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

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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.

“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.”

“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 am a terror many try to hide. I am a secret that no one will find. I am only used by the brave. When issued properly, I will save. I am the source of everyone’s strife. If you wield me wrong, I will cut like a knife. What am I?”