Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain Book 3)

The Villain

The way down to the dungeons was lined with blazing torches, the crackling sound a small comfort in the damp darkness before them. There was no reason for Trystan to carry his own torch, but he felt he needed to hold on to something, preferably something too dangerous to drop.

Ads by PubRev

He kept a foot of distance between Sage and himself, a strange sensation of pins and needles pricking at the bottoms of his feet, eventually climbing until they hit the back of his neck. As they finally made their way to the bottom of the stone staircase, a screeching sound came from farther below, where the guvre was being held.

“It’s creepier down here at night,” Sage commented, brushing past him, her heels clicking on the stone. One scraped it, and she stumbled, immediately righting herself. She glared at the ground. “You should get that fixed.”

“Your inability to walk in a straight line? I wasn’t aware it was fixable,” he responded flatly.

“I feel as if your sense of humor only crops up when you want to irritate me.”

He didn’t deny it. That was when his sense of humor cropped up.

“What sense of humor?” he deadpanned.

She laughed, and his heart stopped beating.

There was a fear Trystan had carried with him all his life, and most of it hinged on failing. First his parents, then Benedict, then the entirety of the kingdom. He’d resented being The Villain at the beginning, resented having no choice in who he’d become because of his magic, because of who he’d always been destined to be. But he settled into it when he realized that, thanks to his new profession, he never needed to fear failing again.

Being The Villain gave him a new set of rules, and if that was all he’d ever be, he was going to hold on to it with both hands.

Except he’d just made Sage laugh so hard her cheeks were turning red in the dim torchlight, her joy so powerful it overcame his fear of the darkness.

And that very much did not feel like a failure.

It felt terrifyingly like happiness.

“So am I actually going to get to torture him, or did you just say that to freak me out?”

Thank the gods for Sage and her ill-timed, jarring questions.

He kept walking. “Are you finally admitting the prospect ‘freaks you out,’ as you so eloquently put it?”

“No. But sometimes it feels like you say stuff just to see how far you can push before I’ll run.”

The keys in his hand clanged against each other. “I was testing your mettle. I appreciate the eagerness to learn, but I need to take the lead on this. You’re still recovering, and I have a bit more experience in the torture department than you do. Oh, and Sage, in the future,” he warned, his voice low, “don’t attempt to analyze me.”

Especially when you’re so frighteningly on the mark that I am now concerned you’re a private mind reader or a witch.

“I’m not analyzing. I’m observing. I thought that’s what you wanted, Your Evilness,” she said, folding her arms.

He got to work on the lock in the thick wooden door. It muffled the sounds—specifically, the screams. “Very well. Then observe this.”

When Trystan entered the room, he saw that Otto Warsen’s son was chained to a chair, his ankles bolted down, his waist wrapped in two cords of thick metal. His face was dirtied and bruised, as if it had been struck repeatedly, his light hair lying flat on his head. Trystan took two large steps before slamming a fist hard into the man’s jaw, forcing the gag from the intruder’s mouth.

“You don’t scare me, Villain.” He sneered, spitting in the direction Sage was standing in.

Trystan gripped the man’s cheek with one hand, responding blandly, “That’s not a requirement for what’s about to happen to you, but I caution you not to spit in her direction again unless you desire doing so without a tongue.”

The hatred in the intruder’s eyes was merely fuel, the beginnings of Trystan’s typical routine when it came to this room. Every man he’d held here began with defiance, then fear, and then finally they broke and begged. In Trystan’s experience, he needn’t do much. The lowlifes he’d brought down here typically were without scruples and without a spine.

“Calvin,” Sage said. “That’s your name, isn’t it? I remember seeing it in your father’s correspondence.”

Calvin Warsen trained his hateful look on Sage, and Trystan stepped back, resisting the urge to lay his fist back into the blackguard’s face. “My father wrote to me when you began working for him,” the man hissed at Sage. “Said you flaunted yourself in front of him so often you were practically begging for it.”

Trystan paused, then rubbed at his chin, sighing, before kicking his boot into Calvin’s ankle. The crack was followed by the fool’s pained cry.

“Who let you in the manor?” he asked calmly, waiting for the man to cease his moaning or for Sage to object. She didn’t.

“Fuck you,” Calvin spat.

Trystan nodded. “Wrong answer.” Another kick to his broken ankle, and Calvin cried out again. Music to his ears. He allowed himself to slip back into old habits, allowed himself to not worry what Sage thought of the display, allowed himself to be what he was always meant to be: a villain. “Someone let you in. And that same someone tied up my chef, I’d guess. I’d like a name.”noveldrama

“And I’d like you and that bitch’s heads on a pike.” Calvin sneered. “We don’t always get the things we want, Villain.”

Trystan was all too aware of that, but instead of reflecting on the unwanted emotions it dredged up, he instead rammed the heel of his palm upward, causing Calvin’s nose to crack and bend to an unnatural angle.

“You broke my nose!”

Trystan shrugged. “You bruised her brain.” He gestured back to Sage, bending down so that he was eye level with the mess of a man before him. “All things considered, I think I’m being rather generous, don’t you?”

Calvin’s shoulders slumped—the first sign that he was breaking, the veneer of confidence fading as the pain in his body increased.

“Who is your contact inside the manor? Hmm?” Trystan gripped Calvin’s chin. “Why should they go free when you are down here suffering?”

The chains rattled as Calvin thrashed, and Trystan allowed it, allowed the man to weaken himself until he could no longer fight, physically or mentally. “I can’t tell you! If I do, I die.”

“I’m fairly certain if you don’t, you’ll also die.” Sage’s light voice rang through the violence with calm reason, and both men turned to look at her.

She hadn’t moved from her spot, had stayed where she was directly behind him, no hint of fear as she stared at Calvin with confused fascination. Trystan knew he should object to her chiming in, but he couldn’t. He was hypnotized.

Stepping closer to their prisoner, Sage looked silently to Trystan for permission, and for some unfathomable reason, he gave it to her. Nodding slightly, he watched, enraptured, as she bent her knees until she was eye level with Calvin, gifting the bleeding man a saddened smile that outraged Trystan, but he didn’t interrupt—in all honesty, because he was too curious to see where she was going with this.

“How did you get into the manor?” Sage asked, repeating Trystan’s earlier question but gentler, her wide blue eyes imploring.

“I was let in,” Calvin jeered.

“How courteous,” Sage said pleasantly. “By whom?”

“By the fucking bogeyman.”

Sage was oddly serene when she replied, “So it was a man?”

Calvin began to rattle his chains, shaking his limbs but not budging an inch. Sage remained just out of his reach. “I won’t tell you anything.”

Trystan grabbed Calvin by the shirt collar. “If the lady asks you a question, you will answer it.”

Sage pushed off the ground to stand, then gently pried his hand from the man’s shirt with a small smile that speared right through Trystan’s heart. “Mr. Warsen, I wonder if, to punctuate my point, you might need a little motivation?” Sage began lifting the hem of her skirt, and Trystan clapped a hand over Calvin’s eyes so hard the chair wobbled from the force.

When Trystan finally dared to look, Sage was staring at him, self-satisfied, with her dagger dangling from her fingers. Trystan removed his hand from Calvin’s face, being sure to knock into the man’s broken nose.

Calvin growled and shook, but he stopped immediately when he spied the dagger in Evie’s hand. He recognized it—Trystan could tell by how his eyes flashed. “Where did you get that?”

Sage tipped the blade underneath Calvin’s chin until he was looking right into her eyes. “Your father forged it. It’s imbued with some sort of magic that’s linked it to me, so I thought he wouldn’t mind if I kept it. Call it severance pay.” She punctuated the statement with a slash to the man’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” He gritted his teeth as Sage gripped the back of his chair and leaned the dagger back at his throat.

“Now. Who. Let. You. In.” To her credit, Sage kept her friendly calm, her composure so together Trystan couldn’t bring himself to object to her commandeering the torture session.

She was too good at this. Trystan could do nothing but watch as Calvin’s throat bobbed. Had she broken him already?

“I won’t tell you.” Calvin’s chest heaved when Sage drew a shallow cut at his throat. “You’re gonna kill me anyway.”

Sage gasped, empty hand moving to her chest to convey some deep offense. “Really, Mr. Warsen. You are our guest! We don’t kill our guests.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Trystan drawled, and Sage gave him an exasperated glance, probably annoyed he was throwing out criticisms when he was lackadaisically watching her do all the heavy lifting.

Why was he letting her do all the heavy lifting?

“All right, that’s enough, apprentice.” He pushed himself in front of her and grabbed Calvin by the neck. “Here are your options, because I’m nothing if not in favor of choice. You can tell me all you know now, and I will make your death swift and painless. Or you can hold on, stay stubborn, remain true to a king who doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die. And to a father whose head we chucked into a trash pit last week because it had developed a smell.”

“I’ll always be loyal to my father,” Calvin spat.

Trystan felt his magic pouring out then, wrapping around Calvin, and the man’s eyes darted down to look at it. “What—what is that?”

So it wasn’t merely Sage and her mother who could see it any longer. His magic was now visible to anyone.

Very well. Let it terrify them as much as it used to him.

“You may remain loyal to your father; that is a choice. But know that with that choice, you do not die—”

Sage interrupted, sounding confused. “Um, he doesn’t?”

“No. If he stays loyal, we keep him alive and we be sure to visit. Every day.” Trystan’s eyes hardened, and Sage’s lit up when she realized.

“Oh, you mean we torture him every day if he doesn’t confess!” She looked pleased to have deciphered it, her curls bouncing as she nodded. Her green summer dress was a hard contrast to the dark room and even darker conversation.

“Precisely, Sage,” he affirmed, forcing his eyes away from her exposed collarbones with a hard clearing of his throat. “Imagine, Mr. Warsen. Living your life each day in the darkness. No doors to go through, no windows to see the sun.”

Sage gasped, jumping and gripping Trystan’s arm so hard his magic flared and smacked Calvin in the face. “Oh, now I remember!” she cried, smiling so wide he nearly returned it with one of his own.

Instead, he stared at her like her head had fallen off—likely the only thing he and Calvin Warsen would ever have in common.

Calvin stared at her, too, half disgusted, half wary. “Is she on something? What’s wrong with her?”

“Watch it,” Trystan warned, pressing against his broken ankle before turning to Sage. Calvin’s scream drowned out his hushed whisper. “What’s wrong with you?”

“He was messing with the window! In the kitchen! When I came in, he was doing something to the window.”

The kitchen window? It was the only one Trystan had never touched or rearranged into a villainous depiction. The window with the sun shining down on a—

“That’s it. Well done, Sage.” He couldn’t hide how absurdly pleased with her he was. Not when she was beaming like the light reflecting after rainfall.

“I couldn’t remember at first because of the concussion,” she said too casually, knocking on her head like it was a door. “Guess it was locked up in there somewhere.” She laughed, but Trystan didn’t find anything about her head being injured amusing.

He sniffed and grabbed the knee splitter—a gleaming metal clamp with a top covered in spikes facing rows of parallel spikes on the bottom—and shoved it over Calvin’s legs so his knees were wedged between.

Then he flicked the switch. The two spiked ends began to close in slowly, and Sage—gods help him—looked at the machine with more curiosity than disgust. “Oh, is that going to… Oh, ew.”

He spun her around and nudged her toward the door as Calvin began to thrash in panic. “Yes, ew. Now, let’s go. The sound of kneecaps cracking is a bit grotesque even for my taste. We’ll see you again soon, Calvin. Have a pleasant break.”

“Do what you will, but I will die with what I know before I ever tell you! The satisfaction when you realize the truth will be enough to sustain me—and I suspect it will sustain my accomplice, too.” Calvin grinned, and the machine made its final descent just as Trystan bolted the door shut.

Sage stood there staring at it, her red lips parted as she pressed her ear against the wood. “Either he’s a very quiet screamer or this door works splendidly.”

He waited for her to cry or panic or flee, as he’d wanted to the first time he did something like this. But she did no such thing.

Merely looked up at him with a grateful sheen in her eyes. “Thank you for including me. I know you probably didn’t want to.”

He pulled at his collar, discomfited by her gratitude, hating himself for allowing it to make him feel weightless when he should’ve felt fearful of corrupting her further. Instead, he felt so light his bloody head was going to knock against the ceiling. “You had a right to be there. You’re my apprentice, after all, and he had wronged you.” And he seems to continue to do so. “Now, come.”

“Come where?” Sage asked, tripping to keep up. “Your lack of direction is giving me whiplash.”

Trystan quirked a grin at her.

“To find Rennedawn’s storybook.”