“No, you will not—” But the boss’s voice was drowned out by Evie’s and Tatianna’s tittering.
“His inability to smile at anything that’s not related to death or torture.” Tatianna cackled, and Evie laughed with her.
She gripped her stomach, tears burning the corners of her eyes. It was the kind of laughter that was difficult to stop, and the more you tried, the more intoxicating the urge became—the best kind, her favorite.
“The obsession with his hair,” Evie added, wiping her eyes.
“What about his talent for heaving bodies out of windows!” Blade added.
Kingsley held up two signs: Bad and Jokes.
“Making the interns cry just by looking at them for too long,” Becky added quietly, warily.
They all laughed even louder, Tatianna tilting her chalice toward the woman in a silent toast. Becky looked around, the smallest, almost indetectable smile appearing on her naturally downturned lips.
Evie’s laughter finally died down to something more manageable when she looked toward her boss, who was watching them all, watching her, with a strange look in his eyes. He was at ease, peaceful. That eternal lock on his jaw seemed to have come loose, and there was a relaxed feeling to him as he said, “I am not obsessed with my hair.”
That was what did it. All of them spiraled into a second, larger wave of hilarity. It was like medicine, healing all the broken pieces and forging them into something new, something different. Belonging was such a foreign concept to Evie, something she quietly longed for but had never figured out how to achieve, but here it was. Her moment, her people. It was worth the wait— A flash of light and a thunderous boom shook the walls, sucking the levity from the room like a leeching.
The Villain’s jaw went back to its rigidness, and he walked over to look out the window.
“Sir? Not to pressure you, but do you have any idea when the female guvre will arrive?” Evie asked tentatively, walking up to his side.
A piercing screech wrenched the air.
“Was that…”
“Yes.” The Villain nodded, keeping his gaze on something outside the window. “She’s here.”
Chapter 34
The Villain
“Get back up there!” The Villain thundered from a sheltered alcove in the courtyard, reeling backward when his assistant appeared behind him with a large net. “And what in the deadlands is that for?”
The rain was coming down even harder now, the sounds of the creature’s screeches piercing his eardrums. The dragon shuffled his feet in the opposite corner, ducking under one of the large castle archways in the open courtyard. The guvre hadn’t arrived yet, but she was close. Sage appeared beside him in her dress that was so wet from the rain that it was wrapped tightly against her soft curves.
“It’s a net!” she yelled back, holding it up and looking at him like he was the one who’d lost his mind.
“Yes, I’ve gathered that!” It was amazing that even with the roar of a violently dangerous creature heading straight for them, it was this conversation that was giving him the pounding beginnings of a headache.
“How else are you going to catch it?” she said, confusion pinching her thick brows together, a charming crinkle appearing there.
And now is certainly not the time for me to be noticing charming crinkles above my assistant’s eyes.
“I had something a little more concrete planned,” he said, gesturing to the open grate on the other side of the courtyard. “That leads right into the cellar, next to the male guvre.”
“Will she fly through on her own?” Sage asked, a drop of rain trickling enticingly down her cheek. His fingers itched to brush it away.
He nodded, turning his head back to the sky, waiting. “Nothing will keep her from him, remember?”
“Then why hasn’t she flown into the hole yet?” Sage yelled over the rain that was now coming down impossibly harder than it was before.
“She’s not a fool!” he roared back, lightly pulling her arm to bring her back under the eave when she arched her neck out to get a look at the guvre. “She knows she’d be flying into a trap. She’s trying to see if there’s another way to get to him.”
Light flashed in the corner of his vision, followed by more glass shattering. Sage gripped his arm like a vise and used her subtle strength to yank him closer to her. Just in time for one of the archways to collapse right where he’d stood, a cloud of debris coming over them.
Trystan became unexpectedly aware of his hands, which were somehow on the curve of her hips after Sage had pulled him closer. Feeling himself now breathing heavy for reasons that had nothing to do with his near brush with death, he lifted his gaze from his hands to her lips.