Page 3 of Lord of Ruin (The Age of Blood #2)
She bit her lip, trying to find what exactly he wanted her to see.
It was always like this with him—he never just gave the answer, she had to find it first. And when she succeeded, his praise felt like a buoy on her faltering soul, the only thing keeping her afloat when she felt like she was drowning.
Leaning over the notebook, she scanned the lines, used to the untidy scrawl of the King’s handwriting, a slight flaw in his otherwise immaculate persona.
The journals were not neat or well-organized, most of the notes a sprawling stream-of-consciousness as the King’s mind jumped from other perch to another, interspersed with sketches and notes and the odd equation.
It was difficult work, parsing out the information from the chaff, but part of Shan relished it.
Perry worries about the cost, the blood. What we are trying is such an elemental rewriting of his Blood Working, and to do it will require more power than the typical Unblooded will provide, but access to blood is not an issue for me.
Shan blinked slowly, the thought hovering just out of reach, as ephemeral and difficult to catch as mist. She read it again, slower, muttering the words under her breath, as—
“Ah.”
“You see it, then,” the King said, less a question and more an affirmation. She had passed the test, and the weight of fear slipped from her shoulders.
“I do,” Shan said, tilting her face so she could meet his expectant gaze.
“Dunn.” The last murder, the Councillor of Law that Isaac had so callously used as a demonstration of the Blood Factory’s efficient cruelty.
That was the piece they hadn’t dug into, hadn’t known if his death was part of Isaac’s experiments or merely a statement that he felt necessary to make.
“De la Cruz is not the first to use Unblooded in this manner,” the King said.
He stepped between her and the table, carefully gathering his journal as he went to return it to its normal resting place halfway up the wall, where it was shelved chronologically with all his other notes.
“Even if he used every Unblooded he murdered to enhance his own ability, it shouldn’t have been possible to do what he’s done. But Dunn…”
The King slid back down the ladder with a sigh. “Kevan was powerful, and compounding that into his own body? That might be enough.”
Shan swallowed hard, ignoring the way she hungered for this knowledge. This bit of magic that no one besides their King was allowed to practice, the very way he had extended his life and his power across generations. “Have you ever done this with a Blood Worker?”
“No,” the King admitted, turning back to watch her. He wasn’t upset with the question, with the discussion. Sometimes, she wondered if he actually enjoyed it. “I have never needed to, and the consequences of such actions… well, the price isn’t always worth the power.”
“The price?” Shan echoed, wondering which of the endless journals here had the answer. If he would show it to her, or if he expected her to find it on her own.
“Mhmm,” the King replied as he pulled the ladder to another stack, as he climbed up to it.
“It was something I discovered early in my reign, something that I strove to keep hidden. We are already feared enough, and stability in the game of nations is a delicate balance. But I’ve kept it for centuries, and to think that de la Cruz stumbled upon it entirely by accident… ”
Shan donned a pair of gloves, stepping to his side to receive the tome he handed down. This was a thicker one, an older one, the very binding that held it together starting to fray and fail. “Your Majesty, may I?”
He glanced down at her, imperious as ever, but he nodded.
“Why did you not show this to me until now?”
“Ah, that is a good question, Shan.” His smile was cold and sharp as the claws she normally wore on her hands. “Because this knowledge is dangerous, and I did not want to share it with you unless it was necessary.”
It was almost crueler in its simplicity than it would have been if he had meant an unkindness. The fact that, despite elevating her to be his right hand, he still did not trust her. Not fully.
She could spend the rest of her life proving herself to him, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
“So I followed other paths,” the King continued as he climbed back down, “all the way down to the bitter end. But now there is only one thing to do, only one option left. Truths that I hoped had faded entirely to myth, monsters that I hoped the world had forgotten.”
Shan dragged her thumb across the spine of the journal, her curiosity peaked. Myths and monsters, false tales of what countless fools had thought of Blood Workers. Perhaps there was some truth to it after all. “Are you saying that vamp—”
“Read it,” he repeated, cutting her off before she could even finish the word. “Read that, then tomorrow night we’ll see to Isaac.”
Shan clenched her hands around the journal as she bit back a sigh. Another night without sleep, then. It was foolish to resent it—she had never wanted the position of Royal Blood Worker, but now that she had it, it was more power, more knowledge, more access than she could have ever dreamed of.
She had been foolish to think that any of her previous schemes or ploys were power.
That she, as bright as she was, as capable as she strove to be, could ever hope to bring about real change, that the King would not swat her down, her efforts as insignificant as a gnat’s.
Her little network, her little ploys, that wasn’t power.
This was power—standing next to the Eternal King, his knowledge gifted freely, his experience guiding her to places she had never dreamed to reach.
And now that she had it, she would never let it go.
“As you say, Your Majesty.” She clutched the tome to her chest as she bowed before her King, ready to serve.