Assistant to the Villain （Assistant to the Villain, #1）
Hannah Nicole Maehrer
To Mom and Dad,
for the hours of my childhood you spent telling me stories
and the years you spent listening to mine,
know that yours will always be my favorite.
And for all of you,
this is what I think it would be like to be the morally gray
fantasy villain’s personal assistant.
Prologue
Once Upon a Time…
It was an ordinary day when Evie met The Villain.
Another failed attempt at the job fairs in her village. Another day with no source of income. Another day she was letting her sick father and little sister down. Which was why her mind was preoccupied as she wandered to the trees lined like fences at Hickory Forest’s edge—and walked right in.
The forest had once been frequently populated but was now the very last place anyone with common sense would choose to wander. Especially alone. Well, unless your name was Evangelina Sage and a forbidden forest seemed far more inviting than going home and admitting to your family that you’d finally found a job…and given it away.
Evie sighed, reaching out to let her fingers drift across the scratchy bark of several nearby trees as she wandered past. The forest really was quite beautiful.
The Kingdom of Rennedawn was one of the more modest of the enchanted kingdoms, and avoiding Hickory Forest when it took up so much of its land was a challenge. Still, its citizens had managed it well enough so far.
It had remained that way since a dark figure known as The Villain’s emergence nearly ten years ago. There were too many rumors of him hiding out near the forest’s edge to steal victims to torture. Evie knew little about the evil figure, but she was almost certain he had better things to do with his time than stalk the trees like a forest sprite. Though she’d not seen any of those, either—they tended to live farther north.
“The Villain,” Evie scoffed, walking deeper into the trees and shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her simple brown dress. “Perhaps he would be less murderous if his moniker wasn’t so ridiculous.”
Unless, of course, the name had been bestowed upon him at birth, in which case Evie would applaud his mother for her incredible foresight.
Evie stumbled over a wayward branch, yanking her hands out of her pockets to catch herself with a nearby tree, then trudged toward the murmuring sounds of a stream.
As she walked, she sifted through her meager knowledge of the man, most of which she’d gotten from poorly drawn wanted flyers. In them, he was always portrayed as older, with a gray beard broken up by large scars running down his face from grappling with his victims, and his teeth were often drawn jagged, like he’d rip out your heart with them—or perhaps needed to see a dentist.
So many rumors had trickled through the lands about the kingdom’s greatest foe that Evie wasn’t certain what to believe. She knew The Villain had burned one of the fishing villages in Western Rennedawn to the ground years ago. The kingdom had been devastated with famine after the loss of fishing for months afterward until they’d finally rebuilt. And there were many other stories of horror. Petty larceny seemed a staple of The Villain’s to-do list as well, often stealing into noble homes to frighten the families and make off with their precious heirlooms.
Slowly approaching the stream—wider than she thought it would be—Evie marveled at the beauty of the sun coming in through the gaps in the trees, giving the flowers bordering it an ethereal glow. For a moment, she almost forgot about her predicament, it was so breathtaking a view. But then it all came rushing back.
Her father still didn’t know she’d lost her job at the blacksmith last month. She’d been so sure she could find something else before her family noticed that the table was a little sparser at dinner or that their small cottage was colder for lack of firewood. She’d have to tell him tonight, though. They were down to their last meager food stores.
With a heavy sigh, she knelt down along the edges of the stream, her knees sinking into the spongy moss. She ran her hands through the clear blue water, then splashed some of the cool liquid against her face and neck, hoping to calm her racing heart.
She was in trouble this time. And not from some mythical villain.
No. She’d done this to herself.
The worst of it was that she’d nearly had a good position handed to her. At the fair this morning, she’d been offered the sole new maid posting for a noble family on an estate not far from her village. It wasn’t ideal because of the distance, but she’d been ready to take it happily. Until, of course, she’d turned to see another woman standing beside her with such hope in her smile-lined eyes that Evie’s heart had constricted in her chest. More so when she’d seen three young children standing behind the woman.