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This was the time: he released just a tiny bit of power, weaving it into his words. “I’ll keep it simple,” he said, and she relaxed, her eyes going soft. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

“Not much to know,” she replied. “I worked in Lady Belrose’s home for years, making my way up to handmaiden.” She clenched her hands in her lap. “Four weeks ago, she caught me stealing from her and she turned me over to the Guard.”

Samuel felt a bit green, but he reached down into his power, pulling on it until he was steady and strong again, until he was flooded with its calming presence. “How did she catch you?”

For a second it looked like she was going to resist, but he could feel the power hanging between them, slowly sinking its claws into her and making her malleable. “I was in the wrong place,” Kalyn explained, “at the wrong time. Lady Belrose was supposed to be out to lunch with her daughter. She found me in her study, going through her notes, and when she searched my chambers she found the copies I had made. I hadn’t had my free day yet to drop them off.”

The King shot Samuel a pointed look, but he waved him aside. He wasn’t a fool. “What did you do with the notes?”

“I met a man at the docks, every Sunday at noon, and traded the notes for a bag of coin.”

Samuel couldn’t help himself. She had been better off than most, having a coveted position as a handmaiden, and still she had risked it all for coin. “So you did this for money, then?”

“Of course!” Kalyn frowned at him. “I needed the money for Res’s treatment.”

Samuel paused. “What?”

“They don’t take barter,” Kalyn explained, rather unhelpfully. “Just coin. And blood—but I didn’t have enough blood to pay for this.”

Afraid of the truth, but desperate to hear it, Samuel released just a little more magic. “You were ill?”

“Not me,” Kalyn said, staring down at her hands. “My younger brother, Res. I don’t know if he’s still alive.” Perhaps it was the effects of his power, but she didn’t seem particularly bothered. Her gaze was soft and unfocused, her voice quiet and empty of emotion.

Samuel looked away from her, his mood thunderous, but the Eternal King was unmoved. He simply rolled his hand at the wrist, signaling for him to get on with it. Samuel had to bite his lip to hold back the rush of anger that almost had him demanding to know if the King knew all along.

But he just turned to face Kalyn. “And your contact?”

“I never knew his real name,” Kalyn said. “He went by Storm, but we always met at this tea shop.”

“Which shop?” the King asked, finally stepping forward and joining the conversation.

Unable to take any more, Samuel just funneled a raw punch of power into his next command. “Tell him whatever he wants to know. Names. Locations. Everything.” Kalyn turned her head to the side as if she had been slapped, and Samuel pushed away from the table. He left them alone, letting the King pull the information he needed from Kalyn’s unresisting lips.

He pressed his hands against his face. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

He turned around just in time to see a flash of steel in the King’s hand, the other tangled in Kalyn’s braid so that he could pull her head back and bare her throat. Before Samuel could even say a word, the King had drawn his knife through the girl’s neck, cutting enough to bare the white of the bone.

Kalyn clasped her hands around her throat, as if she could hold her skin together through sheer will alone as the blood poured through her fingers. Her eyes were wide with panic as she struggled to speak, to breathe, but she was only able to make a strangled, gurgling noise—a noise that would haunt Samuel for the rest of his life.

He rushed to her side, catching her as she fell from her chair. There was nothing he could do but watch her die, holding her in his arms as she stared up at him, until she stared at nothing at all.

Samuel held her still warm body close, his shoulders shaking as he struggled to not break. He heard the King walk away, drop his knife in the sink, turn on the water to wash the blood away. Calmly cleaning away the murder he had just committed.

As if he could wipe away his inhumanity with a bit of soap and water.

“You killed her,” Samuel gasped.

“I did,” he said, his voice so terribly calm.

“But why?” Samuel snarled, turning to look at his King. His ancestor, standing there, a towel in his hand, wiping away the last of the blood that had splattered on his skin. “She gave us what you wanted.”

“Only because you forced her,” the King said. “Besides, why are you crying over her? She wasn’t just an Unblooded thief—she was a traitor to our nation.”

Samuel wiped his face, only then realizing that he was even crying. “Her brother was sick.” She was only trying to save him, to pay for the medicine that Blood Workers could easily provide but demanded so much coin for. Was what she had done illegal? Yes.

But he couldn’t call it wrong—and even if it was, he couldn’t stomach this as the price for her crimes.

“That doesn’t matter.” He threw the towel to the side. “I am a king, Samuel. It is my job to enforce the law for the protection of all, and I cannot allow a traitor to live. But I am not without mercy—I made it quick. Clean. Now, let go of the body.”