Page 28 of Lord of Ruin (The Age of Blood #2)

Chapter Seventeen

Isaac

I saac led Anton to the clinic, weaving through the early morning traffic.

Luckily for them, they were able to blend in with the crowd, surrounded by people hurrying through the streets, on their way to jobs and the market and the other inevitabilities of survival.

Isaac kept his eyes open for the Guard, but they mostly ignored him and Anton, looking for those who were more prime targets.

Arrests had spiked sharply in the past few weeks, the Guard eager to steal as much blood as possible, leaving a taste of fear on the air, seeping into the way people moved—quick and purposeful, eyes focused only on the next step before them.

It hurt Isaac to know that this was all his fault, the unintended consequence of the choices he had made. He had known his little gambits would anger the King, but he had not intended to fail. Did not intend to let others suffer for his hubris, and yet, it happened nevertheless.

He nudged Anton with his elbow, tilted his head towards a ramshackle building.

Two stories high, perched at corner intersection.

The lower floor had been many sorts of shops over the years, from a grocer to a florist to one particularly ill-planned summer when it sold delicate stationery none around could afford, even if they wished to waste their sparse income on such frivolities.

But what mattered was the floor above, the independent clinic run by a Blood Worker who had abandoned the dog-eat-dog power struggles of their kind.

It was one he had been to many a time, when he was younger and more innocent.

When he was just another poor scholarship student, before the King had plucked him from all his peers at the Academy and elevated him far beyond the status of his birth.

He prayed that she would still remember him, even after all this time.

Celeste had a been a balm for this neighborhood, treating illness and injuries for a fraction of what the official clinics charged.

They climbed the narrow staircase, the handrail weak and wobbling under his touch.

It looked even more disreputable than he recalled, though if that was the ravages of time or a fault in his memory, Isaac couldn’t be sure.

But the door opened easily under his touch, the sharp tang of cleaning supplies hitting his nose, and it was like he was transported back in time.

“How do you know of this place?” Anton asked, quietly, as he took in the small room they emerged in. The small counter was unmanned, but the chalkboard behind it instructed them to sit in a messy scrawl. Celeste was likely in one of the back rooms, treating another patient.

Isaac wasn’t surprised—she often didn’t have help, couldn’t afford to pay them with the little income she got off her patients.

He settled in one of the hard chairs, foot tapping impatiently. “It’s where I got my first treatments.”

Anton plopped into the chair beside him with a curious hum. “Didn’t trust the healers at the Academy?”

“It’s not that,” Isaac replied, as he tried to find the words. Because Anton was right—he could have gone through the official channels. Even with his family’s standing, even with the scant money they had, there had still been options.

But this was what his mother had wanted, so he had acquiesced easily. “Celeste, the Blood Healer here, was a dear friend of my mother’s. And besides, she was uniquely qualified to help.”

She was like him, born to certain expectations only to defy them completely. And though her transition had been in a different direction and thus her own treatments were different, his mother had been insistent that she would at least understand his struggle.

And she had not been wrong.

Anton took the answer with a nod, but he continued his hungry appraisal, his dark eyes taking everything in. “There aren’t many clinics like this in Aeravin.”

“No,” Isaac agreed, friendly as anything. “But there are some. Not all Blood Workers are your enemies.”

Anton laughed, low and quiet. “You’ve been reading the literature, then?”

Isaac lifted a shoulder in a carefree shrug, playing at casual. “A bit,” he lied, like he hadn’t spent nights poring over them, picking apart each word and argument. And oh, how they were right—Aeravin hadn’t been built for the Unblooded, it had been designed to use and exploit them.

But there were so many Blood Workers who were exploited too, even if they willfully turned their eyes from their own oppression. Isaac didn’t have the damnedest clue how to reach them, but perhaps if Anton did…

Isaac had been such a fool to fall for his act for so long—despite the lack of magic in his veins, Anton was no less talented than his sister, and certainly no less cunning. It was unmissable as he turned that attention back to Isaac, ever calculating.

“So that’s why you wanted me here,” Anton replied, running his hands through his shaggy mop of hair. “Fine, then, show me what it’s like. Educate me.”

Isaac grinned, but before he could say more the curtain behind the desk ruffled, an older woman shuffling through.

She leaned heavily on a cane, her wrinkled face shining with relief as she made her way towards the door.

She nodded at them as she passed, her voice whisper soft and paper thin.

“Don’t worry, boys, whatever ails you, our Celeste can help. ”

“Now don’t go making promises that I might not be able to keep, Granny,” Celeste called as she stepped into the room, her voice booming through the small space.

She was a tall woman, though reed-thin, dark of skin and incredibly beautiful.

There was a strength to her features that aways reminded Isaac of a hero out of myth—made of something greater than flesh and blood, eternally lovely and wise.

But it had been her strength of presence that awed Isaac, moving through the world as if daring it to tell her that she was lesser in any way.

He had tried to be like that, too, as Royal Blood Worker. He never pulled it off.

He stood, unable to hide the honest grin that split his face. “I don’t know, I think that you won’t have that much trouble with me.”

Celeste froze, hand pressed over her heart, as she took him in. Her eyes raked him over from head to toe, no doubt cataloguing everything that looked ill or wrong with him, before she crossed the room and pulled him into a bruising hug.

“My child,” she said, so soft in his ear, “I thought I would never see you again. Not after—”

She cut off, and the old woman chortled. “I’ll leave you to this, then. See in you in two weeks, Celeste.”

“Two weeks,” Celeste confirmed, off-handed, still unable to tear her eyes from Isaac.

Still chortling, the old woman saw herself out, and Isaac squared his shoulders. “I know there is a lot to discuss, Celeste, but I did come here for reason. I need—”

“I know, son,” she finished for him, stepping back. “Do not worry, I will see to whatever you need. For your mother’s sake, may she rest in peace. And who’s this?” She nodded towards Anton, who jumped to his feet, holding out a hand.

“A friend of Isaac’s,” Anton said, as Celeste gave him a firm handshake. “And someone with a business proposition.”

Celeste looked at him through narrow eyes, assessing, but Anton did not so much as flinch. Unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

They would make good partners, if Isaac could pull this off.

“Well, in that case, I’d be happy to have a discussion, but I will need privacy to see my patient.” She stepped back through the curtain. “Let’s get this over with. Right this way.”

Isaac followed after her, Anton quick on his heels.

It was just as Isaac remembered it—the large room behind the entrance, not quite as sterile as many other Blood Workers’ clinics.

The floor was wooden, not sealed marble, but the large metal table was the same.

Celeste kept her tools hung on the far wall, small blades and large saws and tubes and vials, all ready and waiting to be used.

Most of the time, such implements weren’t used, but sometimes, when the damage was bad enough, was old enough that the body had healed itself wrong around a trauma it could not mend, such implements were needed.

He wondered if that would be him, one day soon. Blades sinking into his flesh to reveal the corruption that had spread through his body, peeling away skin and muscle to reveal if what lay beneath was still human.

“So,” Celeste said, drawing his attention back to the present. “What do you boys want to talk about?”

Isaac settled on the table, pulling himself up and letting his legs dangle off the edge. It made him feel so young, so vulnerable, but it was Celeste. If there was anyone he could trust with this, it was her. “Do you know what happened last summer?”

“With your antics?” She stared him down, acting the part of the stern aunt, there to judge him in his mother’s absence.

There were new lines around her eyes that she hadn’t had all those years ago, and her hair was streaked through with grey in the roots.

Like everyone else in this forsaken country, she was running on fumes and exhaustion, and Isaac wondered how much of that was on him.

“Yes, I am aware. Everyone is aware. What were you thinking, child?”

He swallowed hard, the all-too familiar shame rising in him. “I was thinking that I had made a terrible mistake, and that if my mother could see me, she would be so disappointed if I did nothing at all.”

Celeste closed her eyes, let out a long sigh.

“Yes,” she breathed, looking so pained, “yes, she would have been. But you’ve always been too ambitious for your own good.

” She took his hand between hers, gave it a comforting squeeze.

“But how are you even alive? Our Eternal King is not that merciful.”