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

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Keeley, the head of his guard, was seamlessly handling three knights at once, while another guard, Min, had backed two into a corner and was pelting them with…cream puffs? She’s getting a raise.

“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.”

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.”

“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.”