Assistant to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #1)

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

The damn organ between his ribs continued to pound relentlessly. He cursed again, gripping the windowsill until his knuckles turned white, but his heart wouldn’t slow. As if insisting on reminding him that he had one.

Her expression softened, and it felt as if it connected to a thread in his chest, pulling it tight.

The sunlight hit his face, but he felt no warmth, like Sage had dragged even the power of the sun away with her.

“There is so much that can be fixed by honesty, if you’re brave enough to use it.

But he was so happy to see her. What an obscene, unnecessary emotion, but there it was. He was happy… How positively vile.

“I don’t run from my demons. I welcome them. I let them envelop me until I grow stronger.”

the moon once more caught on the gems in Sage’s hair. Trystan kept his gaze there, knowing he’d follow that light wherever it went.

No, right now he would allow himself this small sliver of happiness, if that’s what the warmth creeping through his chest felt like.

How could the reality of kissing her possibly surpass the euphoria that was pumping through his veins at what his own imagination had conjured?

The Villain came to an unbidden realization then, so completely tragic that his mind tried to reject the words. But they were there, so plainly it was almost comical. He was in love with her. Of all the foolish, horrific things he’d ever accomplished, falling in love with a woman he so completely didn’t deserve made the top of his list. But he did love her. It wasn’t a question or even a sudden realization. He’d known, hadn’t he? He’d known from the moment she’d called him pretty. It was like a tether was between them, wrapped directly around his heart, that she had the power to push and pull at her leisure.

Evangelina Celia Sage was woven into his being; in the blink of his eyes, in the crinkle of his smile, in his rusty unused laughter, she was there. From the moment he’d met her, he thought of her like the sun. Bright and vibrant, untouchable. But he was wrong. She wasn’t light; she was color. Every single one, dancing otherworldly and bright over his unworthy eyes. She was the explosion of the vivid gleams and glows of the world around him, like a constant rainbow, shining not after the rain but during. She was everything he never deserved but longed for anyway.

He was ruined. But he loved her anyway.

As she rode home to her family, she felt a tug back in Trystan’s direction, and she wondered if that pull between her two worlds would be the thing that finally tore her apart.