Lord of Ruin

Book 2: The Age of Blood

by K. M. Enright

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Fantasy Romance

Synopsis

The unmissable sequel to Mistress of Lies, a dark fantasy romance with sizzling spice, vampiric blood magic, and cutthroat politics.

LOVE WILL BE THEIR RUIN

It has been six months since the failed coup led by Isaac De La Cruz, and Shan LeClaire is struggling under the mantle of Royal Blood Worker. Left with a dwindling blood supply and a ravenous nation whose thirst will drown them, Shan is forced to turn to darker means to fill the need. And that is only the start of the horrors her Eternal King asks of her.

Now Councillor to the King, Samuel is trapped in a labyrinthine world of politics and bylaws. Crushed by the knowledge that he can never change things from within, Samuel breaks from Shan, turning to her rebellious brother to help him rescue the disgraced Isaac de la Cruz from the King's dungeons.

Despite his newfound freedom, all is not well with Isaac. His actions have consequences, the dangerous magic he experimented with changing him from man to monster. But a monster might just be the only thing that can stand up to the Eternal King. Embracing the beast within, Isaac will see this broken nation shattered-even if it would cost the love of those he holds most dear.

Release date: August 12, 2025

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 464

Sample

In the land of Aeravin, a class of blood mages known as Blood Workers rule the nation. They are led by the enigmatic Eternal King, who has lived for over a millennium, fueled by yearly blood sacrifices to extend his life. Under his guidance, the Blood Workers keep the magicless Unblooded in place as they exploit those beneath them, building lives of decadence and debauchery.

On the eve of spring, Shan LeClaire assassinates her father and takes his place as head of her family. Shan has spent her life building her own base of power, using blood magic and her skills as a budding spymaster. Now she plans to bring her Aeravin to its knees. After witnessing the Eternal King’s annual sacrifice, Unblooded Samuel Hutchinson stumbles upon a body that’s been murdered by illegal magic and becomes caught up in the investigation. Until now, Samuel has spent his life avoiding the Blood Workers, to hide his own secret magic—whenever he gives a command, the listener must obey.

When Shan’s spy brings her the knowledge of Samuel and his gift, she recognizes it from an old rumor and suspects he may be a secret descendant of the King’s bloodline. Seduced by Shan’s promises of change and hope, Samuel agrees to meet with the King, who confirms their relation and agrees to keep Samuel’s magic a secret. But the murders keep happening and all evidence points to a member of the King’s Court. Unable to trust even his most loyal of retainers, the King turns to Shan and Samuel for aid using their unique skills. If they succeed in stopping the murderer, the King promises to reward them handsomely—including helping Samuel master the gift he still fears.

They begin their investigation, and Samuel adjusts to his new life among the Blood Worker ruled high society, even forming a friendship with Shan’s magicless brother and something more with the King’s second-in-command, Isaac de la Cruz. Shan also reconnects with Isaac, her first love, before he abandoned her to take his place at the King’s side. But old wounds are slowly mended, and the three of them start to fall for each other, a delicate courtship budding around the fear and mistrust that Samuel carries around his terrible gift.

As more bodies appear, the clues start to point to Shan’s brother, but Shan refuses to believe it and sets out to prove his innocence. Her efforts distract them from the trail of the real culprit until the fear of the murderer moves the Unblooded to mass protest, destabilizing the fragile peace of the nation. The King reveals the secret underpinning the murders—the tie that Shan and Samuel wouldn’t have figured out on their own. All the murdered were part of a secret slaving ring, delivering unwanted persons to the King’s private Blood Factory, where they were drained of their blood till they died, fueling the ever hungry magical coffers of the Aeravin. And worst of all, Isaac, as the Royal Blood Worker, is the man behind it and likely the next victim.

If the life of the one they have both grown to care about isn’t enough, the King gives them an ultimatum: find the murderer within a week, or he will execute Shan’s brother and turn Samuel’s gift into his personal weapon. Faced with disaster all around her, Shan reveals to Samuel that her ultimate goal is to dethrone the ruthless King and replace him with someone far more human. Someone like Samuel. Though shocked and disturbed by her admissions, Samuel agrees to help her take down the King, but first they must find the killer and save Shan’s brother—as long as he’s not the murderer.

With no other choice, Shan investigates her brother, soon discovering the secret he has been keeping from her—he is not the murderer, but he is one of the founders of the Unblooded rebellion, and it is his actions that have led to the unrest across the capital. With no other leads, Shan and Samuel turn to protecting Isaac, as an upcoming public event will leave him vulnerable. But the event goes wrong as Isaac reveals the truth of the Blood Factory to a surprised nation, having killed one of the King’s own Councillors as a practical demonstration. The truth comes out—the killer was Isaac, working on his own revolution to assuage the guilt of what he had done as the King’s right hand.

A riot breaks out, and the King swoops in to declare martial law, establishing a curfew for Unblooded along with a sweeping list of cruel new laws. After Shan and Samuel lament their losses, Isaac kidnaps Samuel and tries to recruit him to his cause, but Samuel refuses. To prove his methods necessary, Isaac uses his newly empowered Blood Working to strip Samuel of the gift he hates, revealing that Samuel has had the ability to use Blood Working all along, it had just been stifled by his gift. Shan finds them and attempts to rescue Samuel. Isaac releases a trap, but after she saves Samuel, Shan puts herself at great risk to pursue Isaac. Using his newly discovered Blood Working, Samuel pursues them, capturing Isaac.

Afterward, Samuel recovers from the toll of using untrained magic, and Shan delivers the news to the King. He rescinds the order of execution on Shan’s brother and for what they’ve done publicly raises Samuel to the Council of Lords and elevates Shan to take Isaac’s former spot at his side. Weeks later, Isaac is visited in his cell by Samuel, who uses his position to secure a private conversation. Samuel asks if Isaac still wants to bring down the King and promises him that he will be freed soon enough.

But as Samuel leaves him, Isaac reflects on the way his Blood Working experiments have left him changed, thirsty for something he dare not name.

The grandfather clock chimed one, startling Shan out of her light doze. It was much later than she intended to work; she had planned to only stay an hour after dinner to finish up the latest inventory, but lost herself as she dug into the ledgers that were her main responsibility. The ever-dwindling supply of blood for the Kingdom of Aeravin, diminishing a bit more each day as they ran through what remained of the supply.

She cursed Isaac de la Cruz under her breath; the Blood Factory he revealed was abhorrent, the slow draining and death of the capital’s undesirables to fill the Blood Workers’ endless hunger for blood, but so was every other option. He had achieved his goal, he had seen the program ended under the threat of civil unrest, but here she was, left to pick up the pieces of his mess.

It was her greatest duty as Royal Blood Worker, and still, months after her appointment, she found no reasonable solution.

She gently closed her notebook, setting it aside with the ledger for the next day’s efforts. It looked so small on the grand desk, a mahogany monstrosity etched with hand-carved details of roses and thorns. It matched the rest of the furniture she had inherited with the office—large, oversized pieces that made her feel small, from the chair that dwarfed her to the shelves that covered the walls to the wide bay window that overlooked the capital and the grand sea beyond.

Some nights, she wished she could fly out that window and never look back, but every time she so much as dared to dream, she remembered the shackles that held her fast and the work she had yet to do.

Work that she was only just learning the importance of, the complexity of balancing a nation wound together in intricacies she never learned, back when she was just a foolish girl dreaming on the burning of hope of change. But she knew better now—knew just how painful the cost of her grand schemes would be. So here she was, Royal Blood Worker, chipping away at the little gains she could achieve.

But there was nothing she could accomplish now, not with ache in her back and the way her eyes threatened to drift closed one more. She needed rest, her soft bed, and the comfort of Samuel’s arms if she had any hope of solving any of the great issues left at her doorstep.

Pushing herself up, she carefully brushed the stray locks of hair from her face, taking a moment to refresh her appearance. Despite the hour, there would still be people flitting about the Academy—students cramming for exams, instructors frantically preparing the next lesson, and the nearly invisible servants gliding between them, ensuring that everything ran smoothly. As soon as she stepped out of her office, the sole bit of privacy she had would vanish as the performance began again.

Appearances had always been important, as a LeClaire, as a child with foreign blood. As the Royal Blood Worker following de la Cruz, it had become everything, the entire court of Aeravin watching her every movement, waiting to see if she would make the same mistakes he had, if the quality of her blood would be as poor as his.

Yet another mess he had added to her plate, another bitterness left where there had once been the hope for something more. It was uncharitable of her, she knew that, but it was better to be angry at all he had done than to mourn everything she had lost.

That was the lie she kept telling herself, anyway.

Prepared to face the night, she exited her office and stepped out into the top floor. The witch light had been dimmed for the night, casting a warm glow over the couches and low tables throughout the space, places for the enlightened of Aeravin to mingle as they discussed the newest bits of theory and magic. Empty, thankfully, except the door to the Eternal King’s Archives. The sole door was cracked open, light spilling out across the marble floor.

Shan’s heart sank into her stomach as she realized who was there. There was only one person who could access it on their own, whose blood would allow them to pass through the ward and into the room beyond.

It seemed that the Eternal King had been stirred from his own offices again, as he had many times in the past few months, poring over the knowledge he had spent a millennium collecting as he tried to understand what had been done to Samuel. It was a great puzzle in his eyes, nothing more, a bit of intellectual inquiry that he wanted to solve. Whatever pain Samuel went through did not matter.

Still, she squared her shoulders as she stepped through the ward, the buzz of her own magic sizzling against her skin—no doubt the King knew she lingered, and it would be better for her to go to him. She had learned that lesson the hard way.

The room was large but windowless, bookshelves lining the walls and reaching almost all the way up to the ceiling. A long ladder was braced against the shelves, attached to a railing that allowed one to roll it to the proper stack, climbing through the very ranks of history itself. Each shelf was carefully preserved against the ravages of time by being encased in specially made glass, a collection of journals and books dating back all the way to the founding of Aeravin itself.

Journals full of knowledge that Shan, in her time before serving the King, had not even been able to imagine. There were too many of them to get through in her meager lifetime, not unless she devoted herself solely to this endeavor, but there was a part of her that ached to try.

The Eternal King stood in the middle of the room, the brightness from the witch light casting shadows across his face, as inexorable as ever, a man who never changed or aged. There was a sternness to him that she knew waited just beyond the surface, a promise of unyielding will and cruelty, but she had learned to walk around the edges of it, managing his moods just as she managed everything else.

Still dressed in his court finest, the Eternal King stood with his hands pressed into the wood of the table, a slight frown marring his otherwise flawless features. Before him was one of his old journals, bound in leather and filled with his scribbled handwriting, a journal that he protected even from his own skin with the special gloves he wore to flip through the pages.

“Good evening,” the King said, without looking up. “How goes your work?”

Shan still had to fight the urge to lie, the words already hung on the edge of her lips, but she swallowed them down like the bitter fruit they were. “Things are not going as well as I would have liked. We are burning through blood faster than our initial projections called for, even with the increased Blood Taxes and the rationing we established.”

Even with the first two collections of the doubled Blood Taxes, two pints from every Unblooded citizen over twelve, she hadn’t been able to balance the looming deficit, given just how much of the supply had come from the secret Blood Factory. So, she balanced it as best she could, pulling back in the scant areas that she could find, fat that she had been able to trim from the endless requisitions that came to the Royal Blood Worker’s office. Under Isaac, it had been brushed off to aides and secretaries. But in these new conditions, she had to account for every single drop of blood in their coffers, and there was only so much rationing that the nobles would allow.

The entire balance of their nation hung on a tightrope, and with each step Shan feared that she would fall into the abyss.

The King only hummed, turning the page in his journal with a careful hand. “I am sure that you will come up with something. I know you are too clever to let something as minor as this defeat you.”

Fear thrummed a heady beat in her veins. Shan still didn’t know how she withstood it, the level look the Eternal King sent her way, eyes as hard as emeralds, peeling away all her schemes and lies to get to the heart of her. His faith was a burning potential, almost too much to bear, but she could not flinch away.

“I will,” she swore, though she did not yet know the particulars of how she would appease him. She just knew she had no other option, lest she end up like all the others who had crashed and burned. Like her father.

Like Isaac.

The King only smiled, gesturing her forward with a gloved hand. “What do you think of this?”

He stepped aside, allowing her to take his place at the research table, but lingered close enough that she could still feel the warmth of his body, the nearly overwhelming taste of his magic on the air. He had stopped masking around her, when it was just the two of them, no longer even bothering to play at being merely human. Perhaps it was meant as an intimidation tactic, a reminder of just how far above her that he was. Perhaps it was a kind of trust, the only way he could be able to show it.

But it did not matter why. In truth, all it did was make her hungry. What would power like that feel like, in her hands? Who would dare challenge her? Would it let her, for the first time in her life, know what it would be like to be free?

The journal before them was one she had seen before, one of the first he had shown her after her ascension to Royal Blood Worker. In those early weeks, they had spent so many nights in this very room, poring over theories and details as they struggled to understand exactly how the Aberforth Gift had been decoupled from Samuel. It had been entirely fruitless, but here was the Eternal King once more, searching for answers they could not find.

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.

Samuel’s head was pounding and they hadn’t even reached midday recess yet. The air in the Royal Council’s chambers was stifling without even a window to open, the heat from the various fireplaces in the Parliament House that kept all the other corners of the building comfortably toasty turned this one room into a damned oven.

While Lord Rayne droned on and on about taxes and loans and interest, Samuel fidgeted awkwardly with his cravat, wanting nothing more than to loosen it. But even here, among those he might not be able to call friends but were certainly something more than acquaintances, he knew that it would draw him undue attention. That the stark scars on his throat would still catch everyone’s eyes, a reminder of what he had been through. It wasn’t just on his throat either—the darkened lines trailed across his body, along all the paths that his veins and arteries travelled, a reminder of what had been done to him.

It had been months and they had not faded in the slightest, the touch of Isaac’s magic a memory he would carry on his skin for the rest of his life. A tale of loss and suffering that anyone could read, even if they did not know the full context of what had been taken from him. And, despite the way Tristan had put him on display that night when he had changed both his and Shan’s lives, it was not a tale that was anyone else’s right to see.

And so, he suffered.

Even if it left him hot and sweltering in his long-sleeved shirt and pants, his hands hidden by soft gloves, the cloth at his collar obscuring the delicate line of his throat. The others had shed their coats, had rolled up their sleeves in a desperate attempt to chase the littlest bit of comfort, stirring an unkind spark of jealousy that lodged itself in the back of Samuel’s throat.

“Enough,” Belrose said, leaning back in her seat and draping her hand across her eyes. It was strange how different they were, like this, without the weight of expectation and decorum.

When they were grappling with the details of their work during the official recess, nailing down the different motions they would bring forward with the new Season, as they worked together to hash out what was left of their government after the King had stepped in last summer. Sweeping laws that restricted the rights and movements of the many Unblooded citizens of the nation, only now just starting to lift, like that damnable curfew.

Though that was only because enough Blood Workers had been complaining about it, how terribly difficult it was to schedule their employees’ and servants’ work around the legal regulations, funneled through the offices of the Councillor of Industry. A minutia he never would have even considered, a year past.

It was more than he had expected, back when he had first joined the House of Lords, less than a year ago. It had all seemed so frivolous. And maybe it was, then. There had never been a political shift like this in all of Aeravin’s history, not since its very founding.

They were in uncharted waters, and as the least experienced member of the Council, he did not know what the Eternal King had been thinking with this appointment.

“Jenna,” Lord Rayne pressed, only for Belrose to shoot him a quieting glare.

“You’ve made your point quite well, Matthias.” She straightened in her seat, hands draped over the edges of the armrests. “We are fucked.”

Samuel couldn’t help but wince at her blunt language. She wasn’t wrong, as far as he could tell. The particulars were beyond him, truthfully, but the basis of it was clear enough.

In addition to a blood shortage, Aeravin was teetering on the brink of financial collapse.

“Then perhaps you should do something,” Rayne muttered, looking every bit of his seven decades. “Trade is our only option.”

“Not our only option,” Lady Holland said, leaning forward. Any spark that she once had burned out over their many meetings, as she made the same argument again and again. But none would side with her, none but Samuel, as what she asked for was so absurd that it was laughed out of hand.

For why would the richest of Aeravin consent to a rise in monetary taxes when they already had to suffer the effects of blood rationing? But that was the joy and frustration of working with Lady Holland—she was always willing to look at issues through the lens of sheer practicality, even when it was uncomfortable.

Especially when it was uncomfortable.

Lady Belrose did not even dignify Lady Holland’s comment with a response, her attention firmly on Lord Rayne. “As you are aware,” she shot back, “I cannot simply change tariffs on my own. We’d need Royal approval.”

Several sets of eyes shot in his direction, a question hanging unasked on the air. It was something that had been happening ever since his appointment. It had been over a century since an Aberforth had been on the Council, and he couldn’t blame them for wanting to use him to their advantage. He was uniquely positioned as the only living blood relative of the Eternal King… in addition to his close ties to the Royal Blood Worker.

Licking dry lips, he turned his attention to Lady Belrose. “If you have a proposal written up, I can ensure that it is brought to his attention.”

“Can you truly?” Lady Morse interjected, drumming her fingers on the table. Even here, in the privacy of their secluded meetings, she was as unyielding as stone. A hardened military leader in a land where the military hadn’t mattered for centuries. “His Majesty has not responded to any of our other proposals of late.”

“I am but the messenger,” Samuel replied, spreading his hands wide in a placating gesture. “The King is busy with his studies.”

It might have been the truth, as far as Shan had been able to assure him, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. The problems were stark, and the King’s ongoing policies were only making things worse. The Blood Taxes had been raised, rationing had been enforced, the curfew had only just been lifted. Outright rebellion had been ceased under the threat of violence, but the unrest continued.

And unless Tristan Aberforth, the Eternal King of Aeravin, could be bothered to get off his arse and do something about it, this fragile peace would shatter under the slightest weight.

“We understand, Samuel,” Holland assured him, offering him something of a sympathetic smile. He wasn’t sure if any of the other Councillors could truly be called allies, but if there was one, it would be Zelda Holland. “But we are running out of options.”

“I know,” he said, with more fervor than he intended. “I know.” The futility of it all was nearly enough to drive him to madness, but he couldn’t bring himself to not try.

Trying was all he had left.

“Very well,” Belrose said, with an air of finality. “I’ll have the draft on your desk by morning, Aberforth. As for the rest of us, I propose that we take the rest of the day as a recess. We all know we need it.”

The rest of the Councillors muttered their agreement, pushing away from the table as they gathered their things. Samuel didn’t object—hells, he agreed, even as it felt like they were giving up. Another meeting, another waste of time, and what was there to show for it?

A plan that the King would probably never deign to look at, no matter what pretty promises Samuel made.

Holland crept over to his side as the others made their way out of the room, hovering awkwardly as he collected his notes. “Could I borrow a moment of your time?”

He hesitated for only a second before flashing her a smile, one that he had practiced in the mirror under Shan’s careful instruction. It wasn’t quite second nature yet, the charming yet untouchable role of Lord Aberforth, heir to the Eternal King, but it was coming easier with each passing day. Rarely did he feel the bile creep up the back of his throat with every lie, nor the flush of shame that marred so many of his early days in this role.

Each day he sunk a little deeper into the lies that he had learned to wear like armor, and he didn’t know if he would ever be able to claw his way out again.

“After you,” he said, inclining his head towards the door. Holland nodded, accepting with a small smile, and he followed her through the halls of the Parliament House. They walked in comfortable silence—Zelda had never been the type to fill the air with idle prattle, like the rest of the Councillors. When she spoke, it was direct and with purpose, and Samuel was always thankful for that.

Several minutes later, she unlocked the door to her office, and Samuel swept in to take a seat while Zelda instructed her aide to bring them some refreshments. Her offic