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

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

The Villain didn’t miss light. He missed color.

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.”

A wave of tenderness came over him through the fierceness igniting his bloodstream, his battling emotions of rage and relief making him feel wild as his starving eyes took her in. Rosy cheeks, bloodred lips, wild black curls. Mine.

“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.

Trystan’s tentative to-do list early the next morning was as follows: 1. Bathe. 2. Get a report on all he’d missed while he was gone. 3. Avoid thinking about Sage’s thighs. 4. Murder Gushiken. He’d been successful with the first two, failed at the third, and was about to check the last off his list.

“The person who saves the magical lands will take Fate’s youngling well in hand; when Fate and starlight magic fall together, the land will belong to you forever. But beware the unmasked Villain and their malevolent dark, for nothing is more dangerous than a blackened good heart…”

“There is nothing written in any text, gods-created or not, that says we cannot be more than one thing. You’ve been told for a very long time that you are made for destruction, but there is nothing that says you cannot be more. You can be capable of bad and do good. You can do good things and still be bad. Nothing is set in stone, and if it helps, I’ll stand by you no matter who you choose to be.”

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.”

She’d become entirely unpredictable, which, granted, wasn’t so wildly different from before, but the lack of openness she usually displayed so readily was distracting him from his plans, his revenge. She was making him wonder. Curiosity is so obscenely annoying.

“Because we are always expected to plaster a grin on our faces even when we don’t wish to. I used to do it so often, I stopped being able to tell when I was smiling for me or for someone else. So now, I don’t smile unless I’m one hundred percent sure it’s something I want to do, not something someone else wants me to do.”

“I’ve been hurt plenty by the world, by people, by men. Just because you bury your bad experiences behind revenge schemes and scorn doesn’t mean that I must join you in your misery. Being a cynic doesn’t make you wise. It makes you a coward.”

“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.”

Trystan watched Clare’s eyebrow twitch before he noticed her reaching for the leftover orange ink in her pocket. He gripped her wrist. “Don’t,” he warned. That was, until Sage nearly knocked Trystan out of the way, throwing her arms around the knight and burying her head in his neck. “Okay, Clare, go ahead,” Trystan said, waving her on.

It’s been zero days since Evie’s last sob.

“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.”

Losing someone didn’t mean the end; it merely meant the beginning of the life you’d lead without them, the beginning of letting in the people you’d gain in their stead.

“There are two cures to the sleeping-death fruit; everyone knows that.” He shook his head. “The other is a myth, a lie we push for children’s stories. It’s positively evil, even for me.” She blew air out of her lips, feeling strangely let down all of a sudden. “By the gods, alert the town crier! I’ve found a man who doesn’t believe in love.” He lifted a brow, angling his head down when he responded, devoid of emotion: “I do believe in love.”

Her entire life was being needed—it was her value; it was her feeble placeholder in this world. She was his assistant. Not being needed by him was robbing her of her purpose. It was cruel, and he knew it.

Chivalry wasn’t dead, but it ought to be, with the abysmal situations it put him in.

Of course she was a looker. She was Evie Sage.

It had occurred to her many times over that “impossible” was merely a word people used to describe limitations they wished for you to adhere to, so you wouldn’t upset the balance.

The Villain did not seem to appreciate this. “That is what happens when people are bored of mundane existences. They have to pick at extraordinary ones.” She stopped, running a hand down her dress. “I’d hardly call my family’s history extraordinary.” “I was referring to you.”

“The disguise was merely precautionary. The truth is, I could probably saunter through the village just as I usually am without much notice at all.” “I can’t imagine that.” “What?” she said as they arrived in front of the door. “Not noticing you.”

“You think I do not care? As if thoughts of you and your well-being don’t plague me daily. Nightly. Every second we are apart! I watched you die! I thought I’d never see you again! I have never known such darkness, and I never wish to again. If you think that makes me overbearing, so be it. But do not ever claim I do not care about you. You are wiser than that, Evie. Do not be a fucking fool.”

But she was inevitable, from the moment he first saw her and every moment since.

He loved her. It was a never-ending echo that he’d vowed to never say aloud.

Evie searched for an artist’s mark, an inscription, any clues as to who the redheaded girl was or where this was painted. But there were only two faded Fs at the bottom. She assumed they didn’t stand for freaking fucked, but it felt rather appropriate anyway.

“Come now, little friend. You’ve done far harder things than this.”

“I do not lack equilibrium,” she argued. “The ground merely lacks the courtesy of letting me know when it is coming closer.”

But she had one powerful and far more ridiculous tool in her arsenal. Spite.

“I would sooner take the scraps she lay at my feet,” he stated, “than commit myself to a cheap imitation.”

Evie leaned closer as Becky said in a hushed tone, “There was no villain’s assistant position…until he met you.”

Was he still in destiny’s test? Could this be a dream? No. He knew the feel of her mouth, the taste, the way his whole body lit like a match at even a whisper of her touch. This wasn’t a whisper, though; this was burning, flaying him open. It was torment. It was the deadlands’ punishment sent to damn him for all the evil he’d wrought.

He was dumbstruck in love with her. Shit, shit, shit.

He thought of a million things he could say to scold her. Sage, that was irresponsible. Sage, that was unprofessional. Sage, if you kiss me again, you’ll kill me. Maybe not the last one.

“Lyssa, you’re not sad?” Evie asked, wanting to borrow some of that strength for herself. Her sister smoothed out her skirt, feet kicking again. “I think I am very sad. But I won’t be forever.” Words to live by.

You were always supposed to meet Evie Sage, Trystan Maverine. Just as Evie Sage is meant to be your downfall, and you her undoing.

She loved his smile and his rare laughter. She loved that in one moment he could be fiercely protective and in the next he could be soft and unsure. She loved that he understood her, perhaps better than anyone she’d ever known, that he made her importance known without placation.

A piece of sky. And it struck Evie all at once. Every clue along their journey to find her mother. It had been written plainly in front of her the whole time. The daughter of wishing stars. She wanted to be swallowed by midnight. Your mother’s starlight enveloped her. Oh gods. I have no name…by natural law, I can take none. Wanting to be no one. Harvested from the stars themselves.

“This makes no sense. If you didn’t give me the antidote, how did I awaken? There’s only one cure.” Gideon smiled, like this wasn’t going to alter the very fabric of her world. “There are two.”

Beware the wrath of a kind heart.

Trystan—The Villain—hadn’t been the only one revealed to all the world at the king’s ill-fated event. Evie had, too. Gideon sucked in a breath. She’d been…unmasked.