Page 78 of Lord of Ruin (The Age of Blood #2)
Chapter Forty-Three
Samuel
S amuel arrived at the Blood Treasury later than he expected—or perhaps Isaac had made better time than they had projected. Either way, the Blood Treasury was pure chaos, the Guard having already swarmed the perimeter, creating a loose barricade of bodies.
Strickland waved him over as soon as she spotted him, face pale as she struggled to keep control over a rapidly escalating disaster.
Samuel almost felt sorry for her, despite the fact that she had been Dabney’s right-hand man for years, groomed to take the position after him.
Despite the fact that she had been nothing but pleasant and agreeable since her appointment.
Despite the fact that this was a crucible that would break anyone, let alone a woman not ten days into her role.
Because there was no forgetting what she was—the symbol of the system Samuel had sworn to destroy, the target of this very attack.
But Samuel still had a role to play, so he stepped to her side and donned the mask of Lord Aberforth—cold, cruel, and ever so practical. “What happened here?”
Strickland swallowed hard, and Samuel was once again struck by how young she was, not even a handful of years older than himself.
She should have had more time to prepare, to grow, but Samuel had snatched that from her by whispering two words in Isaac’s ear, the name of her mentor, and now here she was floundering.
It shouldn’t have felt good, this small bit of chaos that he had crafted.
But it did, a twisted smug sense of satisfaction curling through him as the pieces fell into place.
Perhaps he was more like Shan than he realized, perhaps there was more of the Eternal King in him than he wanted to admit.
“There was an attack,” Strickland began, and Samuel only half listened as he studied the building in front of him, the colossal Blood Treasury that he never seen before.
Never had reason to see before, just another grand scale institution of Aeravin, a symbol of the casual cruelty and the endless suffering that the Blood Workers placed on their Unblooded brethren.
A concrete, physical reminder of their place in the world, little more than providers of blood and labor, the mortar that held this entire godforsaken country together but never recognized for all that they did.
And Samuel was so, so tired of watching the Blood Workers crush the Unblooded under their boot. Of being—however unwillingly—part of that wretched system.
“The Eternal King and the Royal Blood Worker arrived,” Strickland continued, snatching Samuel back from his dark thoughts, “with a young woman in tow.”
The fear hooked deep in Samuel’s gut, a sharp tug that threatened to take his breath away.
But they had expected this, had planned for this, even though he still saw Mel in his nightmares, a memory that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes, that young man slaughtered by a creature out of nightmares.
The vampires the rest of the world feared Blood Workers to truly be, their civilized veneers cast aside to reveal the feral, ever-hungering beast at the heart of their society.
“What then?” Samuel asked, but Strickland never got a chance to respond as the very ground upon which they stood shook.
The unexpected tremors took Samuel by surprise, sending him crashing to the cobblestones.
But the new vantage point gave him a perfect view of the looming destruction, head tilted back to watch as the entire building shuddered from the ground up, a rolling series of blasts that began underneath the Treasury before the reverberations rumbled upwards.
The windows shook in their frames, the glass panes shuddering as the energy ran up through them, before they shattered outward in a spray of fine shards, raining down onto the cobblestones like a sudden winter squall, tinkling like hail.
A rush of energy followed, invisible but still potent, flowing over them with all the power of rolling thunder, Samuel’s skin breaking out in gooseflesh in the wake of it.
Before them, great cracks splintered through the walls, growing larger as they reached up and up and up, the whole building shuddered as it threatened to shake apart.
Hells, Isaac had done it. The vaults must have been ignited into witch fire, the entire supply of precious, stolen blood erupting as it burned away.
Strickland forced herself to her feet, pausing only to help Samuel up, before rushing towards the door. She came to a sudden stop in front of the looming doors, a harshly aborted movement, like someone had snatched her by the back of her coat.
Samuel crossed the distance in four large steps, his hand landing on her shoulder and pulling her from whatever internal debate she struggled with. “Strickland?”
Turning wide, panicked eyes on him, Strickland whispered, “She told me not to follow.”
“Who?”
“The Royal Blood Worker,” she replied. “Lady LeClaire.”
Everything slowed to a crawl as his brain processed the words, as he realized that their careful plans had all been shattered.
They had expected Mel, they had known that the King would use his greatest weapon.
But neither of them had thought that they would put themselves directly into danger.
No, that wasn’t like them—content to manipulate things from the sidelines while sending others to do their dirty work.
They must not have understood the intention, must not have realized that they were bold enough to destroy it all.
But Shan was in there, and as the building groaned, threatening to come crashing down around them, Samuel found himself moving before he had even come to a conscious decision.
Because even now—even after all that had happened, even after walking away from her—he couldn’t just let her die, trapped beneath rubble.
Not when there was something he could do about it.
He ran through the open doors, Strickland calling after him, her hand nearly catching on the back of his coat, but he pressed on.
The atrium opened high above him, the cracks having spread up the walls and across the ceiling, the grand chandelier wavering in the air.
The quake had shaken its moorings loose, and Samuel watched as the chain slipped and snapped, the mass of metal arms and crystal shells falling three stories to crash into the floor.
The shock of the impact nearly sent him sprawling, but Samuel just ducked around it, heading towards the opening in the far wall, following the streaks of red and the broken bodies through the building.
His boots slid on patches of wet blood, leaking from corpses so desecrated that they hardly even passed for human anymore, ravaged by a rabid beast. He took care to weave around the shreds of meat and organs ripped from their cavities, the wreckage that had fallen around them—doors knocked from their hinges, sconces tumbled from their mountings in the wall.
All around him, the cracks in the walls seemed to grow, the foundations beneath his feet shifting as the floor started to buckle.
It was a winding trail of gore and rubble that should have shocked and disgusted Samuel, but he was too consumed by worry, the panic driving him forward as a strange numbness set in.
Later, the disgust would rise, but for the moment he had found a sense of peace and determination he had never known before.
There was only the aching wound in his chest screaming for Shan, desperate to find her, because no matter how many times they hurt each other, they would always come back to this.
Pulling each other back from the brink of disaster, saving each other again and again, because what was life without her?
They were ruined forever, and if Samuel got her out of this alive, he would find a way to bring her back to his side.
He stumbled through the last doorway to find the Eternal King and Shan huddled together among the destruction, a ward drawn up around them, pale and shimmering.
The King had an arm around Shan’s shoulder, pulling her close.
There was blood on the side of her face, leaking down the curve of her cheek, her dark eyes hazy and unfocused.
The floor around them was littered with rubble and the remains of yet another chandelier, detritus that had hit the top of the ward and slid off, as well as more that balanced, so precariously, above their heads.
Enough debris that—without the ward—it would have crushed them completely, buried them alive as the Treasury fell down around them.
That would still crush them, if the King let the ward go for even a second.
Samuel could feel the power of it rolling off the Eternal King, even untrained as he was, as the King fueled the ward with the mess of spilt blood scattered around them.
It was nothing like the one he had created back in the safe house, fueled by his own power and blood, instead drawn from the mass of bodies around him.
The King looked up at him, brow drawn in intense concentration, sweat beading on his forehead as he held the ward up through sheer force of will.
There was no smear of red on his lips, no sign that he had imbibed any of the blood around him, but still, he had called it to them, had painted an unbroken line around them and woven them an impenetrable shield with it.
Just how powerful was this Eternal King? And would Isaac, even as changed as he was, be able to stand a chance?
Samuel clambered over the rubble, wrapped his hands around the chandelier that lay slanted against the ward and ripped it to the side, where it crashed down with the rest of the debris.
He cleared what he could, shoved the shattered stones and wooden beams off.
It wasn’t enough to free them completely, but there was a passageway out now.