Five months later…
There were severed heads hanging from the ceiling again.
Evie sighed, waving to Marvin as she shut the heavy castle door behind her and strode across the main hall, her low heels echoing off the stone floor in tandem with her fast-beating heart.
The Villain was in a mood.
One severed head was par for the course. A regularity that Evie had grown alarmingly accustomed to in the time she had been working here. But three male heads dangled there now, their mouths open in a silent scream, like they’d left this life in abject terror. And if she looked close enough…
Ugh, one of them was missing an eyeball.
Evie scanned the floor before taking another step, hoping desperately to avoid crushing the eyeball under her heel like she had a few weeks ago when she’d ventured into the boss’s torture chamber to relay a message. The scream she’d let out then was no more than a peep, but if it happened again, she wasn’t sure she could maintain such composure. She could handle a stray finger or even a toe, but eyeballs popped when they were stuck under one’s foot, and that seemed to be the line Evie’s mind had drawn in the sand.
She sniffed, walking forward. A fair one, if anyone asked me.
But it was neither here nor there. The brand of horror she came across on the day-to-day didn’t ruffle her the way it should have. Her need for normalcy had whittled away, bit by bit, since her employment began, but she didn’t mind. “Normal” was for those who didn’t have the ability to stretch their minds past the unreachable end. It was something her mother had said throughout her childhood, and for some reason, it was the one piece of advice Evie could not ignore.
It really couldn’t be helped in any case. She was the personal assistant to The Villain, after all. She chuckled at the job title, imagining the ridiculous way the employment posting would appear in a news pamphlet.
Must be well organized.
Must enjoy working late nights and relish writing long documents.
Must be comfortable and even supportive of arson, torture, murder.
And must not scream when there is an occasional
dead body lying across your desk.
In the boss’s defense, he’d only done that last one once since she’d begun working here. After arriving at work at her usual punctual time, she’d crossed the office, immediately spying the corpse of a burly man sprawled across her desk. Slashings all over his body, chunks of flesh missing.
He’d been tortured before being killed, that much was clear, and the boss had thought to dump the man on her very organized and shiny white desk, which was set up just outside his very large, disorganized office. She’d never forget the look on his face when she walked in, saw the body, and then found him leaning against his office entryway. He just stood there, arms crossed and sharp gaze focused on her.
Ah, yes, Evie had thought. He’s testing me.
But it helped that he didn’t seem as if he were expecting her to fail.
She’d grown so alarmingly used to that look from the villagers, she’d cataloged it in her mind under things that made her want to commit acts of violence.
So instead, she’d sifted through every possible reaction that would serve her best in that moment—aka allow her to keep her job—and ultimately settled on simply being herself.
Well, herself with a mangled corpse on her desk.
She’d glanced at her boss, her chest tightening at the intense way he was staring back. It was almost like he was willing her not to fail, which made no sense at all. Maybe he had indigestion—from all the torturing this morning and whatnot.
“Good morning, sir. Would you like me to work around this gentleman? Or is this your subtle way of telling me you’d like this body moved to a more appropriate location?” she’d asked with a friendly smile on her face.
He’d just raised a brow, then shoved off the doorjamb and strode to her desk—and the body.
She’d bit back a sigh as black leather stretched over his thighs when he leaned across the desk—because he threw the body over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, not because he had very nice thighs. His eyes never left hers as he’d straightened and carried the man toward the nearest window…and promptly tossed him out.
Evie bit back her gasp, determined to prove herself. Besides, this job was still going wildly better than the last.
Taking a large gulp of air, Evie had held The Villain’s gaze, ignoring her new interest in leather attire or, more dangerously, his thighs. “Very creative disposal method, sir… Could I get you a cup of cauldron brew from Edwin?” The ogre who worked in the kitchen made batches of the brown sludge derived from magic beans every day, along with freshly made pastries. She’d never heard of the drink before, but it enhanced work productivity and seemed to put everyone in a better mood, dead bodies notwithstanding.
The Villain’s lips had tugged upward, his dark eyes dancing with mirth. He wasn’t quite smiling, but it was close enough that her heart pounded in her ears.
“Yes, Sage, you know how I take it.”
She’d not come to work to find another dead body on her desk since then, but that didn’t mean the last few months hadn’t been challenging. For the most part, The Villain tended to be gone a lot, likely villainizing the nearby townsfolk in some manner she didn’t care to dwell on. They’d made a pact of sorts that he’d not pursue his evildoings within her village—or at least she’d taken his grunt as acceptance. But still, something told her even a dead body on her desk was going to be more fun than the mood he was in today.
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.”
She smoothed a palm down the front of her high-collared dress that was two sizes too large for her. “We’ll see,” she said, followed by six sets of eyes returning to their parchments as they realized there would be no bloodshed today.
In all honesty, Becky was quite pretty. She was a mere two years older than Evie, but those two years must have added ten in Becky’s head by ways of superiority.
Her light-brown skin was flawless, and her tight-lipped smile did nothing to take away from her striking features. Her cheekbones and jaw sat at the same width, drawing your eye to every high point of her face. If her personality reflected even an ounce of her physical beauty, Becky might be the best person Evie knew.
But alas, she was heinous.
Evie smiled sweetly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “Hard at work this morning?”
The other woman smiled back, laying it on so thick that they could have repaved the walkway up to the castle with it. “I was the first one here this morning, so I got a jump on things.” In Becky-speak, that translated to, I was here before you, therefore I am better than you. Behold my fearsome attendance record.
Keeping her eyes glued forward so she wouldn’t roll them, Evie pushed through the throngs of people bustling around the room at breakneck paces. The boss demanded efficiency from every person he employed, and every person here desperately wanted to prove themselves indispensable.
The hidden room was large and open, desks and tables laden throughout. Stained glass windows, depicting various scenes of evil and torture, were evenly spaced along the beige brick walls, bringing in a warm array of light over the space. The cobwebbed chandelier above them glinted as the light hit it, reminding Evie of the severed heads still hanging from the rafters below. She really hoped that scream from the torture chambers wasn’t another head about to be displayed as well.
She’d only been to the dungeons a few times, but never long enough to accurately assess the room of horrors. But a few of the interns had. It was the highlight of their squeamish conversations near the kitchens.
“It smells like rotted flesh and despair,” one of them had said.
Evie had promptly asked what despair smelled like, but the other girls just returned to their whispering.
She had never been very good at making friends.
For one thing, ever since her mother’s disappearance when she was a child, Evie’d become far too good at letting serious matters roll through her like a tide so they never landed close enough to hurt.
She briefly thought this job might give her a more somber air. That people would look at her and see someone with sophistication and world experience. But despite every reason she had to become a dark and menacing character, Evie had remained exactly who she always was—an optimist—a terrible thing to be in a villain’s office, mind you. Granted, she didn’t want to become evil, but when you spend most of your life trying to see the sun, you begin to wish for rain.
In her most private moments, she wondered what it would be like to never smile again, to be feared the way her boss was. But Evie Sage was not a villain, and anyone who suggested she was would get laughed at in their face.
Of course, was it any wonder everyone still saw her as the same when she continued to grin and bear it all? Like with the rest of her village, Evie had told her father a lie and kept him and Lyssa in the dark about where she went every day. It was for their own good, really. Her father already worried so much because of the burdens he was placing on his daughters, being ill and unable to work since he’d caught the Mystic Illness—a sickness that had plagued the kingdom for the last ten years.
The disease attacked without any rhyme or reason, seemingly selecting its victims at random. Some died quickly from the illness—the lucky ones. Others were left too weak to get out of bed as it slowly stole their lives, like the worst sort of thief.
Her father had had it long enough that the healer assured her and Lyssa it wouldn’t kill him, for now. But he was weak too much of the time to continue in the profession he’d done before.
Thankfully, he’d been a butcher, which was a boon for Evie, since she’d grown up around blood and corpses, and now that very trade was her profession. Although seeing animal corpses was very different than seeing the corpses of human men.
As she sat down at her desk and began her daily chore of balancing their ledgers, she reminded herself that at least today, her desk was clean. She’d only been working an hour when something crashed against the wall behind her—and made her jump right out of her chair, her rear hitting the floor with an embarrassing thud. Her arms had hit the papers as she fell, too, two hours’ work organizing invoices falling around her like paper snowflakes.
Amateur move, Evie.
She knew she always had to be on alert with her desk so close to the boss’s office.
She watched as the last paper drifted down onto her chest, not bothering to pick herself or the work up yet. Something or someone had most certainly been slammed against the wall… Another crash, followed by two softer thuds and glass shattering.
And there goes the framed picture I just rehung last week.
Still on the floor, feeling ridiculous, Evie turned over and went to her knees to pick up the papers strewn about. “Ouch,” she muttered softly, rubbing at her backside.
But she might as well have yelled, given the way the black door of The Villain’s office jerked open, shaking the walls and making the rest of the workers freeze. Evie slowly looked up from the papers in her hands, her vision catching first on the tip of a shiny black boot and then moving upward. Dark pants intended to be loose but instead hugged muscular thighs that were attached to an impressive torso.
Her eyes skipped past the loose V in his puffy black shirt that exposed the strong top of his chest. Even rumpled, he looked distractingly attractive.
When her gaze finally reached his face, she had to swallow a sigh and bury it where nobody would ever find it. But how could she help it? His jaw was sharp and angled enough that it could be a weapon itself, strong enough to make her insides quiver.
Don’t let the boss quiver your insides, Evie.
She used to think the hardest part of him to look at was his eyes. A startling black that pulled you in, a web meant to ensnare your soul. They were the type of eyes that begged you to look away, but Evie ignored that plea, because they were very nice to look at.
And his mouth.
Perhaps the most expressive part of his face, every change so slight but so rich in meaning that she’d begun to catalog them. For instance, right now his mouth was pulled tight. When she glanced back up at his eyes, he was staring down at her. His head was tilted slightly, and her stomach did a flip as she wondered what he must be thinking about her being on her hands and knees, like she was playing a ridiculous game of leapfrog.
Is he confused? Confounded? About to kill me for my clumsiness?
He slowly bent his knees, kneeling until he was eye level with her.
Lacking the fundamental intimidation she should be feeling, Evie instead smiled brightly at the man the entire kingdom lived in fear of. “Good morning, sir.” A muffled groan came from within the boss’s office. Raising her brows and angling her head to look past his, she added, “Having a busy morning, are we?”
The boss raised his brows back at her. “Quite.” Shaking his head as if rattled by his own answer, he began gathering the rest of her strewn-about papers before placing them on her desk.
Evie put her foot down to stand and winced, earning a sharp look from the evil incarnate standing before her. His mouth twisted down into a frown. He was…angry? Of course he was angry. Evie had interrupted his business by falling flat on her ass.
She started to pull herself up with one hand on the edge of the desk, but the boss gripped either side of her waist and lifted her before she could protest. Not that she would’ve, had she had time to, because his large hands were, well, very nice.
When she was finally on her feet, he dropped his hands in an instant, clenching them at his sides. Warmth stole up her cheeks as she awkwardly tried to look anywhere but at his face, afraid she might see a smirk or worse, and landed upon the open V of his black shirt.
And her mouth, for some gods-forsaken reason, decided to produce an excess of saliva.
Evangelina Celia Sage, if you choose this moment to drool, you are never reading a dirty novel again.
Too distracted by the patch of skin, Evie nearly missed the way her boss was assessing her. Not the way her previous employers had, but in a far more analytical way. Like he was searching for inconsistencies.
“How did you fall, Sage?” His words had a smooth sophistication. A lilting accent that only made his voice more alluring.
“My chair turned on me,” Evie said flatly. “And my rear end became very well acquainted with the floor.”
His lips twitched upward, and Evie felt like she’d just found a treasure trove. Twisting to put the rest of the papers down, she felt another sharp ache slide down her back. She winced.
The ghost of a smile slipped from his lips, and Evie cursed her own clumsiness for causing it to disappear.
“Do you need to see the healer?” he asked, placing a hand on one side of her desk, leaning down in a way that put emphasis on his strong forearm beneath the sleeve of his rolled-up shirt.
Hmm…suddenly her mouth was completely dry.
“No, sir, I wouldn’t want to subject Tatianna to my war with the chair.” She leaned in, gesturing at him to come closer into her confidence. He turned his head slightly, giving her his ear, and Evie smothered her surprise at him entertaining her antics. “Best to keep this between us, or it may enlist the other chairs in a revolt.”
Then the boss did something that nearly made Evie’s mortal soul leave her body—he laughed. Or rather he coughed, a lot, into his hand. It was closed around his mouth, clearly masking a smile he was having the fight of his life trying to keep off his lips.
Evie mumbled her shock under her breath. “That wasn’t even that funny.”
The watchful eyes of the other workers snapped them both to attention, and before the boss turned to glare a warning at their audience, the crowd scattered like ants that saw a large foot coming at them.
Except, of course, Becky, who kept her hawk eyes glued to the pair from the other side of the room.
“See the healer, Sage. We have a big week ahead of us, and I can’t afford you falling dead on me.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever died from a bruise on the ass, sir.”
His eyes went tight, and his mouth did a familiar movement that even Evie knew meant she’d pushed too far.
She took a tiny step backward. “But I’d hardly want to be the first, so I’ll just—I’ll just head there now.” She made a wide path around him, passing his office. She spied a scrawny-looking man inside, lying underneath a brick that had come loose from the wall above. No doubt, after he’d been slammed into it.
Kingsley sat on the edge of the boss’s desk, as he always did these last few months, his wide, unblinking expression taking her in before his webbed foot lifted one of his tiny communication signs. This one in red chalk, reading, Ouch.
Evie had grown quite fond of the tiny creature’s presence. He mostly just sat there, observing and offering up quiet counsel with the slab of slate the boss gave him to write on. His tiny gold crown always at attention on his slimy head.
Ouch indeed, Evie mouthed back to Kingsley before returning her attention to the broken man lying on the ground.
She tried to muster the sympathy she should feel for the pain of another person, but she’d seen so many men come and go from that room that she was trying to save her sympathy for those who deserved it.
A weaselly-looking man, whom she was almost certain she’d seen throwing rocks at a group of ducks last week in her village, did not make the cut. A smile graced her lips as she struggled to remind herself the boss was most likely not beating this man to a pulp to defend a few ducks’ honor. Her mind also begged the point that even if he wasn’t intentionally defending the ducks in question, he had by association.
Which for some reason was just as adorable.
She forced her smile into an even expression and continued forward to the small hallway that led to the healer’s quarters. For the bruise. On her ass.
Before she could throw her head in her hands at the disaster that was her morning, she remembered her boss on his knees before her, handing her the discarded papers, the sliver of his chest, his laughter.
Perhaps her morning was not a complete disaster.
Of course, there was no telling what his reaction would be when she returned to her desk and had to admit to him the discrepancy she’d found in the books that morning. She didn’t know everything about The Villain yet, but she did know that he detested disorganized recordkeeping, almost as much as she hated stray eyeballs.
