Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(112)

Arthur’s long red beard was neatly trimmed, his hair tied away from his face, and his arms slowly spread, as if to… Oh dear gods, was his father trying to embrace him?

Trystan swerved so hard into Sage that he nearly took them both to the ground. His arm accidentally brushed the side of her breast, and he wasn’t sure what about this situation was worse—that his estranged father had gone in for a hug when Trystan barely tolerated handshakes, or that the mere brush of Sage’s corset-covered breast made his arm feel as if he’d been struck by a stray lightning bolt.

A tie. It had to be a tie.

Arthur’s hurt showed in the furrow of his brow, the downturn of his mouth. “I deserve that. I should not have assumed… I apologize. Jones was being a friend by writing to me. Your mother is not easy to get around—it took me years of trial and error to sort it myself.” The gruff laugh was a sound Trystan had heard often in the life before this one. Arthur continued. “I wanted to help you, and I thought if you had me on your side, Amara may be more cooperative in giving you the glass slipper.”

The reasons made sense. But Trystan did not care.

“And how do you intend to help with that?” Trystan folded his arms, turning his body to block Sage when a few fishermen passed them, not moving until they were well out of sight.

Arthur gestured to the end of the docks, where a covered carriage sat. “This will get you through the village; I will drive it home. People will assume I’ve brought wares back with Jones. It’s the best course.”

It was.

Fucking annoying.

Another fisherman passed and looked at Sage a little too closely before clasping a hand over his mouth and jumping. “The Wicked Woman! Call the Valiant Guard. It’s The Wicked—”

Trystan shoved him over the side of the dock, whistling as he heard the splash.

Sage looked into the water uneasily. “Didn’t you say there were crocodiles in there?”

“Yes,” he said blandly. “Why?”

“One of you fish that man out and keep him quiet!” Jones called, unfazed by Trystan’s sudden act of violence.

Maybe he was losing his touch.

Jones clapped him on the back. “I will be waiting here to return you home. Good luck to you all, and good luck to little Alexander, too.”

The name made warning bells go off in Trystan’s head, a paranoid shock shuddering through him, and he did not know why. Not until he looked around and found an unchained cuff attached to a small, weighted ball near his feet.

Kingsley.

He caught a flash of green in the corner of his eye, and the next moments drew gasps from the entire group as they found the frog atop a post, seconds from leaping into the water. “Kingsley?” Trystan called cautiously. “Jump down from there.” The frog’s gold eyes were nearly swallowed by the black of his pupil, the awareness gone, causing his heart to plummet. “Alexander. Alexander, it’s me. It’s Trystan.”

Nothing.

And then the frog leaped. Trystan and the others watched, the world moving in slow motion as Kingsley jumped from the post, toward the water, hopping right atop a lily pad and then back to the dock, disappearing into the village fray. “No! Shit. We must go now.”

Arthur ushered them all along, piling them into the carriage, grabbing Trystan’s hand before he shut the door. “It’s not your fault, son—none of it. You need to remember that.”

Arthur closed the door in Trystan’s face, trapping him inside the carriage and trapping the words that were making tiny dart-size holes beneath his skin. The carriage rattled along, and Trystan took brief peeks at the sand-lined roads, the street vendors with fish and beautifully colorful necklaces, the stone houses getting bigger and bigger as they rode.

“Don’t lose that frog!” Trystan banged on the roof, and Sage shushed him.

Sage. Shushed. Him.

The world had turned inside out. “Be quiet, you little urchin!” she said smugly.

Be quiet, you little urchin, or you’ll get us both killed.

The first words he’d ever spoken to her. Thrown back in his face. Lesson learned—next time you find the most infuriating, beautiful, and life-altering woman you’ve ever encountered…

Leave her behind to die.

“I see him!” Arthur called down to them. “I see where he’s heading! Up the stone path! He’s chasing a—a fly!”

“Where?” Trystan hissed, nearly lunging for Sage when she gave him a thumbs-up.

But all the anger disappeared when his body finally caught up to what his mind had been screaming at him to realize. Where the stone path led.

“Your mother’s house!”

Trystan’s mother’s house. That was where Kingsley was going.

The same mother who had tried to kill him the last time they met.

Very well. At least she wouldn’t hug him.





Chapter 69


Kingsley


Blurry colors, large people, and a single stone path up to a sizable home. Fly. There was a fly. He wanted to eat the fly.

Something else. He wanted something else, too, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Or who he was beyond what his animal instincts were driving him to do. Chase fly. Eat fly. His tongue shot out, and he missed it, leaping after it through a small window into a kitchen, where he found himself eye to eye with another being.