Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(36)

He didn’t need to deserve her. He was The Villain. He could take her, and she could take him—

A loud animal screech wrenched them apart, both breathless as the archway above—the very same one that had been rebuilt perhaps a dozen times since Trystan had taken over the manor—collapsed in a swarm of dark-gray mist.

They separated as quickly as they had come together, every part of his body screaming to rejoin hers, but that wasn’t possible.

Because in the short moments they had been lost in each other…the entire courtyard had been overrun. By Trystan’s magic.

“What did you do?” Sage asked, her lush mouth swollen from his kiss, lips forming a little O.

He sputtered, looking at her, trying fruitlessly to call his magic back. “I didn’t do anything, you menace! You kissed me first!”

She shoved his shoulder, and her touch burned. “You didn’t have to kiss me back!”

“Yes! I did!” he yelled, and that—miraculously—knocked her silent.

His magic retreated, and Fluffy, who’d been sleeping peacefully under one of the awnings, whined. The grate covering the male guvre’s enclosure shook and rattled with a loud groan.

Blade bolted out the back doors, a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. “What happened?”

The mist of Trystan’s magic began to dissipate slowly, coming back to him in waves. And he could tell that Blade saw his magic in all its glory. Along with Sage and Trystan looking red-faced, guilty, and…unkempt.

Standing next to two violently unsettled animals.

Gushiken squinted, tossing the rest of the sandwich in Fluffy’s direction and brushing his hand against his red-and-violet sleep shirt. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to ask?”

“If you do, I will ram that sandwich down your throat,” Trystan growled.

Blade opened his mouth with a suggestive grin that made Trystan’s blood boil. “Funny. Was your tongue just down Evie’s—”

But he didn’t finish, because Sage dove around Trystan to close her hand over the dragon trainer’s lips. Hands that had been around Trystan’s neck moments prior. Until his magic and reality interceded and ruined everything.

It’s not the magic, his conscience argued. It’s you.

His mother’s ugly words the day he left with Alexander’s cursed frog body in tow reared their head for the first time in years.

You’ve always had the habit of ruining everything and everyone, haven’t you?

“Settle Fluffy, Gushiken. I’ll see to the guvre,” Trystan said gruffly, striding toward the guvre’s grate, a sting burning behind his eyes that made him feel weak and foolish.

“Trystan,” Sage called after him.

“Not now, Sage,” he said, emotionless, not looking back.

Not ever again.





Chapter 21


Kingsley


Alexander Kingsley found Trystan exactly where he thought he would. In a puddle of his own regrets.

A metaphorical puddle, of course. Alexander was the one sitting in an actual puddle adjacent to the guvre’s cage. Trystan had one hand on the bar of the enclosure and one clutched to his chest. “I know you’re in pain. I know. I’m sorry for it,” Trystan rasped at the moaning animal.

Alexander scribbled on his sign.

You

Trystan looked down and rubbed at his eyes with both hands, the purpling underneath deepening in the torchlight. “I am not in pain, Kingsley.”

No. Trystan was right. Alexander scribbled another word.

Anguish

Trystan sighed and shook his head. “Yes, I suppose that’s closer to the truth, isn’t it.”

Alexander hung his head in sympathy. There had been a time when Trystan listened to his counsel. Alexander had been raised to be a diplomat, after all, and he’d always excelled in saying just the right thing to achieve his goals when he was a prince. As frog counsel to “The Villain,” Alexander excelled in being direct rather than smooth because there wasn’t nearly enough chalk in Rennedawn to write every thought that came to his mind.

And in the last ten years, he’d had many.

“We’ll have to be up before sunrise to check on the window,” Trystan whispered, taking a cautious step back as the guvre with all his colorful scales slowly crept over to the cage door before resting his head as close to the grate as he could.

Fate’s creatures were one of Alexander’s first lessons in historical studies of the magical continent—beasts crafted by the hands of Fate. And whatever that fated creature saw in Alexander, he didn’t like it, whimpering lightly as he moved as far away from Alexander as he could manage.

Trystan looked down at him. “Someone not liking you. Now that’s a first.”

It wasn’t, but forget the kingdom—there wasn’t enough chalk in the continent for him to tell that story in its entirety.

So instead he wrote: Second.

Trystan huffed, almost amused. “I suppose the enchantress who cursed you wouldn’t be too fond of you now. Considering she’s been falsely imprisoned by your parents. All these years, I thought she was dead. My mother said she was executed on charges for ‘murdering’ you.”

She may as well have.

But Alexander didn’t say that, either. He jotted another word down onto his small sign, suddenly all too aware of how small his webbed hand was, how small he was.