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Chapter 17
Eloise walked beside Keyon back to her room after the St. Johns had left.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Cease thanking me.”
“I shan’t. You did the right thing, letting them go.”
“We shall see,” Keyon grumbled.
Eloise stopped in front of her door, and Keyon paused, too. “Would you… Do you want to come inside?” she asked tentatively.
“You have no idea how much,” he answered, his gaze burning through her.
Eloise swallowed, opened the door, and slowly entered. Keyon followed closely behind.
“Tell me about Ava,” Eloise said as she turned to him.
A grimace of pain twisted his face, and he looked away. “I’d rather not.”
“It might ease your pain.”
“Nothing will ease my pain,” he growled, and Eloise stepped back.
Keyon swallowed, then looked around the room. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“I am not.”
“Aren’t you?”
Eloise let out a breath. “You are not as frightening as you think you are.”
“And yet everybody is terrified.”
Eloise stepped closer to him. “Not me.”
Keyon paused, looking at her intently before nodding. “Not you.”
He walked over to the hearth and stirred the dying embers of the fire. “She was… carefree,” he finally said. “She wasn’t my blood sister. If I have any, I do not know them.”
Eloise watched his tense back as he hunched over the fire, unwilling to face her. He must have loved her so much to be in such pain.
Eloise had heard stories of Hades’ ruthlessness. She had never imagined him to be tender and caring about the people he loved.
“I found her in one of the brothels. The ones that use children as whores…”
Eloise jerked back, unprepared for such a revelation. Considering Keyon’s own past, she should have suspected.
“She was a tiny little thing. She did not know her age, but she looked to be not older than six. Six years old and those bastards used her to—” He halted and stood abruptly.
A tear slid from Eloise’s eye. How horrible it must have been for a small child.
“I was ruthless back then. I’d spent years on the streets, killing, looting, stealing. I did anything and everything in order to establish dominance in the criminal world. Because in the criminal world, if you weren’t high up in the chain, you were below. And trust me when I tell you nobody wants to be below. But when that little girl looked at me with all the horror in her eyes, as if I were a beast more terrifying than the bastards who’d confined her in the brothel and used her body for their pleasure, I realized that perhaps I had crossed the line.
“Only monsters kill.That’s what Ava told me. And I vowed to myself that no matter what other people see in me, that little girl would never see the beast in me. The monster. Since then, I have never killed a soul.” He turned toward Eloise, his eyes glassy. “I don’t want you to see a monster in me either.”
Eloise swallowed. “Is that why you did not kill him?”
