The Keeper's Retribution: A Chosen Novel (The Keepers Book 2) Read online

  Taking a shuddering breath, Effie glanced back down, and finally saw what had become of Jo. A horrified whimper escaped her as she processed what she’d done, the level of brutality she’d been capable of unleashing.

  No wonder Tess fled.

  Scrambling off of the body, Effie crawled to the corner of the room and threw up.

  Chapter 23

  “She’s in here!”

  Effie lifted her head up just enough for her eyes to peek up over her arms. Much of the afternoon light had faded, leaving the treehouse mostly in shadow. She could just make out Lucian’s dark head in the soft light that still fell through what passed for a window.

  She had no idea how long she’d been curled into a ball in the corner. Everything after when she’d gotten sick was a blur. Although she must have snagged one of the blankets off the floor at some point, because one of the moldy scraps of fabric was flung over the top half of the corpse in a desperate attempt to cover up what laid beneath.

  If only it was as easy to hide the image permanently seared into her mind.

  Lucian took one look at her and then glanced at the body beside her.

  “It would seem that we’re too late for a proper rescue.”

  She couldn’t even muster a smile.

  Lucian frowned. “Effie?”

  Tears filled her eyes, and she squeezed her arms tighter around her trembling body. How was she supposed to explain what happened when she barely understood it herself?

  A muscle ticked in Lucian’s jaw, and he eyed the wooden structure, his frown deepening as he did. “Effie, I’m going to need you to come to me. I’m too big to move about in here. Can you do that?”

  Apparently, she took too long to respond because Lucian started to push his shoulders through the small opening in the floor anyway. A shiver raced along her skin as she realized it was the same one that Jo and Tess had used to pull her up by the legs. Effie shoved the thought away, she didn’t want to think about either woman right now. Or what was left of them.

  “No! Don’t!” Effie cried, holding out a hand to stop him. “I’ll come to you.”

  She didn’t want Lucian to come anywhere near the shrouded corpse. He might be tempted to lift the blanket. She didn’t want him to see proof of what she was capable of. How could he look at her with anything but disgust again if he did?

  It was more difficult than she’d thought to unfurl her body, her overworked muscles cramped and unwilling to budge. With a low groan, she managed to move to her knees and crawl to Lucian.

  He sucked in a breath when she made it into the light.

  “Effie.”

  “It’s not mine,” she managed, referring to the blood she knew covered her.

  His eyes shifted from her battered hands up to the matted hair hanging in clumps around her face.

  “I know what happened to Jo—” she broke off, choking on the name.

  Lucian’s eyes darted back to the corpse behind her and gave her a grim nod. “We’ll save the storytelling for later. For now, let’s worry about getting you home.”

  She nodded, a tear slipping free as she sucked in another breath. “Okay.”

  “Can you slide forward a bit more? If you swing your legs down the latch, I can grasp you around the waist and help you down. There’s a ladder alongside the trunk of this tree that leads to another platform below. There’s an entire series of houses up here. It took us a while to find the one you were in.”

  Lucian kept talking, his voice warm and unhurried as she tried to follow his commands. He only stopped when her swollen foot came into view. It was an angry purple, her skin shredded from the rope and barbs, and more than twice its normal size.

  “Here, I’ve got you,” he murmured, no longer waiting for her to try and navigate getting out of the little house on her own.

  Effie was more than willing to let him take over. Wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, she buried her face into his shoulder and breathed him in.

  “We’re coming down!” he shouted over her head. In a quieter voice, he added, “Hold on to me.”

  Lucian began climbing down a ladder she hadn’t noticed. Effie didn’t once worry about falling. Lucian wouldn’t let her.

  “I’ll take her,” Kael said, holding out his arms for her as they neared the landing.

  “No, it’s fine,” Lucian said, the sound of his voice rumbling against her cheek.

  Peering through her hair, Effie watched Kael nod and step back.

  “Mother’s tits,” Ronan whispered from somewhere out of view.

  Effie held onto Lucian tighter, attempting to hide as much of her gore-spattered body as possible.

  “Effie, look at me,” he ordered.

  She shook her head.

  “Look at me, fledgling,” he said again, this time in a voice coated in steel. He wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  Loosening her grip, she lifted her chin. A tremor ran down Lucian’s body as his eyes roamed over her face.

  Not knowing what else to say, Effie blurted the first thing that came to mind. “You owe me a new weapon. Lots of them. Something more substantial than a fucking dagger.”

  Lucian’s eyes widened, and his mouth curled into a smile. “Is that so?” He tilted his head. “Seems like you managed well enough.”

  Some of the horror of what happened must have shone in her eyes because Lucian’s smile faltered.

  “I’ll get you whatever you want,” he said gruffly. “If you don’t know how to use it, we’ll train you until you do.”

  Effie nodded, relieved that much, at least, would be settled. She started to lower her face back to his shoulder, preferring to stay out of sight as much as possible.

  “Wait,” Lucian said, halting the movement. “I need to set you down for a second so I can get a better hold on you. It’s a long walk back to the portal from here.”

  “Should we try and make her a litter?” Kael asked from behind her. “It might be more comfortable.”

  “Effie?” Lucian asked, looking down at her.

  She dug her nails into his back and shook her head.

  The only place she wanted to be right now was in Lucian’s arms. She hated that it made her appear weak, but he was the only thing keeping the panic at bay, and she didn’t want to risk it coming back. Some combination of his strength, scent, or maybe just the steady sound of his heartbeat had managed to make her feel more like herself than she had since ending up in the treehouse.

  Effie didn’t recognize the savage creature she’d turned into up there, and she never wanted to be that thing again. She didn’t care that it might have just been her sense of self-preservation taking over. She’d been scared of a lot of things in her life, but nothing so much as who—what—she’d turned into when facing off with Jo and Tess. That other Effie was beyond terrifying.

  Especially since she could still feel the echoes of pleasure she’d experience when destroying Jo.

  Revulsion made her stomach roll, and Effie squeezed her eyes shut. No. I would never take pleasure in killing anyone.

  She repeated the mantra over and over. It was one thing to kill for survival, but another to revel in it. Effie didn’t want to be the kind of person that enjoyed another person’s pain. Not even if they deserved it.

  “I’ll carry her,” Lucian said. Dipping his chin to whisper in her ear, he added, “I won’t let you go.”

  “Thank you.”

  After wrapping up her ankle in a makeshift bandage, and a quick bit of strategizing, the men worked out the fastest way to get out of the trees and back to the portal. Effie leaned against Lucian, barely hearing any of it. She was numb. Numb to the pain and to her surroundings.

  “She’s shutting down,” Kael said, sounding like he was speaking from a great distance.

  “It’s battle fatigue,” Ronan said. “I recognize the symptoms.”

  It wasn’t until Lucian spoke that she snapped back to the conversation.

  “We need to get her t
o a healer.”

  “Not the healing wing,” Effie protested weakly as Lucian lifted her back up, cradling her in his arms.

  “You need to get your wounds tended to,” Lucian insisted.

  “I’m tired of waking up in that cold, sterile room. Can’t they tend to me in my suite? If not, they may as well just put my damn name on the door and let me redecorate considering how much time I’ve spent in there.”

  Lucian’s lips flattened. “We’ll go to the healers, so as not to inconvenience them, but you can stay with me.”

  “Okay,” she said, letting her eyes fall closed as Lucian started walking.

  “I fucking hate it when you agree with me that easily,” he muttered darkly, lengthening his strides.

  Effie’s lips twitched, but her eyes remained closed. “Why’s that?”

  “Because it means something’s seriously wrong.”

  Chapter 24

  In the end, Lucian didn’t end up taking her to the healing wing first. He started down the hall that would take them there and didn’t make it more than two steps before noticing the way Effie was cringing away from the others’ curious stares.

  “I don’t want them to see me like this,” she whispered.

  He recognized the shame and guilt in her voice. Every warrior knew what it was like to walk off the battlefield feeling like you’d left some part of your humanity behind.

  Lucian felt her pain like a knife to the heart. Effie shouldn’t have to know what that was like. He was supposed to protect her. Not that she couldn’t fight her own battles, but she shouldn’t have to. Why should she bloody her hands when his were more than stained enough for the both of them?

  “I’m going to help her clean up first. You guys report in,” he said, sending Kael and Ronan away.

  He’d been carrying Effie for over an hour, but barely felt her slight weight as he took her to his room. The way he was feeling right now, he might never let her go again. That was twice in the span of a week he’d thought he lost her. Lucian didn’t think he’d survive a third.

  Not without burning down the world around him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, lifting her head and looking around.

  “To get you washed up.”

  “In your room?” she asked as he kicked open the door to the Guardians’ shared chamber.

  “Would you prefer somewhere else?”

  Her eyes were a brilliant blue as they blinked up at him from her blood-smeared face. “This is probably a bad time to try and get me naked, Guardian.”

  Lucian snorted. “Trust me, fledgling, if that was my intent, I’m sure you’d be more than willing.”

  Effie’s lips lifted in the barest hint of a smile, and some of the weight in Lucian’s chest lifted. If she was smiling, then she would come back to him. Maybe not tonight, or even tomorrow, but she would recover from the horrors of the day.

  “You’re probably right,” she muttered as he carried her through his room and into his black tiled bathing chamber.

  “Just to be safe, we’ll leave the clothes on,” he whispered, earning another rasping chuckle.

  Lucian smacked the silver tile that allowed the warm water to flow from the ceiling.

  “You’re going to get wet,” Effie protested when Lucian stepped beneath the spray with her still cradled in his arms.

  “So are you.”

  It wasn’t long before the water that fell to the floor was tinged red. Needing to distract himself from the possibility that more of that blood was hers than she let on, Lucian set Effie down on a bench set back into the wall of the shower.

  “Isn’t the point of your shower that you’re supposed to remain standing?” Effie asked with a laugh, lifting a hand to brush her hair off of her face.

  Lucian pressed another small disk in the wall, dispersing a white cream. “If I recall correctly, you weren’t so good at the standing part even without an injured ankle.”

  Effie stuck her tongue out, and Lucian’s heart clenched. With each fresh wave of gore that ran down the drain, the more of the woman he knew returned to him. Distantly, Lucian realized that caring for her like this might have been just as much for him as it was for her.

  Rubbing his hands together, Lucian began to lather the soap.

  “Shift a bit to your left,” he instructed.

  Eyeing him suspiciously, Effie did as she was told.

  Lucian began to run his hands through her hair, detangling the matted strands as carefully as he could, while still massaging the soap into her scalp and using his thumbs to press into the knotted muscles along her neck.

  Effie let out a little moan that he felt straight in his groin.

  Not the time.

  “That feels amazing, Lucian.”

  The rest of his blood flowed south as he struggled to focus on washing the soap from her hair. She might be making the sweetest noises he’d ever heard, but this was hardly a seduction.

  She’s injured, you ass. Lucian forced himself to pay attention to the cuts and scrapes covering most of her skin to help alleviate the sudden tightness in his pants.

  He couldn’t tell which of them was breathing harder by the time he was done and Effie was clean once more.

  Turning off the flow of water, he said, “If you’d like, I can run you a bath so you can soak for a bit before we get that ankle taken care of. Or, if you’re in a lot of pain, we’ll dry you off and get it handled straight away.”

  Effie’s eyes glowed as she peeked up at him with a small smile playing on her lips. “Would you be getting in with me?”

  Lucian closed his eyes, more tempted than he’d ever been by the image of their bodies sliding against each other beneath the water. “That’s probably not a good idea,” he said in a strangled voice.

  “I trust you,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand.

  “It’s a good thing one of us does.”

  Her laugh was low and husky. “We’ll both behave. I just want to be close to you, Lucian. You keep the darkness away.”

  His eyes snapped open and his desire ebbed at the haunted look in her crystalline eyes.

  “Part of war is death, Effie. No one will blame you for doing what you had to do.”

  It killed him when Effie looked away from him, pain etched in every curve of her body. She was holding herself so carefully, as if one wrong move would see her falling apart.

  “There’s self-defense and then there’s what happened today,” she said, her voice hollow.

  Needing to touch her, Lucian settled for pushing a few blonde curls away from her face, letting his fingers linger along her jaw. “Tell me what happened.”

  She shook her head. “Please don’t make me.”

  “No one makes you do anything, remember? But, I do think it will make you feel better.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  Lucian sighed, crouching down until his face was level with hers. “Effie, I know what it means to take a life. To recognize the person on the other end of your sword as you watch the light fade from their eyes. It’s a bloody business, but it’s inevitable.”

  “She was my friend,” Effie said, her voice broken.

  “She wasn’t the person you knew anymore.”

  “You think I don’t know that? That it makes it better? Lucian, I—” she broke off, pressing her lips together and shaking her head.

  “You what?”

  “I destroyed her,” she whispered, the look in her eyes so devastated it hurt him to look at her. Effie’s hands shook as she lifted them. “I destroyed her with my bare hands. I didn’t stop, Lucian. Not even when she was dead. I-I couldn’t stop.”

  She was crying openly now, her entire body shaking with the force of her sobs.

  Lucian pulled her into his arms, sitting down on the shower floor and easily supporting Effie’s weight as she fell against him. “You were protecting yourself.”

  “No—”

  “Yes,” he insisted. “Effie, neither her nor Tess would have
hesitated to kill you. You’ve seen what the Shadow-touched can do. They aren’t human.”

  “They still knew who I was, Lucian. It wasn’t like with Tinka. They weren’t mindless beasts.”

  “Not yet, but who’s to say that’s not where it was heading? We have no idea how quickly the corruption transforms its host.”

  “Tess is still out there somewhere.”

  “We’ll find her.”

  Effie scrubbed at her face, hiding behind the palms of her hands.

  “Hey,” Lucian murmured, tugging gently on her wrist. “Don’t hide from me.”

  “How can you even stand to look at me after what I did?”

  “You think what you did today compares to the worst of what I’ve done in my lifetime? You want to talk about darkness, Effie, I can promise you my soul is blacker than yours will ever be.”

  Effie shook her head, her expression fierce. “Not possible.”

  “How can you be so sure?” he asked, lifting his brow.

  She rested her hand over his chest. “I see who you are, Lucian. There might be darkness, but it is eclipsed by all that is good and honorable within you.”

  Her words gutted him. “Effie, if you can be certain, so can I,” he finally managed.

  She opened her mouth to argue, and he pressed a finger against her lips.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “With my life,” she answered, without hesitation.

  “Then believe me when I say, nothing you could do would ever change what I see when I look at you.”

  Her pulse fluttered in her neck, and then they were crashing together, their lips and tongues tangling in their desperation to get closer.

  Earlier promises forgotten, Lucian ran his hands along the sides of her leather-clad body, pulling her more solidly astride him. The leather vest she wore over her tunic was water-logged, the fabric swollen and difficult to manipulate. Lucian quickly gave up bothering with the buckles, feeling little guilt about tapping into his power to deal with removing it. If ever there was a time to take advantage of the ability to transform matter, surely it was now.

  Effie let out a soft chuckle as the garment fell free. Grasping a side of her vest, he flung it across the room, smiling when its wet slap caused her to laugh harder.