“I don’t know. I’ve never had the pleasure,” he said dryly. “I think you have to improvise on this one.”
He watched her grip the sides of her head, nodding at two of his best guards coming in fully uniformed through the still-open front door. He gestured toward the office. “Take Mr. Sage out the window if you can. She shouldn’t have to see him a second time. To the cellars. A clean one, if you please.”
“It doesn’t need to be clean,” Sage called, taking another large swig. “I felt dirty for weeks after Mr. Warsen attacked me. I still do sometimes.” Her eyes went somewhere out of reach, and it scared him.
“Mr. Warsen?” He angled his head at the bottle, curious at the alcohol percentage.
“My father ‘offered’ me to him.” She began to laugh, and as the words sank in, he slowly realized what they meant.
He spoke carefully. “Are you saying that your father is the reason Mr. Warsen hurt you?”
The story spilled from her lips in slow waves, about how Otto Warsen had made it very clear he wanted her and how she had made it very clear she didn’t want him. How he lunged for her anyway and in her attempt to run, he’d ripped her sleeve, then run that dagger down her back. She recalled how she’d stolen a cloak off a clothesline to cover herself when she went home.
She sniffed and recounted how she’d gone upstairs quietly and washed the blood away.
As she talked, Trystan listened, keeping his fury contained, not wanting to frighten her. This wasn’t about him.
She looked at him finally, her beautiful eyes glassed over with pain and cynicism. “He didn’t succeed in whatever he’d been planning to do, since I got away. But I still feel little moments of fear.”
She brought out the papers and the inkpot her father had used to trick her, the letters from King Benedict that showed how he’d played her father and her as his pawns, how desperate he’d been. Trystan nodded through it all, taking the information with a calm gentleness he scarcely knew he was capable of.
“And now I’ve imprisoned him. My own father.” She stalked back toward the kitchen, a manic look in her eyes as she took another large gulp of wine. “Does that mean I’m evil now?”
Trystan shook his head, unable to keep up, but Sage continued. “Oh my— My father is a monster, and my mother’s abandoned me. Of course I’m evil now! That’s, like, every villain’s origin story, right?”
He shook his head, wanting only to reassure her. “You’re not evil, Sage,” he said flatly. “You made a difficult choice.”
Another swig.
“Er,” he interrupted. “Should I take that—”
“Would you like some?” A bit of the sadness was sweeping off her face, and her eyes even looked brighter…but he should still probably try to—
“Evie!” he said, bewildered as she appeared to have downed half the bottle.
She stopped, frozen in shock or disbelief, at his use of her name.
“Sage.” Trystan cleared his throat uncomfortably, loosening his collar, trying to get more air into his body. “I realize this situation has been…stressful.”
She looked up at him like he had three heads, and why wouldn’t she? He’d just referred to her knocking out her father and his betrayal like a heavy paperwork day, or perhaps how Trystan felt after a bad haircut.
“More than stressful,” he rushed out. “What you’re experiencing must be devastating and confusing and…” Gods, he was horrible at being comforting, and she knew it, too, sensed that fundamental weakness in him.
But she smiled, and he thought, I can’t be that bad, then.
But then the smile disappeared, and a pinched look of accusation fell upon her face. “I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me. Do you know?”
“Know what?” he asked, feeling in that moment that he’d give her anything, confess to anything, if only it would put that smile back on her face.
“What the king wants with the mated guvres?”
Fuck.
Chapter 56
Evie
They both sat down on the worn sofa, Evie fidgeting with her hands, squeezing then releasing, squeezing then releasing.
Silence permeated the air, the only noise the creaking of the old foundation.
She wasn’t sure why her heart was beating so fast, but she felt like something big was going to happen.
Her boss looked like he was in great pain, the pinched look of his mouth making her chest hurt. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, finally settling them on his thighs. Evie wouldn’t mind having her hands there as well.