Chapter 44
Evie
“Why. Would. You. Sneak. Up. On. Me. Like. That!” Evie yelled, punctuating each word with a slap to Raphael Fortis’s arm.
“It was Roland’s suggestion!” Raphael bit out, gesturing to Roland and Marv, who gave her a gentle wave.
“I told them it was a bad idea, Ms. Sage,” Marv told her, rubbing at his wild hair.
Rebecka Erring’s older brother had the good sense to look guilty, albeit begrudgingly so, but Evie was still trying to nail her soul back into her body. “I apologize.” Raphael bent at the waist, giving her a gentlemanly bow.
She stared at him. “I’m not going to curtsy.”
Roland coughed.
Raphael looked different than when Evie had seen him last. Sadder. More defeated. She understood the feeling.
“You look horrible,” Evie said.
“How good of you to notice.” Raphael rolled his shoulders. “We didn’t sleep last night. We rode all day to get here.”
Evie hiccupped, staring at Marvin and then Roland. “But they look fine.”
Marv preened. “Thank you, Ms. Sage.”
“Marv, I urge you to set a higher bar for compliments.” She offered the advice with a healthy dose of wariness. Her instincts were tempting her to be friendly with the front gate guard who’d betrayed them.
It was then she remembered their purpose in sending Marv off. “I’m sorry—is the poison…?”
Roland sighed. “Under control but not cured.” He looked at Marv intently, deeply, reaching for his hand with a subtle brush of his thumb, eyes softening. “Not yet.”
Marv turned bright red, and Evie allowed herself to delight in it.
Raphael, on the other hand, was not in a patient or romantic mood.
His dark brows turned down, his mouth hardened. “Evie, something terrible is about to happen. We had to warn you.”
“Must you?” Evie strained against a smile. “I love surprises.”
Roland fiddled with his glasses, nervousness evident in his tone. “It can’t wait, Evie.”
“Well, it must be bad if you dragged yourselves all the way here.” She saw terror somewhere in the man’s movements, in the darting of his eyes. “How did you even know where to find me?”
Raphael removed his helmet, pushing down his hair, then tugged a folded parchment from his pocket and handed it over to her. “My mother was sending these out to people under our protection.”
WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE
THE TRUE VILLAIN
EVIE SAGE
MAGIC THIEVERY
MURDER
TREASON
This time, when Evie looked upon the etching of the woman portrayed there, she didn’t see many differences between them.
“They’ll need a longer scroll if I keep collecting accolades.” She said this with a smile, ignoring the lurching in her stomach. She’d had a cask of gin; of course her stomach was uneasy.
Gin did wonderful, horrible things.
“There is a whisper network of loyalists working with Benedict, and they’re whispering about you.” Raphael tugged up the hood on her cloak in a familial gesture that made her miss Gideon. “They know you’re being harbored in the Heart Village. It isn’t safe.”
Nowhere was safe anymore, not when even her own body had become foreign and unpredictable. “And why are you telling me this? Out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose?” Her dubious questioning wasn’t necessarily fair. Rebecka’s brothers were not to blame for their mother’s transgressions.
“Believe what you want about my motives, but that is the truth. My mother has been growing more memory flowers for Benedict, and she no longer has any qualms about hurting Nura Sage’s daughter.
It—it’s not right. Our family, the Fortises, are meant to protect against corruption and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
” The sigh out of Raphael’s mouth was pained, his handsome face defeated as his moral pillars collapsed around him. “How far we’ve fallen.”
Evie knew that feeling well, so she placed a hand on Raphael’s arm in a gesture of comfort. “Not so very far, I think,” she said softly.
The breeze off the river, the gentle lapping of the waves, and the spray of salty water against her ankles sobered her faster than several cups of cauldron brew. Gods, she missed cauldron brew. Gods, she missed everything at the manor. Everyone.
“Get away from my cousin!” The high-pitched, slurred proclamation was delivered along with a swing of—
“Deadlands, Helena! Put down the gin bottle—you’re going to waste it.” Evie ripped the newly purchased alcohol out of her cousin’s grip, noting that Raphael had fallen onto his hands and knees to avoid the blow. “Here.” Evie gave her cousin one of her slippers. “Go nuts.”
But Helena had halted her actions, her hand still poised in the air, ready to come down hard on the man she’d perceived to be hurting Evie.
Evie was too touched to be worried Helena might kill the man.
“How undignified,” Raphael grumbled, crawling to his feet, brushing dirt off his shirt. “A gin bottle for a weapon, screaming like a banshee—” When Raphael’s head picked up, he found Helena twirling Evie’s shoe on her finger, observing the Fortis warrior with the interest a cat gives to a canary.
He froze, his eyes appearing to process several things at once.
“Go on, sir.” Helena smirked, tossing Evie her shoe without looking away. “I’m loving the review of my character. Hope it goes to print.”
“I would run out of room on the page,” Raphael gritted out, back straightening to full height.
“Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls.” Helena laughed in the way bells rang, the sort of sound that preceded battle. Even piss-drunk, Helena still managed a sweeping curtsy, her skirts falling perfectly around her. “I’m Helena. I run the Deadlands Theater. And you are…”
Raphael stumbled back, gaping. “The Deadlands Theater. You run the Deadlands Theater?”
Helena stepped into Evie’s side; she’d been observing their interaction with rapt interest, and she now felt she needed fairy floss and popcorn. “Have you heard of it?” Evie asked him.
Raphael’s eyes shut tightly before he whispered, “It’s where Benedict placed his spies.”
Helena stumbled back. “That’s not possible. None of my employees would even sniff in Benedict’s direction.”
“Think what you will. But your theater is dangerous. For you, for Evie, and for anyone who steps inside.” Raphael was grim but certain. Too certain for Evie’s heart not to fall to her toes.
The actors. Would someone be hurt because of her?
“No,” Evie breathed, then broke into a sprint for the playhouse.
“No. No. Please no.” Her legs were moving, pumping at a furious speed, Helena and Raphael’s calls to stop not far behind her, but she could barely note them.
Her blood had turned cold, her whole body succumbing to the sensations when she shoved the doors open.
Her breath was the only sound inside the empty room. Or at least, she assumed it was empty, but it was far too dark to tell, with the only spotlight shining right on the stage. “Hello?”
You fool. What if someone answers you?
The door slammed shut, and she yelped.
She hadn’t made such a sound since the boys in her class began hiding in the dark corners to jump out and scare her. But in the end, that fear had subsided, because in the light, those boys were harmless. She’d been safe.
Evie had no idea what lurked in the dark any longer.
She turned slowly, hoping to see Helena and Raphael. Even Marv would be welcome company over being alone in the eerie dark.
A sandbag hit the stage with a thud that made her gasp, a rope unwinding and tumbling down beside it. “In case you were wondering,” she called evenly, “this is very creepy of you.”
Walking down the long aisle, she approached the stage steps, searching around for anything that might be a weapon.
The faint sounds of a laugh felt like a phantom glided through the space. “If you’re a ghost, I have other recommendations for hauntings. Do you know Griffin Sage?”
And that was when a limp body landed with a sickening thud three inches from where she stood.
“Gods!” Evie’s eyes burned, fingers going to her lips, her other hand crossed over her heart.
“Oh no. Fritz. Fritz? No. No. No.” She dropped down beside the man, turning his cheek, and retched when she saw his face.
He’d been mutilated. An eye missing, along with several fingers.
Evie had worked for The Villain of Rennedawn long enough to know what torture looked like. This was uncontrolled.
This was personal.
Her fingers slid over a piece of parchment pinned to the man’s chest, which was barely moving in his fading breaths of life. Cold dread settled in her gut. Another Wanted flyer.
This one reading:
WICKED WOMAN
THE TRUE VILLAIN
LATEST ATROCITY:
BURNED DOWN DEADLANDS THEATER
And then—
Evie smelled smoke.