Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(32)

“And I’d like you and that bitch’s heads on a pike.” Calvin sneered. “We don’t always get the things we want, Villain.”

Trystan was all too aware of that, but instead of reflecting on the unwanted emotions it dredged up, he instead rammed the heel of his palm upward, causing Calvin’s nose to crack and bend to an unnatural angle.

“You broke my nose!”

Trystan shrugged. “You bruised her brain.” He gestured back to Sage, bending down so that he was eye level with the mess of a man before him. “All things considered, I think I’m being rather generous, don’t you?”

Calvin’s shoulders slumped—the first sign that he was breaking, the veneer of confidence fading as the pain in his body increased.

“Who is your contact inside the manor? Hmm?” Trystan gripped Calvin’s chin. “Why should they go free when you are down here suffering?”

The chains rattled as Calvin thrashed, and Trystan allowed it, allowed the man to weaken himself until he could no longer fight, physically or mentally. “I can’t tell you! If I do, I die.”

“I’m fairly certain if you don’t, you’ll also die.” Sage’s light voice rang through the violence with calm reason, and both men turned to look at her.

She hadn’t moved from her spot, had stayed where she was directly behind him, no hint of fear as she stared at Calvin with confused fascination. Trystan knew he should object to her chiming in, but he couldn’t. He was hypnotized.

Stepping closer to their prisoner, Sage looked silently to Trystan for permission, and for some unfathomable reason, he gave it to her. Nodding slightly, he watched, enraptured, as she bent her knees until she was eye level with Calvin, gifting the bleeding man a saddened smile that outraged Trystan, but he didn’t interrupt—in all honesty, because he was too curious to see where she was going with this.

“How did you get into the manor?” Sage asked, repeating Trystan’s earlier question but gentler, her wide blue eyes imploring.

“I was let in,” Calvin jeered.

“How courteous,” Sage said pleasantly. “By whom?”

“By the fucking bogeyman.”

Sage was oddly serene when she replied, “So it was a man?”

Calvin began to rattle his chains, shaking his limbs but not budging an inch. Sage remained just out of his reach. “I won’t tell you anything.”

Trystan grabbed Calvin by the shirt collar. “If the lady asks you a question, you will answer it.”

Sage pushed off the ground to stand, then gently pried his hand from the man’s shirt with a small smile that speared right through Trystan’s heart. “Mr. Warsen, I wonder if, to punctuate my point, you might need a little motivation?” Sage began lifting the hem of her skirt, and Trystan clapped a hand over Calvin’s eyes so hard the chair wobbled from the force.

When Trystan finally dared to look, Sage was staring at him, self-satisfied, with her dagger dangling from her fingers. Trystan removed his hand from Calvin’s face, being sure to knock into the man’s broken nose.

Calvin growled and shook, but he stopped immediately when he spied the dagger in Evie’s hand. He recognized it—Trystan could tell by how his eyes flashed. “Where did you get that?”

Sage tipped the blade underneath Calvin’s chin until he was looking right into her eyes. “Your father forged it. It’s imbued with some sort of magic that’s linked it to me, so I thought he wouldn’t mind if I kept it. Call it severance pay.” She punctuated the statement with a slash to the man’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” He gritted his teeth as Sage gripped the back of his chair and leaned the dagger back at his throat.

“Now. Who. Let. You. In.” To her credit, Sage kept her friendly calm, her composure so together Trystan couldn’t bring himself to object to her commandeering the torture session.

She was too good at this. Trystan could do nothing but watch as Calvin’s throat bobbed. Had she broken him already?

“I won’t tell you.” Calvin’s chest heaved when Sage drew a shallow cut at his throat. “You’re gonna kill me anyway.”

Sage gasped, empty hand moving to her chest to convey some deep offense. “Really, Mr. Warsen. You are our guest! We don’t kill our guests.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Trystan drawled, and Sage gave him an exasperated glance, probably annoyed he was throwing out criticisms when he was lackadaisically watching her do all the heavy lifting.

Why was he letting her do all the heavy lifting?

“All right, that’s enough, apprentice.” He pushed himself in front of her and grabbed Calvin by the neck. “Here are your options, because I’m nothing if not in favor of choice. You can tell me all you know now, and I will make your death swift and painless. Or you can hold on, stay stubborn, remain true to a king who doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die. And to a father whose head we chucked into a trash pit last week because it had developed a smell.”

“I’ll always be loyal to my father,” Calvin spat.

Trystan felt his magic pouring out then, wrapping around Calvin, and the man’s eyes darted down to look at it. “What—what is that?”

So it wasn’t merely Sage and her mother who could see it any longer. His magic was now visible to anyone.