Keeper.What a funny word. Strangely versatile, depending on how you use it. I decided not to comment on it.
While the rest of them were still seething, in various stages of anger or maybe even grief, I concluded the story. “I escaped after locking them inside the room. The brothel’s name is The Maiden Fair. I doubt they’re still there though.”
“No, we can start there,” Winston exclaimed, turning around from the window. “Based on the events, theLordis likely a student too. They knew exactly when to attack you, so he must have passed the information to your kidnappers.” He turned to the others. “We have a few suspects on our list.”
“But how can you investigate without confronting the suspects?” I had thought the Prince wanted to keep this under wraps for now.
Claude walked over to my other side, stroking a hand on my hair. “Let us worry about that, baby girl. You’ve already been through enough. Anyone who touches you without your permission will die. To be honest, it’s like they’re defying the Royal Crown. How stupid is that?”
“Huh? Why?”
He beamed, but unlike Winston, he didn’t try to hide his ire through sweet smiles; Claude was genuinely happy at the thought of destroying someone. For my sake. I didn’t know whether I should be flattered or terrified. “Not only had they committed a crime at the Magical Academy, which is governed by Win, they had kidnapped the Caregiver of the Champions. They must think we were joking.”
“There’s gossip circulating the school that Bea’s your maid, after all,” Vincent muttered as he brushed a hand through his bright blue hair. “It's likely they think her kidnapping won’t be a big deal. Maybe even doing the Champions a favor if they think you’re making fun of her.”
Winston huffed before plastering on his usual angelic smile. “That can be easily rectified.”
I knew exactly what he meant. Of course I was against it.
“No, you will not,” I gasped. “You’re not going to make a Royal Decree out of it!”
Once again, I was painfully reminded that I shouldn’t be mixing with this company. I had already caught the attention of too many men, and adding more eyes on me would severely impact my escape plan.
The escape plan that was slowly disintegrating before my eyes.
Winston, surprisingly, nodded. “I defer to you, princess. But you can’t expect us not to do anything about it unofficially.”
And then Theodore stepped out of the shadows, covered in copious amounts of blood, holding a severed hand.
Before this past a-little-over-a-month I had been living in this universe, I was a fast-food worker, making ends meet, about to attend state university, with too many ex-boyfriends. The worst type of violence I had experienced was a beat down. There was blood, sure. If it were in a fighting ring, it was exciting in a sick kind of way.
Neversevered limbs.
Then it all dawned on me when the rest of the men glanced at him without a huge amount of revulsion — this wasnormal. We lived in a world where monster attacks were not uncommon, where the Demon Lord terrorized the northern territories, where there was an ongoing, Everlasting War, where students like me were expected to participate.
My experience for the past month had been extremely sanitized.
“Not so tough missing a hand,” Theodore mumbled, tossing the thing in the middle of the room. It landed in a pitiful heap on the stone flooring.
“A little decorum, please?” Samuel quipped.
“W-what the fuck is that?” I couldn’t help it; I stuttered.
Theodore froze for a second before his face fell. He already looked gloomy on a normal day, so this expression was something else. “Sorry you had to see that. I forgot you haven’t been through any combat yet …” He pointed at the thing. “My gift to you, wife.”
Questions of “Wife?” echoed throughout the room as he began pulling off his blood-soaked gloves, ignoring them.
“Whose hand is that?” I ignored them too.
“The bastard who touched you,” Theodore simply answered, settling on an empty wooden chair, staining it with the blood that wasn’t his.
I felt a chill, glancing at the thing again before focusing on him. “But how do you know you had the right bastard?”
“Nothing a little coin and torture doesn’t fix,” he mumbled. He gestured to the hand, looking at the others. “That one is nasty. Has a Unique that can make someone fall asleep through skin contact. No wonder he had a kidnapping business.”
The information made my blood run colder.
“But how? How did you know where to go? How did you get there so fast?” There was a point he had disappeared from my sight, but even then, that wasn’t long ago for him to travel across the city. And if he had left then, he wouldn’t have heard the additional details of the kidnapping.
