Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(4)

There were severed heads hanging from the ceiling…and one of them belonged to Trystan Maverine.

Alexander William Kingsley awoke with his tiny heart pounding in his slimy green chest. The cushions on his small, gilded bed were pressed under his webbed toes, and he glanced down from his perched resting spot at the sleeping man on the bed, relaxing only slightly when he saw Trystan Maverine’s chest moving in a smooth rhythm, a slight snore escaping his best friend’s nostrils.

A horrid nightmare. That was all it was.

Alexander wouldn’t pay it any heed, lest he drive himself mad trying to communicate what he’d dreamed one bloody word at a time. It was morning, birds were chirping happily outside, and he’d awoken…

Another day in the body of a frog.

It was another nightmare entirely—or at least, he used to think so. Over the decade he’d spent mourning his life as a man, Alexander had come to find several useful things about his predicament.

1. There were no exhausting expectations of always being gallant and chivalrous (because who in their right mind would expect a frog to be either of those things?).

2. He didn’t have to fill silences with useless conversation. (He actually found that in most instances, a single word sufficed quite nicely.)

3. He was small enough to sneak around the manor to wherever he wished in order to keep a close eye on his friends (and it could not be overstated how much his friends needed keeping a close eye upon).

4. People often forgot that he was once human, leaving them unguarded in confessions, secrets, even feelings. (Every day was fresh entertainment!)

5. And finally, and certainly most enjoyable, was watching his best friend—The Villain—a man who Alexander had never thought would open up his cold, closed off-heart, fall truly, deeply, and wildly in love with Evie Sage.

A screech sounded down the hallway, and Trystan startled awake as Alexander just had moments prior. “What in the deadlands? Who is screaming?” he grumbled gruffly, turning to Alexander with a flat expression. “It’s one of the Sage girls, isn’t it?”

It had been two weeks since the Valiant Guard had attacked the manor, since the pregnant guvre had been taken, and since Evie’s mother, Nura, had returned from being in hiding among the stars. Two solid weeks of Evie and Trystan not speaking—in part because of the erratic impact Evie seemed to have on Trystan’s magic, and in part, Alexander was certain, because the two would sooner knock their heads together than confront their unspoken feelings.

Or, as Alexander had begun referring to their silent avoidance of each other—torture for the masses.

Trystan grumbled, throwing back the covers and donning the shirt strewn over the chair by his new desk. Somehow, the movement was timed to near perfection with Lyssa Sage barreling through the door, giggling and skidding to a hard halt when she saw the scowl on Trystan’s face.

“Evie said if you make faces like that, it’ll get stuck that way, Lord Trystan,” Lyssa said, giving Alexander a tiny wave.

Alexander lifted his webbed foot and waved back. Lyssa Sage was a constant delight, as were all children who’d yet to be touched by the horrors of adulthood.

And the depravation of common sense.

“Good. I prefer my face this way,” Trystan grumbled, tucking the ends of his shirt into his loose trousers as Lyssa went to tug open the dark drapes over the windows.

The girl frowned at him as early-morning light streamed in. “You prefer it like that? Why?”

“I like to look angry and intimidating,” Trystan said, sticking a foot into each of his well-worn boots.

Lyssa pressed her lips together before muttering, “But you don’t. You look like you need to use the bathroom.”

Inwardly laughing, Alexander furiously jotted down a word on one of his signs—a difficult feat when Trystan had first presented him with the idea, filling the office area and every room with baskets of the little signs and chalk for Alexander’s use alone. The first few times, his handwriting had looked abysmal, but after ten years of practice, no one ever had trouble deciphering what he wanted to say.

He held up his sign proudly.

Yep

“I will throw out every one of those blasted boards right now!” Trystan bit out. It was an empty threat—one Trystan had thrown around countless times over the years and one Alexander knew his friend would never dare follow through on.

“Lyssa!” Another light voice echoed down the hall. “There’s breakfast for you in the kitchens!” Alexander identified the voice as that of Evie Sage, The Villain’s newly promoted apprentice.

If Alexander had not already recognized the person attached to the voice, he need only look at how rigid Trystan had become at the sound, like one more word would break him in two.

“Are you coming for breakfast, Lord Trystan?” Lyssa blinked at him, then gave Alexander a wide, innocent smile.

Trystan stared hard at the door, like he was willing Evie to stay far away from it. But Alexander knew his friend’s internal war well enough to understand that Trystan was simultaneously wishing her to walk through it. This had become, in Alexander’s opinion, a masochistic ritual over the past two weeks.

Admittedly, “The Villain” had been sneaking looks at the young woman all along; this wasn’t new. They’d started as curious glances, like studying a lab specimen, then begrudgingly moved to intrigued staring, and then to the current stage—pure agonizing, desperate glaring. The past two weeks, however, had taken the man’s self-inflicted torture to a new extreme. In the last fortnight, The Villain had crept around corners, lingered in doorways, and pressed his ear against any wall she was on the other side of.