Blood sprayed her face as he fell, eyes wide. She stood up, soaked in blood, breathing hard, an ache in her neck.
The dagger pulsed in her hand. But the pain was gone.
She smiled in relief, staring at the weapon like a lost friend, and it almost seemed to answer her.
“You witch!” one of the two remaining knights yelled, sprinting for her. Evie held up the dagger to fight, ready to destroy him, but the knight halted when a large sword was shoved through his middle.
Evie gasped as the sword was tugged out and the knight fell. The other knight behind him stood there with the dripping sword.
“What the— Why did you? I mean, I’m not complaining, but why would you help me?”
The remaining knight, her unlikely hero, did not say a word. Merely stood there for a moment, assessing her, his whole face covered by a silver helmet, save for his eyes. Evie took a careful step closer to him, but the move seemed to startle the knight into action. Grabbing the reins of his horse, he quickly hoisted himself up, giving her one final glance before riding away.
What in the deadlands was that?
But she didn’t have time to ask more questions. Not when she spotted a strip of Trystan’s torn shirt laying against the grass.
He was gone. Taken. By them.
She breathed heavily. The burn of tears threatened, but she couldn’t cry; not yet. The dagger pulsed in her hand like it felt her distress, like it didn’t want her to be alone with it. Her heart had been nothing but in pain for the last few hours, but this, this was unbearable. She picked up the strip of his shirt, clenching it in her fist. Her feelings were too erratic. She could not tame them.
The thought of him trapped, in the dark, reliving his most traumatic past moments… No, she would fix this; she had to. If they hurt him, the man who she was almost certain possessed part of her soul, she would destroy them.
The dagger pulsed in her hand once more, and she gripped it, becoming a mask of calm, as she turned toward Otto’s dead body.
She smiled.
She returned to the manor quickly, in case the knight who’d saved her had a change of heart, but she felt sick as she walked through the manor gates without Trystan. After alerting the guards of what had occurred with a composure she was proud of herself for, she made her way up the stairs.
Evie immediately peeked in on Lyssa, who was asleep on Tatianna’s extra bed, Blade’s knit dragon held in her tiny hands. Evie gave a watery smile and then went to the hallway, and as soon as the door shut, she cried. She cried and cried until she was hiccupping, until she sank down slowly to the ground, until her face was sticky and puffy from the tears and she was burying her face in her knees.
Her sobs faded slowly, and when Evie finally looked up, only anger remained.
A little while later, Evie found herself in the entryway corridor. She’d bathed and changed, and with it came a renewed sense of purpose as she watched Marvin following her orders. Catching her reflection in the mirror hanging across the way, her eyes stopped on the red of her lips, from her mother’s rouge, then passed to her hair, unbound. She pushed it behind her ears as her loose pants swished against the stone floor.
“Lift it higher, Marv,” Evie instructed as she let a wicked smile settle on her lips. Becky appeared like an apparition beside her, looking forlorn and lost.
“He’s really gone?” She removed her glasses as she spoke, wiping the lenses against the thick fabric of her skirts.
Evie felt a strange kinship with her for just a moment. She gave Becky a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “We’ll get him back. I’ll make sure of it—whatever it takes.” And despite all that had transpired between them, all the insults and jabs and mistrust, Becky looked at Evie with something that veered precariously close to respect.
“What did you have in mind?”
Evie stared down at the gold markings circling her smallest finger. “Well, first—” She paused, smiling to herself. “I’m going to need you to kill me.”
Becky’s lips pulled up into a wry grin as she began speculating. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“All done, Ms. Sage!” Marvin called, and Evie looked to the opulent ceiling and what had just been added. Her heart pounded in satisfaction at Becky’s quiet gasp behind her. Otto Warsen’s head dangled there, eyes frozen forever in an expression of fear and surprise.
Stepping back, leaving him behind, Evie made her way to the stairs down to the dungeon. Quietly vowing to herself that she would save The Villain…
Or become one trying.
