Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(110)
The difficulty with feelings was you could manage them, keep them at bay, but eventually they would return, and they would demand penance. Evie feared the day they came to collect on all the times she had shuttered them away.
She forced her features to soften, her lips curving. “That is wonderful, Trystan. I’m so proud of you.”
Reaching up her arms, she wrapped them gently around him, curling her fingers in his hair. He grew rigid, and she prepared for him to pull away from her, for him to reject the affection she offered, but the hesitation lasted but a moment, and in the next, his arms were closing around her.
She was the first to break the embrace, and when he realized this, he jolted back so fast he knocked his head against one of the lanterns. “Ow!” He rubbed at the back of his head, grumbling, prickly as the thorny hedge in front of the manor. “All I did was read a letter, Sage. It wasn’t so very difficult.”
Her lips folded inward. “Wasn’t it?”
“It was merely drivel about how he was proud and how no matter what, I’d always be his son.” Scoffing, he planted his hands on his hips as he made for the railing overlooking the water. “Hardly anything groundbreaking.”
She could feel his defenses rising, the hackles going up, every barrier he had built to protect himself from others coming to the warfront. “No,” she said quietly. “There is nothing groundbreaking about someone loving you. It doesn’t surprise me a bit.”
His head turned to her so fast she thought it was about to roll off onto the deck like a wayward cricket ball. “Sage—”
She held up a finger. “No! No, you are not allowed to ruin this moment with something dismissive or naysayer-y.”
“That’s not a word.”
She ignored him. “One day in the future, when I am telling this story, I want to say that on my twenty-fourth birthday, I spent the evening on a ship that was pinker than a tulip, I danced with The Villain, and then I told him that he was easy to love, despite how much he wanted it to be difficult.”
Trystan held up a hand, not angry, just dumbstruck. “I do not want—”
Her hand closed over his mouth. The stubble prickled her palm, and the warmth of his lips sent goose bumps up her arm. His facial hair owned some magical quality—that could be the only explanation. He tried to mumble her name underneath her fingers, but it came out something like “Sigggg.”
Her arm fell to her side, and she waited for the fallout. Without even a helmet for protection.
He shocked her when he brushed one of her curls behind her ear, fingers grazing her cheek as they went, soft eyes looking at her like he had never seen anything as fascinating as what was in front of him.
“When you tell this story, you can also say that the moment The Villain read that letter, the first person he wanted to tell was you. The first person—” He swallowed, struggling with the words. “The first person he wants to tell anything has always been you.”
Her smile was big and bright and honest.
Real.
Trystan must have known, because he answered it with one of his own. So big and beautiful, his whole face changed into someone gentle, someone tenderhearted and open. And Evie made a simple vow to herself.
I will kill Benedict for trying to take this from him. If it’s my final act in this life.
“Well, I’m going to check on the cake.” Evie smiled, folding her hands behind her back, and slowly moved away, ignoring her instincts to get as close to him as possible.
“Very well.” Trystan’s grin faded. “Sage. I meant to ask—who exactly are you planning to share this story with?”
Evie flung her arms wide in a dramatic curtsy, faking exasperation. “Our children, obviously. Girls, I think. Two of them.”
She was joking, of course, but that did not mean she didn’t enjoy the way he paled, looking seconds away from fainting. “Girls. Two of them,” he repeated slowly, like it was happening, like she’d currently summoned the children just by mentioning it, like she was conjuring gremlins.
“Not to worry, sir!” Evie spun around, calling behind her as she strode away, head high. “They’ll probably be just like me!”
Yes, this was the best birthday she had ever had.
She just hoped it was not the last.
Chapter 68
The Villain
They sailed into port in the early hours of the morning, the fog rolling in as steady as the morning tide. It clouded Trystan’s view of Benevolence Village, but that did not stop him from taking it all in with a grim expression.
He had not slept a wink the night prior. Instead, he’d remained in the background as the crew sang their birthday song to Sage, then happily tripped one of the crewmen into the wall when he planted a large kiss on her cheek. After that, he’d disappeared, saying he had a headache, but that wasn’t why he had made his escape. Not truly.
He inhaled the scent of salty sea water mixing with the smells of the bakery just opening on the docks. The thin cloth of his shirt did nothing to protect him from the morning chill, but it did not matter. He needed the cold.
Girls. Two of them.
She had been trying to rattle him. As far gone as Trystan was for her, he wasn’t so foolish as to ignore her insistent attempts to shake him, to be his downfall in this battle of wills.