“I think they’re done,” Gushiken whispered above the dripping quiet of the downstairs cellar, just a floor above the torture chambers. This time of day, his prisoners were exceptionally loud in their dramatically painful-sounding moans.
Trystan was unsure of how the guvres slept so soundly through the noise. It was as if they were lulled by the agony of others. In all fairness, he often was as well.
“As long as they’re content, their magic should stay mild enough to keep them contained,” Trystan said. His thoughts were not nearly as focused as his words. They were a tangled riot, reviewing all the events that had transpired in the last few weeks and the chaos they had wrought.
But at least both guvres were back in his possession. Blade’s leather ropes had proven shockingly useful…even if the man himself wasn’t.
How he’d ever thought this man was a certified animal trainer was beyond him. He really needed to fact-check résumés before hiring going forward.
“Is that why you had me remove the wall in there?” Blade asked, tapping his chin and nodding toward the cage.
“Why else?” Trystan asked sharply.
“I don’t know.” The dragon trainer adjusted his vest. “I thought perhaps you took pity on them.”
“I don’t feel pity. Ever,” he said, trying to sound authoritative, but he knew how juvenile it came out.
The male guvre curled closer to the female, and they sighed quietly together.
“I just—” Trystan paused.
Last night, he had heard the male give off a low-pitched cry and watched as he raised his clawed foot and lightly scratched it against the wall separating him from his mate. As if he knew any attempt to get to her would be futile but he couldn’t find it in himself not to try.
The Villain was still in denial that he possessed a heart, but if he did…it might have cracked. Just a little.
“How is Ms. Erring?” Trystan asked, changing the subject and walking toward the stairs that ascended back into the office space.
“She’s fine. Back to breathing fire with the best of them.”
“That was a joke?” Trystan was doing his best to appreciate humor in others rather than rail against it.
“Yes, sir.” Blade smirked, walking up the stairs beside him.
“Very good.”
“Thank you?” Blade asked hesitantly.
Trystan walked into the office, which had been completely cleared. Sage’s desk was empty, her cloak and bag gone.
The sun had set beyond the trees, and the last rays of light shone through the window, painting the room with a warm glow. It didn’t feel quite right when she wasn’t sitting there.
Tatianna appeared around the corner, his sister following closely behind her, and suddenly, it all flooded back.
Him outside the door, hearing Sage scream. It was the sound of nightmares, of all his fears coming together to brutalize him.
And therein lay the problem. He was The Villain. He couldn’t afford to fear anything. Least of all be afraid for someone. His feelings for Evie would surely fade with time, as most things did. His heart began to quicken, as if telling him what a lie that was.
“She went home,” Tatianna said. “She needed to rest.”
Yet again, his fear flared like a fast boil. “Was she all right? What did—”
“She was fine. Little progress was made, but she didn’t seem discouraged. I sent her home with the dagger.”
“What?” he roared.
“In its box!” Clare added, rolling her eyes. “You are worse than when we were children, with this mother-hen thing.”
“I am not…a mother hen,” he gritted out.
Blade’s ears looked perked, but he became very distracted when Ms. Erring appeared, moving across the floor to her desk, her severe bun yanking her features tight.
“Evie was fine.” Clare put a hand on Trystan’s arm. The warmth from their childhood came through in the gesture, right past his skin and bones and shooting straight for his soul.
Tarnished as it was.
Gods, he was turning into a sap.
“You should tell her what the gold mark is, Trystan,” Clare murmured quietly.
Tarnished indeed.
“It’s not right to have her agree to something like that without understanding what it is.”
“It doesn’t affect her at all,” he argued, fearing that the first good thing he’d done in years was an atrocious overstep.
He’d sincerely intended to give her the employment bargain, which, if she broke the bonds of his trust, would seep into her body like a poison. He’d only known her a day at the time, so there was no reason to veer down any other path…but then there were her eyes.
They were so honest, so open. They made him feel…afraid. So many things could happen to her, so many people she could trust who could turn around and destroy her. He’d hated at the time that it mattered, couldn’t figure out why this woman with a loud voice and a plethora of energy could evoke such strong protectiveness.
So instead of the green ink used in employment bargains, he’d used the gold, because unbeknownst to the public, its main purpose was protection. It warded against the strongest of evils, and when she’d face them, he’d know. He’d had the same gold ring placed around the circumference of his biceps, so that when she faced any true threat of death, it would tell him one way or another. Gold ink was a fickle sort of magic; it catered to its own rhythm, letting him know in different ways when she needed him. The unpredictability was inconvenient, but it was better than nothing.
His gold ring had burned him both times she was exposed to the dagger, when they were menaced by the guvre, and when she was on the parapet with the bomb ticking away, though the effect there was delayed—the magic in the ward was more unreliable after he’d just used so much of his own. Protection magic wasn’t very fond of his. A popular opinion. Each instance of Evie’s peril caused a burning sensation in his arm so great that he felt her pain with her.
He’d justified the practicality, telling himself that knowing when his assistant was in trouble was essential.
And he’d live in that denial if he could.
“No, it doesn’t negatively affect her, but it is permanently on her body.” Clare raised a brow, waiting for Trystan to understand her point.
But he already did, and he knew he was a bastard.
“That aside.” Tatianna leaned closer. “Are you any closer to determining who here is selling you out?”
“It’s nobody in the manor,” he said flatly, feeling more lost and frustrated than ever.
His guards, who had the best kind of loyalty—forced—hadn’t uncovered a single ounce of guilt among his one hundred and two employees. There wasn’t much else to do but turn to his other conclusion: that someone was getting in and out of the manor right under his nose. And it didn’t escape him that the person who’d been doing this always struck hard when he wasn’t there to sense them, to find them, to eviscerate them.
There were just too many variables, and they were no closer to answers.
“I’ll simply murder King Benedict, and then I won’t have to worry about it anymore.” Trystan seemed to be chronically accompanied by a headache lately, and the one person who helped to relieve that symptom had gone home for the day.
“Sounds good to me,” Tatianna said cynically, rolling her eyes when Clare glared at her.
“Killing someone is never the answer.” Clare frowned.
“I admire your moral heart, little sister,” he said. “But killing is often my favorite answer.”
Clare remained quiet for a moment, assessing him with such familiar eyes. “I was surprised to see how much you care for your…employees.” She used a plural word, but they both knew she was referring to a single person. “At first I thought Malcolm was exaggerating.”
“He wasn’t.” Trystan didn’t have it in him to lie. “In fact, I’m sure he understated it.”
Clare nodded. “Well, I hope that—” She halted.
“Sir!” Marvin—Trystan’s favorite, if he had favorites, which of course he didn’t; he was evil—his not favorite guard barreled through the doors, sweat from sprinting up the stairs running down his forehead. “A missive came! Keeley told me to give it to you urgently!” Marvin reached out to hand it off but doubled over his knees to suck in a breath.
“I know.” Blade walked over and slapped Marvin on the back. “Those stairs are their own form of torture.”
“Funny,” The Villain said dryly, reaching a hand out for the message, then quickly sliding the envelope open and scanning the page. The words etched there froze every muscle in his body.
“What?” Clare pressed. “What did they find?”
“Clare…” He trailed off, confusion numbing him. “The knight who bought the blue ink, who bought the timepiece from Malcolm…”
“Yes?” Clare said, sounding nervous. The rest of the room stood at attention, Marvin included.
“He’s dead.”
“What?” Clare staggered, pulling a hand through her short, dark locks, perhaps even pulling out a chunk. “So someone got to him first?”
“No, you don’t understand,” The Villain said. “The knight, Lark Moray, perished a day after purchasing your ink. He couldn’t have been the one to get the clock from Malcolm. He was already gone at that point.”
Trystan felt like he was outside his body, like he had separated from himself while his mind filed through what this meant. “We’ve been following the wrong trail this whole time.”
“It wasn’t him, then, who set the bomb,” Clare said incredulously. “But then—” Clare threw her hands over her mouth in shock. “East Marigold.”
“Who?” The Villain pressed.
“He always asked so many questions about me, about my family. He was so kind, though, I never thought.” Clare’s eyes watered.
“I don’t understand,” Blade cut in. “So it’s a different man? What’s the big deal?”
“There’s more, isn’t there?” The Villain pressed further, feeling like a disaster was looming right over them.
“Y-Yes.” Clare stiffened her lip, looking haunted. “The man who comes to see me, he uses a fake name. I mean, we all knew East Marigold had to be an alias. It’s ridiculous. But he came drunk just the other night and accidentally gave me the real one. After he left, I checked the town registry to be sure he wasn’t some sort of criminal, and it was there.”
The room was so quiet, a strand of hair could fall from his head and they’d all hear it brush against the stone. “And…” Trystan didn’t recognize his voice; it was higher pitched than he thought possible.
“I…I.” Clare looked at him, visibly holding herself to keep from shaking. “I didn’t think it mattered, I swear!”
“Spit it out, Clare!” Tatianna said, exasperated.
“His name was Griffin Sage,” she said finally.
Sage.
No.
But there was Kingsley at his feet, holding a sign: Father.
And suddenly it whooshed through him like a wave. The horror.
Tatianna finished his thought for him. “That’s… By the gods, that’s Evie’s father.”
“Oh my—” Rebecka’s head whipped up from her desk. “Her notebook.” She stood and stalked over to Evie’s desk. “Where is it?” She ducked down, digging through her drawers.
“She always takes her notebook home,” Tatianna said, confused.
Becky pulled an ink vial out with a determined strike, nearly shattering it. “Evie and I were having one of our…friendly chats. I may have said something about her ordering subpar office supplies, and she bragged about her father gifting her this special ink.”
The vial was a vibrant purple, almost artificially so.
“When was that, Rebecka?” The Villain stalked over, grabbing the vial out of her hands and passing it to Clare.
“About a week after she started working here, sir.”
“When the ink was purchased,” Clare confirmed, hand once again wrapped around her mouth, eyes wide with surprise. She turned the bottle over and nodded, tears watering her eyes. “This ink has been dyed. Someone mixed a few drops of red ink in here to make it look purple, but it’s blue and contains all the magical properties.”
Becky nodded, looking right at Trystan. Her hazel eyes were serious and resigned. “Whatever Evie wrote in her book, her father was able to see it. Our plans, our safe houses, even how to get in and out of the manor undetected. She was always writing everything down.”
“Her father tricked her,” Trystan said, his voice devoid of all life, though in his heart, a tiny flicker of hope that Evie had been unaware of her father’s machinations started to grow. “He knew she worked here all along, and he used her.”
Since The Villain had met Evie, he had felt himself changing in new ways, perhaps even better ones. But now he didn’t feel better. He felt destructive.
“Let’s calm down,” Clare said, putting a hand on his tensed arm. “He’s her father, Trystan. Perhaps there’s another explanation.”
“He put a bomb in my desk.” He attempted to keep his words level, but the last three came out in a roar. “He nearly killed her— He would have killed her.”
And now she was there, alone with him.
“Fuck,” The Villain growled, breaking for the stairs just as thunder roared to life outside. He halted in his tracks for a moment, listening to the rain whip against the window. “One of you go make sure this isn’t because a guvre once again found themselves outside of their cage. Tatianna, you’re with me.”
He continued quickly for the exit as Tatianna called after him, “And what are you going to do?”
The Villain gripped the door, taking a deep, aching breath. “I don’t know yet.” He tore it open and stomped out, whispering harshly under his breath, “But I know who I want to kill.”
