Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(13)
“How unfortunate.” Trystan glared. “Since I so enjoy excluding you.”
“Is the male guvre still struggling?” Evie asked, knowing what an understatement this was to describe the turmoil the animal was going through every day he was separated from his mate and unborn baby.
Clare’s easiness faded into something guilty. “Blade’s been slipping some of the calming potions into his food, but he isn’t eating much, so it’s difficult to get him to take enough to stay that way. The poor thing’s either thrashing and fighting or lying in the corner, making this awful whimpering sound.”
“Hard to work up an appetite when the one you love is so out of reach,” Tatianna said, her dark eyes falling to Clare. The two women held each other’s gaze before sliding away. Evie made a note to follow up with them later. Their relationship status was hardly her business, but she needed something else to focus on besides her disastrous love life—or lack thereof.
A heaviness settled about the room; Kingsley seemed to sense this as he leaped on the table and held up a sign spelling out the word:
True
And another sign:
Live
Tatianna’s face twisted. “Is he attempting to tell us to live truly?”
Gideon bent low, squinting at both signs. “I think he spelled ‘love’ wrong.”
“Impossible,” The Villain snapped. “Kingsley doesn’t misspell words.”
“Um.” Evie paused, snapping her fingers, pretending to contemplate. “Halp?”
The Villain stared at her. “With what?”
“Oh gods.” Evie moaned into her hand. “Halp. As in, I’ve seen him misspell the word ‘help.’”
The Villain blinked, unfazed. “Oh. That doesn’t count.”
Fate must have been having a grand laugh at her expense, because her plan to torture The Villain into submission seemed to have been switched around on her. “How does that not count?”
“It’s an inside joke.”
He said this in the same dry tone he always used, but Evie caught it. The slight shift in his mouth, a near curve, eyes flashing to the flush creeping up her neck with a hint of satisfaction. “Are you playing with me?” she asked.
“Sage, I wouldn’t begin to know how.”
She folded her hands behind her back, giving him her best customer service saccharine sweetness. “I could loan you one of my books. They’d give you some inspiration.”
“I’m going to pretend you’re discussing a sports manual so that I don’t lose my breakfast,” Gideon said, waving his hands back and forth like he was attempting to wash an invisible window. “Mother, would you care for a stroll about the courtyard? Or perhaps a nosedive into the thorny grove?”
Nura had been noticeably absent from the conversation, her gaze taking on a faraway look that Evie had spent her youth in fear of, but instead of leaping to fix it, Evie felt her limbs frozen in place, the bottoms of her feet rooting her.
“Yes,” their mother replied dreamily. “And perhaps Lyssa might want to join us?”
Gideon hadn’t leaped to please everyone when they were children as Evie had, but he’d always been the laughter in the room, the lighter presence, and people who basked in light tended to avoid things that lived in the dark. “Perhaps,” he said, though his easygoing manner faltered for just a second. “Why don’t we go ask?”
When they shuffled from the room, Tatianna looked quizzically at Kingsley’s signs, picking one up to inspect it. He released them both, hopping toward Clare, who looked down at the frog with a fond familiarity.
The Villain leaned down and spoke quietly in Evie’s ear, his voice smoky and dark. “I don’t need your books.” His dark gaze on her was a caress, a finger running down her cheek. “I already have it.” It felt like a secret confided and a bitter confession all rolled into one.
What in the deadlands? “You already have what?”
His eyes lingered on her face, dipping to her red lips. “Inspiration.”
Now, why does that seemingly ordinary word suddenly sound absolutely filthy?
Probably because he’s saying it while staring at you like he wants to melt your corset. And pathetically…it’s working.
“Ms. Sage!” Marv rushed through her office doors, and the fragile moment shattered.
Evie kept a certain pleasantness to her, even though it felt a bit like steam was about to shoot out of her ears. “Not a ghost again, Marv?” she asked, feeling a twitch settling into her eyelid.
“Worse!”
Tatianna frowned, running a hand down her pink silk skirt. “Ew. A ghoul?”
“No, Ms. Tatianna.” Marv took a deep breath. “It’s King Benedict!”
They were all alert now, Kingsley included, though there was a vague distractedness to his expression Evie reminded herself to look into later.
“What about him, Marv?” The Villain barked.
Marv paled.
“He’s knocking on the front door.”
Chapter 7
The Villain
“Knocking” had been an understatement.
The king and his Valiant Guard were using a catapult to launch large stones past the thorny grove and into the manor’s front entrance. Trystan had a catapult of his own, and if one more person screamed, he was going to start launching the rest of the finance department.