Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(85)

But as Evie drifted off to sleep, she didn’t have any dirty dreams.

Only nightmares.





Chapter 54


Gideon


The night passed poorly and without sleep.

The cool early-morning air brushed Gideon’s arms as he donned the silver-plated Valiant Guard armor. It was a meticulous process, and it felt strange to be doing it once again. He’d thought The Villain’s Malevolent Guards would’ve thrown it off a cliff or melted it down for weapons. The metal clanged as he bent at the waist to adjust his boots.

He hated this uniform, hated all it stood for, but he hadn’t always. There had been a time when he was proud to bear the king’s crest, proud to be one of the few men permitted to serve His Majesty and the vision he held for Rennedawn.

But now all the armor did was remind him of every terrible thing that had occurred the last time he wore it. And chafe. Gods, how had he forgotten how uncomfortable this thing was?

“How did the king expect you to do anything in this getup?” Keeley’s voice pulled Gideon’s attention, and he bit his gloved hand to keep from chuckling. “Don’t laugh! I already feel ridiculous enough.”

Gideon coughed into his fist, holding up a finger, thanking his lucky stars The Villain had Valiant Guard armor in storage from the ones he’d dispatched. “I’m not laughing, just observing. Amid a pronounced lack of oxygen.”

While the rest of the Malevolent Guards waited nearby, Gideon and Keeley were meant to take out the two Valiant coming down for their posts, then sneak in and relieve the two sitting outside the hidden tunnel. That was the easy part. The hard part was releasing the female guvre and somehow getting Fate’s creature out of the enclosure without the rest of the Valiant Guards being tipped off.

A casual Friday.

Keeley snorted as she stiffly started moving back toward camp. “For the record, you look even more ridiculous in this getup than usual, and yet I’ve had the strength to resist teasing you.”

“The first day we met, you called me a tin can with arms.”

Keeley looked genuinely confused by the statement. “That wasn’t teasing. That was a fact I was kind enough to relay to you.”

Gideon didn’t have the will to argue with her—lack of sleep was doing him in, and so was the funny way she was walking. “Things riding up in there, Captain?”

Metal met his shin at the end of her kick, and Gideon gripped his throbbing leg with a curse. “Gods. Sorry, I shouldn’t have referred to your undergarments. Please don’t report me to Becky.”

“The fact that you could even think of such things when I look like a metal toolbox is absurd.”

“Keeley, you could be wearing an oversize paper bag, and I would still have no trouble thinking of such things.”

Too late now, you ignoramus.

Keeley stared straight ahead, not reacting. Not even a twitch. This was a new low, being ignored. If anything, Gideon had always managed to be irritating, but perhaps even that finely honed skill was leaving him.

As the camp where most of the Malevolent Guards remained came into view, Gideon stood still and let Keeley move ahead of him. He watched from atop the grassy hill, not hearing a word of what Keeley was saying to the rest of her staff but enraptured nonetheless as the captain dropped her satchel into Min’s waiting palm. The deference the others showed to her was clear in the way they all bowed their heads gently.

Min and Andrea—two of Keeley’s shadows, it seemed—threw their arms around her, and the three of them remained together for a moment before Keeley pulled away. With a quick nod at Gideon, she began heading in the direction of the palace.

Gideon stumbled after her onto the hidden path they’d laid out as the best place to catch the next set of guards before they made it to the secret tunnel. He was supposed to be silent—if anyone heard them coming, they were done for, and this whole elaborate plan would have all been for naught.

But Gideon was a Sage.

So after approximately thirty minutes of holding out, his mouth opened and words spilled forth. “With the way you command an audience, I could almost believe that your father was a king.”

Keeley shot a hand to her lips as they walked and snapped at him, “My father, if that was even the man writing those letters to me, was a fraud. The letters were my keeper’s way of tricking me so I wouldn’t escape her house. For all I know, she paid someone else to write them, or even wrote them herself.”

She’d told him of this an hour before, by the pond. That her dad was a charlatan who had fathered Keeley with a mother who had never wanted children, then left her alone with the woman. But she’d received letters from her supposed father frequently, and he committed to the lie they’d told Keeley from the time she was a little girl.

That her father was the king and she was being hidden away for her own protection.

“I still don’t understand why she did such a thing,” he said now.

Keeley seemed focused on the bushes in front of them, where they’d set up a lookout for the king’s guards, but paused her assessment to give him a sardonic lift of her brow. “I should think you of all people would understand a person of authority using your ignorance against you. The king knew whose son you were for the entirety of your employ. My guardian wanted me to be a good little girl, so she told me every possible lie, and when I misbehaved—”