Apprentice to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #2)

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

My gods, the woman was like the sun. He needed tinted glasses just to look at her.

How she’d yell at him, and then the flush would go all the way down her chest, dipping below her bodice, at which time, naturally, he’d be distracted by it and stop listening. She’d notice and yell at him some more. He couldn’t wait.

“What a horrible waste of pastry. I’d rather they throw rocks.”

She was afraid, but she knew now: fear usually meant you were standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something she would shy away from ever again.

“I would never make the mistake of underestimating a woman like you. It would be a fatal one.”

“It is fiction for a reason, you menace. By the gods, what if you carried out every impossible act you read about?” It was a rhetorical question, but she couldn’t resist the urge to slip into the normal ease of their cadence, like no time had passed. “Oh, I suppose that I would need to become very, um—flexible.”

He would follow her off a cliff without question. And Evie knew she was in love with him. Right then, right there.

She breathed, “It’s so beautiful.” Her boss had been silent beside her, but now he replied hoarsely, still gripping her hand, “Yes, it is.” And when she turned, he was looking at her.

There was no emotion in his voice when he said, “Does your mind live in the gutter?” She shook her head, tapping a finger against her lips. “No, but it rents there on occasion.”

“You know as well as I, Trystan Maverine, that humans demonize what they cannot understand. It isn’t our job to educate them, just to live the way we’re meant to with the knowledge that being called a monster does not make you one.”

“Sometimes family isn’t a thing we are born into but a choice we make. Sometimes”—Evie smiled—“the people who love you most in your life are the ones who choose you.”

“I think I am very sad. But I won’t be forever.”