by Meg Anne
Even though her arm felt like it was being torn from her body, Effie still had one good one. Letting the sword fall from limp fingers, she hefted her cleaver higher in her left hand.
Tess laughed harder, which only fueled Effie’s rage.
Snarling, vision cloudy with pain, Effie pulled her left arm back, inhaling deeply. As she exhaled, she let the cleaver go, watching it spin through the air and wedge itself in the center of Tess’ forehead.
The laughter abruptly stopped as ichor-tainted blood started to drip down the once beautiful face.
Heart still thundering, Effie stumbled forward, her right leg buckling as the stretching and tearing feeling from her arm worked its way down her body. Nothing was going to stop her, not when she was this close.
Limping forward, Effie tugged her weapon free from the woman who’d fallen to her knees, a wet gurgle bubbling forth from her mouth.
Large, milky-white eyes blinked up at her, and in them she could see her reflection. In that long, drawn-out moment, Effie was no longer sure which of them was the monster.
Nor did she care.
Grasping the woman by her hair, Effie tugged her head back, exposing her throat. Leaning forward so that her mouth brushed against Tess’ ear, she whispered, “When you get to hell, tell them that I sent you.”
The dead woman’s head was already falling from her body before Effie finished speaking.
Chapter 32
All around him the Keepers and the citizens protected by the citadel fought for their homes and their families. It didn’t take centuries of experience to see that it was a losing battle. More than half the buildings in the city were burning, thick smoke hanging heavy in the air and turning it a menacing, burnt orange. Those that weren’t on fire were little more than dust with nothing left to show that they’d once existed at all.
Lucian felt the loss of the city like the loss of a limb. He’d called many places home throughout his life, but had always found a special kind of peace in the Vil d’lume. Now that it was destroyed, the survivors would try to rebuild, but they’d never capture what had been lost. That kind of magic only ever exists once.
Lungs burning, Lucian spun around, searching for his next target. He didn’t have to look for long. The tainted beasts were everywhere. Drenched in blood and sweat, he no longer knew how much of it was his, but Lucian didn’t stop swinging his blade and fighting for what was left of his home. For the people he considered his.
While the Guardian plowed through an endless stream of Shadows and their Shadow-touched minions, the Chosen used what powers they had to try and mitigate the damage. These were no seasoned warriors, few if any had more than remedial control of their elements, but between them they’d been able to offer enough of a distraction that Lucian and his men could fight back.
“Keepers retreat!”
Lucian was not a sentimental man, but he was grateful for the quick thinking that had him grabbing the handful of items he’d tied around his waist before donning his armor. By the time the day was through, nothing within the citadel would remain.
Looking out over what had once been the central fountain, Lucian met Kael’s eyes, his brother’s grim expression matching his own.
“The citadel is lost.”
There was nothing left they could do now but survive.
Lucian fought like a man possessed, his blade spinning around him so fast he was obscured by the blur. He hacked and slashed, showing no mercy for the monsters that stole the lives of the innocent. They deserved none.
No matter who they’d once been.
Dropping to his knees to dodge a bolt of sickly green acid, Lucian used his momentum to roll forward and cut the legs from the Shadow who’d flung it. A wet gurgle sounded above him, telling him Kael had completed the kill.
The two men didn’t acknowledge each other. They didn’t need to. Not when enemies still walked among them.
Dragging in a ragged breath, Lucian scanned the thinning crowd, seeking out his next target. The battle was starting to slow, the ground littered with corpses. So many familiar faces stared up at him with blank eyes, and more than he cared to admit had died by his blade. Dozens of Keepers had been turned—although one was too many.
How? How had this happened?
Frustration and grief simmered in his veins. All the prophecies and warning in the realm hadn’t been able to stop this from coming to be.
Howling in rage, Lucian swung his blade, the tendrils of inky smoke wafting along the edges burned through rotting flesh and made quick work of a snarling Shadow. The fiends may have destroyed his city, but at least few, if any of them, would survive to celebrate the victory.
A flash of red caught his eye. Lucian stared hard at the crumbling stairway as Ronan stumbled down it with the Night Stalker leaned heavily on his arm. They were the first to step out of the building since the Triumvirate’s order to fall back. Lucian didn’t want to contemplate what that meant for the rest of the Keepers.
Heart pounding, he looked behind the warrior, searching for a head of familiar blonde curls.
Effie was nowhere to be found.
Lucian’s heart stopped, and his eyes flew back to a guilty-looking Ronan. He was already moving, his voice barely human as he snarled, “Where is she?”
“She wouldn’t leave. Somethi—”
Blinded with rage, Lucian shoved the man, sending him staggering back. “You left her?” he roared, disbelief and fear turning his blood to ice.
“She’s not—”
Voice dropping low, Lucian looked Ronan dead in the eye, not wanting to leave any room for misinterpretation. “You better hope she’s alive when I find her, Shield, because if something’s happened to her, nowhere in any world will keep you safe from me. I will hunt you down and slit your throat in your sleep.”
Ronan’s nostrils flared and a flash of something burned in his eyes, but he only nodded.
Pushing past him, Lucian ran up the stairs and into the burning building, the shouts of his brothers lost in the wind.
Lucian lost track of the number of rooms he combed through, pausing only to turn over a body and ensure it was not the one he was looking for. The burst of relief each time it wasn’t grew fainter as he ran out of places to search.
Entire wings of the citadel were gone, leaving Lucian with the option of trying to dig through the debris or climb over it. More often than not, he had to turn around and try to gain entry from a different direction.
One way or the other, he would find her. There was no other acceptable option.
Lucian knew that he should have been at her side as soon as the fighting was underway. Effie was his charge, his responsibility. But she’d been cut off from him, and the townsfolk were all but defenseless without him.
He’d justified his absence by telling himself that Effie was with Ronan. The Shield should have kept her safe. The bastard damn near flayed him alive when they met for Lucian failing to do the same. So how? How by all that was holy could he have just left her?
Lucian shook off the rage, needing his battle calm to stay focused. Emotion had no place here.
Taking the next turn at a run, Lucian skidded to a halt. Less than an arm’s length before him, a small body was crouched over something on the ground.
“Effie?”
A wet growl was his only answer.
The hair along the back of his neck lifted. There was nothing human about that sound.
Suddenly, the answer to a question he hadn’t wanted to face slammed into him.
Denial was a cruel mistress. She let you bury your head until the truth of a matter cut you to the core. When it would hurt you the most.
Lucian would have laughed if he wasn’t so close to losing it entirely.
There had been so many clues, the truth begging him to notice. He’d missed it. Him. A fucking Guardian with the ability to see life’s very essence. Never once did he think to use his power to check her. Not after Sylverlands, when he’d inadvertently done so,
and she’d shone more brightly than twenty fucking suns.
Never, in all his years as a Guardian, had Lucian seen anyone shine as Effie had that day. There had been no doubt in his mind that her soul was pure. That she was untainted.
He’d never made a costlier mistake in his immortal life.
It was only now, when it was too late, that he finally understood his error. Her soul’s radiance was the very reason he hadn’t sensed the dissonance. The same must have been true for Tinka.
Khouman’s broken words swam to the surface. ‘Would never hurt a fly unless it was to save someone . . . but then I started to notice the changes in her. A savagery so out of place with her gentle heart . . . Surges of temper . . . A new proclivity toward violence.’
Tinka had taken weeks to transform, then, just like now, no one realized what happened until it was too late. Until their loved ones were lost . . .
If Lucian had taken the time to search Effie’s essence again, would he have found the microscopic stain? Would it have made a difference?
Or had Effie’s days been numbered ever since that Shadow tore out a piece of her and contaminated her blood?
Lucian didn’t need his power now to show him what should have been obvious as soon as the first of her symptoms started to appear.
Her sudden disregard for her friends.
Her muddied visions.
The unexplained bout of physical pain when he’d held her in the shower.
All things that had been explained away as something far less sinister than the truth.
In order for the corruption to fully spread inside its host, it must have to tear the person’s soul apart first. No wonder it had taken so long for the changes to be revealed. The weaker and more prone to evil the person, the faster the corruption spread. But for Effie and Tinka, those who were truly good, the transition was much slower, but no less absolute.
Lucian’s heart caught in his throat as the blonde head started to turn toward him. Even though he knew what he’d find, he almost dropped to his knees as reality stared him down. Years of training was the only thing keeping him upright.
“Hello, Guardian,” Effie snarled, black lines slithering through milky white eyes. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Lucian’s blade dropped to the ground with a dull clang.
Letting out a savage battle-cry, the woman who cradled Lucian’s blackened heart in the palm of her hand launched herself at him, the promise of death shining in her mutilated eyes.
Effie and Lucian’s journey concludes with The Keeper’s Vow, coming November 2019. Sign-up here to be notified as soon as the pre-order is available!
Can’t wait for more Keepers? Check out Kieran’s story, The Dreamer and see how the obsession begins. Keep reading for a sneak peek.
Sneak Peek
Kieran bolted upright, beads of sweat trickling down his back and chest as he fought to catch his breath. Scenes of the horrific battle superimposed themselves over his reality. He fisted his hands in the sheets that pooled at his hips and fought the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him.
Breathing through his nose, he willed his racing heart to slow, while the echoes of her pain continued to radiate through his body. He’d been dreaming of her since he was a child, and never in his hundred and twenty-six years had he experienced something so intense as the dream that had just woken him. Kieran could still feel her heart breaking as if it was his own.
Kieran lifted a shaking hand to brush back the tangled strands of long, damp hair that clung to his face. It took several long moments for his breathing to even out and for his room to come into focus.
Somewhere in the world, perhaps another world entirely, a girl with golden-blonde hair and wide, cornflower-blue eyes was about to watch the man she loved die to save her.
“Effie,” he whispered, the sound of her name breaking the silence.
Kieran had practically grown up with the mysterious girl from his dreams. It took him decades to realize she was not merely a figment of his imagination. It was even longer before he realized, real or not, he may never meet her. That would require knowing where she was, and all he had to go off of was a name. Hardly a good start. The fact, however, did little to quell his response to her. After bearing witness to so many of Effie’s life-defining moments, he felt connected to her in a way he’d never come close to feeling with anyone else.
It’s what made her pain unbearable.
Not for the first time, Kieran wished he could go to her. Wrap his arms around her and comfort her. It was the worst kind of hell to care for someone you could never have.
Kieran sucked in a breath and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Going back to sleep now would be impossible. There would be no peace found there anyway, only the haunting echo of her screams. As his feet touched the cool stone floor, the jolt of cold helped to further ground him, although flashes of his dream continued to torment him.
His head dipped to his chest, the loose strands of his hair falling forward and concealing his face. There was no logical explanation for why he had these dreams. No reason at all why he should care so much about someone he’d never met. Someone who didn’t know he existed.
It was bad enough when he’d watched her fall in love with the golden-haired warrior. He’d woken from the dream of their first kiss only to slam his fist into an antique mirror. But this…nothing had prepared him for this. It was so much worse watching her fight tooth and nail to crawl toward her lover’s burning body.
Kieran grit his teeth, his fingers biting into the wood of his bed frame until a splinter buried itself in his flesh. He hissed with pain and dug out the sliver of wood in the dim moonlight that filtered in from the balcony. Thankfully, the physical pain helped to chase away the ghosts of his dream.
Relief had his shoulders drooping. If that’s what it took, he’d gladly surrender to the pain. He’d work himself to the bone so long as sweet oblivion waited for him at the end.
Anything was better than this.
The Dreamer is out now!
FROM THE AUTHOR
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Acknowledgments
There are so many people that are responsible—in big and small ways—for the creation of this (and every) book. Most of them I try and thank regularly. They are the ones who celebrate the small victories with me, are there to listen or let me spam them when I come up with a piece of dialogue so good I just need to bask in it, and the same ones that help me talk through the writer’s block. They are my tribe and I am so lucky to have them.
That said, there’s one person that deserves extra special attention, so this time around he’s the one I want to focus on. Not because all those other people aren’t essential—they are—but because I literally could not do this without him.
Never has anyone supported me and my dreams so thoroughly. He’s shouldered every burden to allow me to focus on living my dream. From making sure I take breaks to eat, to being my alpha reader and plot partner, to being my web developer and graphic designer, my PA, my partner in crime, my inspiration, my big spoon—he takes care of every need. I may write about soulmates and epic badass alpha’s, but he’s the real deal. The love of a lifetime. He’s the reason I get to write full time, and I can never thank him enough for that.
To my husband, I love you with all of my heart. You are my safe space. You give me room to fly, but are the reason I’ll always come back home. I
am so thankful we are on this journey together and that you are just as excited about it as I am.
Also By Meg Anne
Fantasy Romance
The Chosen Universe
The Chosen
Mother of Shadows
Reign of Ash
Crown of Embers
Queen of Light
The Keepers
The Dreamer – A Keepers Story
The Keeper’s Legacy
The Keeper’s Retribution
The Keeper’s Vow
Paranormal Romance
Cursed Hearts
Co-Written with Jessica Wayne
Star-Crossed
Amria
Supernova
ABOUT MEG ANNE
Meg Anne has always had stories running on a loop in her head. They started off as daydreams about how the evil queen (aka Mom) had her slaving away doing chores; and more recently shifted into creating backgrounds about the people stuck beside her during rush hour. The stories have always been there; they were just waiting for her to tell them.
Like any true SoCal native, Meg enjoys staying inside curled up with a good book and her cat Henry . . . or maybe that’s just her. You can convince Meg to buy just about anything if it’s covered in glitter or rhinestones, or make her laugh by sharing your favorite bad joke. She also accepts bribes in the form of baked goods and Mexican food.
Meg loves to write about sassy heroines and the men that love them. She is best known for her adult fantasy romance series The Chosen, which can be found on Amazon.
