. Even the sympathetic ones—Shan with her compromises, Isaac as the Royal Blood Worker—would save them by keeping them in their place.

He was a tool to be used, and Isaac was watching him with unreadable eyes.

Samuel dropped the pamphlet and ran from the crowd.

“Wait!”