Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(15)
“But Tatianna said you were doing villain things!” Lyssa dipped under Evie’s arms and ran for Trystan. “I have to observe!”
Sage let out a small growl and stomped her boot. “Lyssa, that is absurd. Go inside. Now!”
Trystan whistled low. “Didn’t you just say the same thing, Sage?”
Sage planted her hands on her hips, betrayal gleaming in her eyes. “Shall I test my villainy on you?”
“If it’ll end this faster, have at it.”
Lyssa laughed, and Trystan’s mouth twitched. Until another crash shook the manor, causing everyone to fall against the stone ground. Except Trystan.
“Forgotten about me?” Benedict’s voice carried to them on the wind.
“For the love of the gods,” Trystan yelled, lifting the speaking trumpet back to his mouth. “What deal do you want to make, Benedict? Out with it!”
Even without the looking glass, Trystan could see the king’s smile stretching wide, sinister in a way Trystan had never fully mastered. It was an irony he had no trouble acknowledging that the purest forms of evil seemed to be buried inside a man so desperate to reach ultimate power and all those who would ignore his wrongdoings to keep him there.
“I’ll tell you the entirety of Rennedawn’s prophecy. Here and now.”
No. Too easy. “And in exchange?” Trystan drawled.
King Benedict’s greedy gaze fell upon Sage and Lyssa, who’d made their ways to his side. Trystan contemplated ripping the king’s eyes out, but then the king said something that caused a riotous silence on the raised platform.
“I want Nura Sage.”
Chapter 8
Evie
“My mother is dead,” Evie called down to the king, solemn. “Hadn’t you heard?”
Benedict pointed a finger at her, shaking his head like he found her amusing, and Evie caught herself wondering how difficult it would be to break a finger and how badly it would hurt. “Lying does not become you, Ms. Sage.”
“Evie?” Lyssa asked warily, not quite tall enough to see over the wall down to the king.
“Take Lyssa inside,” Trystan said at her ear. “I will handle this.”
Evie turned and looked up at her boss with defiance as she uttered a word she was growing rather fond of—one she’d had such trouble with in the past. “No. Keeley. Please take my sister inside, if you would?”
Trystan’s jaw clenched, the muscle moving with the motion, and Evie found herself fixating on it to keep herself calm. He didn’t fight her, just nodded stiffly, accepting her choice with no protestation as they stood there together against the man who had taken so much from both of them.
Behind them, Keeley quietly ushered Lyssa back into the manor, handing off the undetonated pumpkin lightly into Evie’s palm as they passed. The captain whispered words of reassurance to Lyssa until they disappeared. Evie allowed herself a moment to pretend she believed them, for the part of her that still wanted to.
She glanced to the side and internally groaned when she spied Lyssa’s wide eyes through the stained glass window, openly defying her. Oh, the lecture that girl was going to get when she was through— No. That was a Becky thought. Oh dear, how’d that get there?
Trystan called back to Benedict. “You were a fool to come here, Benedict. But in the interest of destroying you at a more opportune time, I’ll allow you ten minutes to get as far away from Massacre Manor as you can before the Malevolent Guards descend upon you.”
Benedict laughed again, and something buried deep inside Evie’s mind snapped. She rushed the wall, climbing atop the edge and holding the undetonated pumpkin high, ready to pull the stem and detonate it.
The king stopped laughing, the thin veil of the patient ruler dropping to reveal what the king truly was. “Ms. Sage, be reasonable. Is this really the person you want to be? A murderer?”
She could feel Trystan at her back, but he didn’t pull her down, didn’t stop her when her red lips stretched wide, the wind billowing her shirt, her fear of heights melting away behind her anger, her fury. Her darkness. “Do you know, Your Majesty? What happened to Otto Warsen that day you left him behind to kill me?” Her voice was melodic, light; it almost didn’t sound like hers.
Benedict edged closer to the grove. “I suppose your traitor brother dispatched him with your help?” he responded coolly, though Evie could hear the masked curiosity in the vagueness of his answer.
She tsked and shook her head, unsheathing her dagger from her thigh. “Close! Gideon was a help with the remaining guard, to be sure, but Otto was mine, I’m afraid. I slit his throat.”
The king stilled, his head angling for a moment before snapping straight. “Oh?”
“Yes. It was a quick death and my first. So I wanted to be sure to commemorate it in the way Mr. Warsen deserved. One that paid tribute to the life he’d lived and those he left behind.”
Benedict was eager to hear the rest. Evie could tell by how he pressed: “And how did you do that?”
Evie held up the pumpkin projectile in one hand, her dagger in the other. She grinned wide as she used the tip of the knife to lift the stem, speaking strong and loud so all could hear. “I removed his head.”
She flicked the stem fully off and threw the pumpkin as far as her arm would allow, only a few short strides from where she threw the ticking bomb she found beneath the boss’s desk when this had all begun. Except now she was no longer throwing the danger away from her.