Page 112 of Mistress of Lies

“Are you so sure?” The King tilted his head to the side, his green eyes cold and piercing. “You seem… uneasy. This will help lower your inhibitions.”

“It’s not my inhibitions that are the problem,” Samuel snapped, with more venom than he intended, but it earned him a smile.

“No, it’s your fool heart.” He pressed the glass into Samuel’s hand. “And while that might be admirable in some people, you cannot allow it to hold you back.”

Twisting his wrist, Samuel watched the whisky swirl in the glass. It was actually tempting, and he could already feel his power stirring in his chest, aching to be used. “My heart is the only thing that has kept me from becoming a monster.”

“Only fools think of things in terms of men and monsters, and it’s time to stop pretending you are less than you are.”

“I am just a man,” Samuel said.

“Not just any man.” The King placed his hands on Samuel’s shoulders, leaving him no choice but to look up at him. “You are an Aberforth and a Blood Worker. You are the last of my line. You should be a god amongst men.”

But he didn’t want that—or at least he had tried his whole life not to. The darkness was a part of him, but still disparate, held back by the strength of his will alone. Every time he was weak, every time he broke—every time he used his power in this mad quest for mastery—it was a bit harder to tuck that power back away. He had started to crave it, the rush that came with using it, the sense of control that he never had before.

And this? This would only make it all the harder.

He took a deep drink of the whisky, the burn giving way to something warm, almost pleasant, in his belly.

“You need to stop thinking of your power as only evil,” the King said, his voice soft, not quite a whisper. “I would have hoped you had learned that by now, realized that it can be used to protect, to save yourself and those you care about in times of need.”

Samuel could envision it immediately, how the words would flow from his lips, the imagined enemy stopping dead in their tracks. “They have to obey me.”

“Not just that.” The King stepped back, looking him over. “You’re not trained for combat, you never have been. But you have another way to take care of a threat. Permanently.”

Unable to contemplate what he might mean—even to dare thinking about it—Samuel took another deep sip of the whisky.

But the King didn’t give him that out, choosing to continue, to whisper the words that Samuel feared to hear. “You could order them to stop breathing, for their heart to stop, to drop dead at your feet.”

“I thought you said that I am not a monster.”

“Is it monstrous to protect others? To protect the ones we love? The ones we have a duty to serve?” the King asked. “Isn’t that exactly what we should be doing? Not everyone is a Blood Worker—there are countless Unblooded in Aeravin, in the world. Weak and defenseless. And not a single person like you. So, shouldn’t you do everything you can to protect them?”

Samuel turned away, the alcohol turning sour in his stomach.

“Just imagine it, Samuel. We all have enemies.” The King’s voice was as cold and serious as death. “Not just me and you. Pretty little Shan LeClaire. Foolish Isaac de la Cruz. They both play dangerous games and if they are ever at risk, wouldn’t you want to help them? Sometimes you only have a moment—a breath—to act.

“And you don’t ever want to waste it.”

Samuel blanched, but the King just watched him impassively. Of course. They hadn’t found anything on the killer. The Royal Blood Worker still had duties to do—and public appearances to make. Samuel just didn’t know if it was hubris or some kind of twisted kindness that motivated the King to dangle such potential in front of him, but either way he knew he had to be prepared.

Perhaps it was the result of living so long, seeing so many born and die. One stopped seeing them as people.

It’s what made him such a powerful King, and something less than a man.

Speaking through a suddenly dry throat, Samuel said, “We don’t even know if that would work.” It was one thing to tell a man to kneel, to force the truth from his lips, to force him to remember something he had thought forgotten. But to force him to actively work against his own survival instincts? To end his life—the thing that most clung to so strongly?

Samuel acknowledged that he had a great and terrible power, but he wasn’t so arrogant to assume he could do this.

“That is what Erik is here for,” the King said, turning back to their guest. He had listened the whole time in enforced silence, but somewhere along the line he had started trembling, violently shaking in his seat. “I picked him specifically for you. I realize your morals still bother you, but this man is a traitor and a murderer, and I am not so cruel as to force you to kill an innocent.” He stalked behind Erik’s chair, wrapping one hand around the man’s throat.

“He killed not just the Guards but servants as he made his way to me. A girl, only sixteen, left dead on the floor in a pool of her own blood. My valet, a man who had served me for more than two decades, who left behind a wife and two young children. He tore families apart in his insane quest to kill me, and for what?” Tearing off the man’s gag, he looked at Samuel. “Ask him.”

Tossing back the rest of the drink, Samuel stepped closer to Erik, close enough to smell the fear and sweat that rolled off him. “Is what he said true?” Samuel asked, letting the power flow through him and hang heavy on the air.

“Yes,” Erik gasped, his voice hoarse, harsh, like he hadn’t used it in years. And perhaps he hadn’t, locked away in the King’s dungeons. “I killed six servants on my way to the King.”

Samuel let out a harsh breath. “Did they have to die?”

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