Page 101 of Mistress of Lies

She’d know his magic anywhere, the scent and taste of it imprinted on her soul. Shan closed her eyes, letting the magic wash over her as she parsed through the threads of the spell. It had the strength of a heavy tapestry—each person keyed to it acting as a thread that wove it into the rest, making the overall protection stronger, not weaker.

Blood wards were a tricky business. It was easy enough if all one wanted was to ward for themselves or their families. Like knows like, and Shan could easily allow Anton access to anything she had warded for herself. In fact, she often did. Where things got tricky, though, was wards like this—where it needed to be keyed to a group of people, from different families and different blood. When it was done poorly, the spell broke down, buckling and breaking under the weight of all it had to parse.

Isaac’s ward, though, showed none of these signs. It was one of the most complex pieces of magic she had ever seen.

Samuel gasped sharply, and she opened her eyes to find that the door at the end of the hallway had opened. Standing there, looking at them in shock, was the man himself. Isaac was dressed in his formal state robes, splattered and stained with what Shan could only assume was blood. But the true horror was the look on his face—the brief moment of fear, guilt, and shock—that vanished, replaced by a mask as cold as any of her own.

“De la Cruz,” the King said, cutting through the silence. He walked through the ward, the magic shimmering and allowing him access. “I do apologize for interrupting your work, but there are some things that I fear I must explain to LeClaire and Aberforth. They have been aiding the investigation into the… unfortunate deaths. Would you please grant them access?”

Isaac didn’t say a word, unwilling to look at her or even Samuel. He just nodded solemnly, and a flash of steel glinted in his hand, a small dagger dangling from his fingers. He sliced his palm open, a thin line of blood welling up, and pressed it to the ward.

Shan shivered as she felt the magic at work, the ward shifting and peeling back to provide them entry. Grabbing Samuel by the arm, she pulled him through quickly, knowing that each second Isaac held the ward open was only a further drain on his power.

The instant they were through, Isaac dropped his hand and the ward snapped back into place.

She had never felt this torn—she wanted to reach for Isaac, to use her claws to tear down this wall he had thrown up between them. She wanted to turn to Samuel, to comfort him and explain away the confusion that he wore so plainly. But the King was watching them, so she did nothing at all. She just followed Isaac through the door and came to a sudden halt as she realized what she was looking at, her brain struggling to keep up with the horrors her eyes beheld.

The stone of the castle had given away to a shining, quartz room—from the floors to the walls, easy to clean and sterilize. She could smell the sharp tang of cleaning agent, the kind they used to destroy stray drops of blood lest they be gathered and used against them. It was a familiar design, like so many of the laboratories across Aeravin, in private homes and in the Academy, in clinics and hospitals, but that’s where the similarities ended.

Instead of tables and simple tools, there was row upon row of harsh metal slabs, and on them were strapped people of all ages and types. There was no pattern or reasoning to them that Shan could find, but she would bet everything she had that they were Unblooded. They were stripped to just their underclothes, with needles and tubes pressed into their arms and legs as their blood was slowly, meticulously, drained from them. Under each table were large glass vats of blood, growing more full by the second, and silent Blood Workers moved between them, tending to the people in a sick mockery of a hospital.

It wasn’t a dungeon. No, it was something far worse than that. Bile rose hot and sour up the back of her throat as she realized what this was—a blood factory. A place where the Unblooded were unwillingly gathered, drained until there was nothing left but a corpse.

The realization hit Samuel a second later. He pushed past her, and Isaac turned away from them both, his head ducked low in shame as he left them alone with the King.

Samuel came to a stop by the first patient, an emaciated looking man whose age was impossible to determine, his hands flexing over the needle and tube just above the elbow, as if he thought to remove it himself but caught himself at the last moment.

Shan moved quickly, catching Samuel’s hands, and he gripped her tightly, so tightly that she feared she might break under the pressure of it. But his eyes—his eyes were burning—a cold fire that she nearly flinched away from.

“What is this place?” he breathed, and Shan just shook her head, helpless.

“My masterpiece,” the King said, coming up beside them, glowing with pride. He looked down at the man on the table, who only stared up at them through half-lidded eyes, too drained to have any fight left. The restraints were no longer necessary. If anything, they were just there to hold him up as his died. “The secret that has kept Aeravin strong.”

“Why are you showing us this?” Shan asked, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice. “Our knowing about it would only be a liability.”

“Clever girl.” The King cast her that appraising look again, and Shan forced herself to not look away. “You are right, it is dangerous to show you. But you were never going to figure out the tie between the murder victims without it.”

Shan turned slowly, her vision going blurry around the edges as she watched the silent Blood Workers go about their business. A pair of them were tending to a nearby patient, newly deceased, removing the tubes and wiping down the few spilled drops of blood. They moved with a practiced efficiency, and as they removed the corpse and brought out another bound, gagged prisoner, Shan finally understood. “Suppliers.”

The King only nodded, but Samuel looked to her in confusion. “Suppliers of what?”

“People,” Shan replied, and Samuel stared at her uncomprehending. She just looked to the King. “How much did you have to pay them to hand over their own?”

The King laughed, low and dark. “It was surprisingly less than you’d think. These are mostly criminals and outcasts, people that the Unblooded won’t be missing. If you think about it, they’re doing a good service. Less trash on the streets and more blood for us.”

“Wait, they sold people?” Samuel said, his voice simmering with the quiet kind of rage that was so dangerous. “The people who have been killed—they were slavers?”

The King wrinkled his nose. “No, not precisely. We’re not enslaving these people.”

“You’re killing them,” Samuel said, and the King turned on him, slowly.

“Yes, I am,” the King said, levelling a cool stare at Samuel. “But Blood Working demands a price, and it must be paid in blood.”

“This is wrong,” he snarled, stepping forward.

“Will you never cease disappointing me?” the Eternal King asked, his eyes cold and hard as he looked Samuel over with something akin to frustration. “I’ve tried to show you that truth—being a King, protecting a nation—is not for the faint of heart. And this is something you’ll have to come to terms with. You need to learn that sometimes we must do terrible things—necessary things—for our country.”

Samuel started to tremble, and the King scoffed. “If you want to survive here, be more like LeClaire, boy. She is showing true strength.” Shan bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming, to ignore the terrible implications as they crashed down around her, her entire life restructured and reframed in a matter of moments. Every time they had used blood, from the days in the Academy to the very witch light that lined the streets of the capital, the blood had come from this place. Hells, every time she had requisitioned blood for her home, in her father’s name or her own, she had justified the existence of this horror.

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