Trystan was soaked to the bone.
He rode furiously through the woods, jumping streams and boulders, barely able to see under the downpour of rain. The familiar fork in the road appeared, and he was relieved to see the lit cottage, light coming softly from each corner. Nothing bad could possibly happen in a home that looked so inviting.
By the gods, will he kill her?
He wouldn’t; he couldn’t. But the man had literally planted a bomb, knowing it could easily destroy her. With that thought burned in his mind, The Villain leaped from his horse, tucking it quickly underneath the pavilion at the bottom of the drive and then kicking the front door open.
“Evie!” he called, realizing that if there were any secrets left in this house, he was about to uncover them inch by terrible inch. But there was no answer, just a small-sounding sob coming from the hall. Trystan raced in that direction, halting hard when he saw who sat there.
Lyssa Sage was short, with hair that stuck out in every direction. He was sure there was no one on earth he had less in common with, but she looked up at him like she trusted him when she cried, “Mr. Maverine, I think my papa is hurting my sister.”
He knelt fast, leaning away so he wouldn’t scare her. A strange thing, when that was so often his goal, especially while trying to get answers. “Where are they, Lyssa?” The Villain asked, pushing soaked locks out of his face.
“His office.” She pointed to a door on the right, closed and quiet. “I heard yelling, and then Evie was crying, and it sounded like someone fell.”
He cleared his throat, trying not to let his panic show. “I’m sure it was just a disagreement.” He turned to Tatianna, who trudged in behind him, shaking the rain from her cloak and then her braids.
“Take Lady Lyssa back to the manor,” he said, holding out a hand to the little girl, which she readily accepted. The Sage women seemed to keep courage in large supplies.
“But what about—” Tatianna could’ve said a hundred different things. What about Evie? What about kidnapping? What about taking a child back to a place that deals with stealing, murder, and torture? Not to mention deadly creatures and salacious company…with severed heads in the entryway.
“Take her through the back entrance. Just be sure she’s covered from the rain,” he said.
Tatianna pulled her own water-repelling cloak around Lyssa, who instinctively snuggled into her side.
“I’m a friend of your sister’s. You’re going to come stay with us for a while,” Tatianna said kindly, leading her out the door and into the lightning and rain.
“Evie’s not a maid there, is she?” The little girl’s voice, unbelievably, brought a small smile to his face, much like her sister’s so often did. But the smile lasted only a second before he remembered his mission and crept closer to the office door.
He leaned his ear against it, but there was no noise. The silence made his heart pound.
Trystan put his hand against the knob and twisted slowly, pushing it open on a groaning creak. When he could survey the full scene, he stopped, his mouth dropping open.
She was there, alive. He let out a soul-shuddering sigh of relief before taking in the rest of it. The body of a man, who Trystan assumed was her father, lay prone on the ground.
Evie’s eyes went to his, sad, bloodshot from her tears. Her hands were shaking. “I figured it out.”
His entire body seemed to sag from pure relief.
She sucked in a hard breath. “He’s not dead. But I gave him a sedative, so he should be out for— I don’t know, how long do sedatives last? Maybe I did kill him.” She sounded robotic, like she was reasoning everything out to herself rather than him.
He started to walk toward her, but she stood, moving up to him, holding out her hand before he could speak. After taking a deep inhale, Sage said quickly, “I know he was the traitor. I mean, I didn’t know before tonight—”
“I know you didn’t,” he interrupted.
“Shhh,” she scolded him.
He complied, feeling his back go straighter under her scrutiny.
“I didn’t know, but I did earlier when I left, and I knew you’d want to take him into custody, torture him for information. But I also knew you’d be conflicted because he’s my father.”
Now that he had to object to, really. “Sage, I don’t mean to burst whatever sort of morally gray bubble you’ve put me in. But this man sabotaged shipments and my revenge, not to mention he’s the reason that many of my guards are dead. I would’ve had no qualms about hurting such a man.”
“You wouldn’t have done it, though.” She sounded so absolute, he began to doubt it himself. “You would’ve given me the choice.”
And he knew then that she was right. It would’ve been agony not to capture him, not to kill him, but he would’ve left it up to her. This betrayal no longer belonged to him alone—they shared it, the burden of it now tethering them together, and he would defer to her wishes. Because what she wanted mattered to him.
“There wouldn’t have been many choices,” he grumbled.
Her lips turned up—not quite a smile, but that little glimmer in her eye was still there.
Thank all in existence for that.
“I wasn’t sure how long the sedative would take to go into effect, so I suppose I got lucky.” Sage sighed, moving toward the open office door and walking over to the kitchen. She pulled the cork off a bottle of wine and took a large swig, then another, then another.
“What are you supposed to do after you sedate your father, who also happened to betray you in every conceivable way? What’s the protocol?” She scrunched her nose adorably, and he hated the fact that he found anything adorable. Especially when Sage seemed so far away from herself.
“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.
