Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(20)

The man smiled back at her. He was being friendly, yet Evie seemed to have lost the ability to socialize. And by “lost,” she meant she’d never found the ability in the first place.

“No problem,” he said. “Maybe another time?” He was handsome, like one of the princes from Lyssa’s stories, and he did absolutely nothing for her aside from trigger her irritation at being stuck in this conversation.

Don’t you remember, Evie? Men only do it for you if they’re dismembering people!

“Maybe,” Evie replied quickly, turning on her heel and clamoring down the hall as fast as her heels would carry her. “Maybe?” she muttered to herself. Why was she so incredibly awkward? There was no way in the deadlands she was ever having a cauldron brew with that man.

Blade moseyed up beside her. “Maybe what, sweet Evie?”

She smiled, leaning into her dear friend’s shoulder, and smoothed back a lock of his long hair as they walked toward the stairs together arm in arm. “Maybe I have terrible taste in men.”

“Impossible!” Blade gasped. “You’re friends with me.” Evie laughed, furrowing her brow when she saw what was in his hand.

“Blade, dear. I love that you have rainbow pliers, and they do match your magenta vest rather well, but what are you doing with those?”

Blade didn’t miss a beat. “The magical maintenance repairmen asked for an extra one. They’re fixing the window upstairs right now. Poor guys’ve been at it for hours.”

Evie stopped just before they hit the first step. Everything seemed to slow down around her as ice bit into her skin, seeping into her blood and through the rest of her limbs. A terrible prickling feeling climbed up her neck as her pounding heart turned to a roaring in her ears.

She didn’t think. She ran.

“Evie?” Blade called. “What’s wrong?”

“Get the boss! Quick!”

She sprinted back down the hall, and as she ran through the kitchen door, her heart sank.

The strange man was at her favorite stained glass window, a tool in hand to chip out a piece.

“Stop!” she ordered, her dagger finding its way out of her thigh strap and into her hand. “Back away from that window.”

The man laughed, his eyes crinkling, giving Evie a look that she was certain every woman had seen at least once in her life. A look that said, I could hurt you if I wanted to.

“Come to have that cup of cauldron brew now?” He chuckled. Then unsheathed a two-sided blade from the holster hidden behind his back.

She nodded, masking the sick feeling in her stomach with feigned innocence. “Yes, actually.”

The blond man’s eyes narrowed as she walked toward him with her mug…and splashed the hot liquid right in his face. With a gruff cry, he lunged for her. He would have nearly missed her if not for catching hold of her braid and tugging her backward, then releasing her, the momentum forcing her to slam into the wall.

Her ears rang at the impact, and in that moment, she knew with certainty that this man not only could hurt her, but he very much wanted to. The blood in her veins was no longer ice; it was fire.

The next thing she knew, he was charging at her, blade swinging.

She screamed.





Chapter 11


The Villain


“I don’t care how you recreate the bloody stained glass! Just make it look like murder, torture, or death.” Trystan bit out the words in a frustrated growl. Hostility surrounded him like a storm cloud, but he had to place his focus where it belonged.

He’d done far too much good as of late. Taking in stray relatives, tea parties with children. No wonder his dark magic was treating him like a pariah. It was more than any villain could bear. The time for growing into a different man had long passed. He was a monster, always had been, and he would reclaim that role no matter what it took—his life’s work depended on it. And so did the storybook prophecy.

After all, there was no storybook without a villain.

Rennedawn’s magic was falling into a state of imbalance, and fulfilling the prophecy was the only way to regain control, for Trystan to regain control. There was no time for wallowing in what couldn’t be, and there certainly wasn’t time to give a damn about how his magical maintenance workers repaired a bloody window.

Broken solely because his magic was becoming foreign to him, something he didn’t understand. Just when he’d begun to think his control had been regained, Sage merely looked at him and his body reacted so violently, it scared Nura Sage into nearly creating another tragedy.

It’s far too early in the day for this degree of self-loathing.

“Very well, sir! We’ll do our best! Do you want the inscriptions facing outward or inward?”

Trystan pinched the bridge of his nose, resisting every impulse to shove the worker through the window. There was no point.

It’s no fun throwing people off things if Sage isn’t here to scold me after.

That left Trystan only one option: answering every annoying and asinine question that was flung his way. He no longer had an assistant. He had an apprentice. A furious, maddeningly frustrating, and disgustingly beautiful apprentice.

“Sir?” the maintenance worker asked.

Trystan coughed, hardening his face and folding his arms defensively. “Leonard, it’s a picture. There are no inscriptions.”