Assistant to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #1) (8)
Because signs of excessive decapitation could only mean one thing: one of his plans had fallen through for the third time in two months.
She heaved another sigh as she approached the endless, winding staircase. Evie stared at it for a moment, wondering why there was enough magic in the walls of this place to move objects on their own and keep the temperature comfortable, but not enough to make the stairs less, well, awful. She shook her head. It would be added to the suggestion box.
Note to self: suggest a suggestion box.
As she began her daily climb, she avoided the door that appeared to her left after the first flight. The door that led to the boss’s personal rooms.
Only the gods would know what he did on his personal side of the expansive and decidedly gloomy stone structure.
Don’t think about his personal life, Evie.
Another good rule for the list she’d been adding to like clockwork since her first day there.
Stop trying to get the boss to laugh, Evie.
Don’t touch the boss’s hair, Evie.
Don’t find torture attractive, Evie.
Don’t tell Edwin the cauldron brew is too strong, Evie.
Her breathing grew labored as she climbed the second story and rounded on the candlelit banisters to the next flight, calves beginning to burn beneath the thick blue skirt that brushed the tops of her ankles.
An echoing scream from the torture chambers in the dungeons below stopped her in her tracks. She blinked for a moment, shaking her head, then quickly continued up the stairs again.
Despite his other obviously nefarious doings, the boss had a strange and confusing set of moral checkpoints that he followed rather diligently—first of which was to never harm innocents, to her relief. His evil was very much the vengeful kind. She also liked that his moral list included treating the women of the world with the same level of respect and esteem as the men. Which, in hindsight, wasn’t much to begin with, but at least the office rules were more consistent than the outside world’s view.
Before she worked for the evil overlord, Evie had spent her days employed by her local village blacksmith, Otto Warsen. Organizing his tools, handing him whatever instruments he required so that he could stay hard at work on the forge. It had been a decent post, one that paid enough for her to support her ailing father and still be home in time to make dinner for him and her younger sister.
Or at least it had been a decent enough position—until it wasn’t.
Evie felt along her shoulder beneath her linen shirt to the raised, jagged scar hidden there. If it had been a normal blade, it would’ve healed properly. But whatever magic had been ingrained into the white dagger was now living beneath her skin like a curse. One so vicious that anytime she felt an ounce of pain anywhere on her body, the scar glowed. A nuisance, since inanimate objects seemed to get in her way at an alarming rate.
If there was something to stumble over, it would surely find her.
Chuckling through another heaving breath, Evie began her climb of the final set of stairs—a lair big enough for a village and he had them working on the top floor? Evil, thy name is villain—but she continued on to the person who had altered the course of her life.
It seemed feeble to merely refer to her boss as a “person.” In so many ways, he was larger than life, but her being responsible for his every want and need had humanized him. The mysterious veil that lay over him when she’d first begun had slipped away, and a far clearer picture was set in her mind.
Still, she had much to learn.
Like what darkness lurked within him that there would be three severed heads hanging from the ever-loving ceiling.
She reached the top step and swiped a hand across her sweaty forehead, despairing over the time she’d spent making herself presentable that morning. A mirror wasn’t necessary to know that her cheeks were flushed and the wispy hairs coming loose from her braid were sticking to her forehead. Moving down the hall, she could feel the slick sweat sliding between her thighs.
A tempting thought of loose trousers danced across her mind.
The boss had made it very clear there were no rules in the way his workers dressed, meaning for the first time in Evie’s employment, she was permitted to wear something other than drab-colored dresses. But she feared wearing something as scandalous as trousers would draw too much attention to herself.
Women? Have legs? Alert the town crier!
No, she already courted enough suspicion in her small village about the “mysterious” job she disappeared to each day. Best to blend in so nobody deigned to take a closer look.
If anyone asked about her work, she told them she’d gotten a position as a maid at a large estate in a neighboring village.
It wasn’t a complete lie. She was always cleaning up messes around The Villain—granted, they usually involved blood.
Reaching the end of the hall, she pulled on the gilded sconce closest to the stained glass window, then stepped back as the brick wall slowly slid open, revealing the hidden ballroom that doubled as their workspace beyond. She hustled into the large room as the wall slid closed behind her and took a deep breath. The fresh smell of parchment and ink permeated the air in a comforting, familiar way that never failed to make her smile.
“Good morning, Evangelina.”
And now her morning was ruined.
Rebecka Erring sat with her pool of administrative professionals to the left, everyone pausing their work to blink up at Evie now. Rebecka’s eyes held Evie’s gaze from behind large, round spectacles, and Evie said, “Good morning, Becky.”