Chapter Two Wilde
Five Years Ago
The Lord of Grimnight’s Evil Lair
Receiving the Official Tour
“What do you think?” the lord demanded. He stood in the doorway of the throne room, hands steepled, fingertips tapping against each other in evil mage approved fidgeting.
I surveyed the room from a safe distance.
It was my first official day as his apprentice and the last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself by tripping over the roots sprouting through the floor.
Two rows of benches ran parallel along the length of the room, leading the eye toward the back.
There, a massive tree twisted itself into an ominous throne.
Every branch and twig had an end sharp enough to skewer anyone in range.
“That’s where I sit,” the lord said eagerly. Then he cleared his throat and straightened to his full height of five feet and eight inches. His bright blue eyes flicked to the top of my head, mentally measuring, and then smirked when he confirmed he was taller.
At seventeen, I still hadn’t hit any impressive growth spurts.
A few years ago, when I was stuck around five feet, I’d consulted a mage about ways of altering my appearance.
He’d happily shown me glamours and other spells, but nothing permanent.
The best ‘permanent’ solutions he could offer were high heels and proper nutrition.
The lord shuffled a little closer to me, back to his evil-mage-fidgeting. “Well?”
“Imposing,” was the only word I could think of, so it was the only word I gave him.
“Isn’t it?” he asked gleefully, an evil laugh bubbling into his voice.
“But …”
The evil laugh choked off and his shoulders slumped. “Yes? What is it?”
“How do you walk across the room without tripping?”
He blinked rapidly in incomprehension, then tossed his head back and laughed. “Oh, I don’t walk. I do this.” One moment, he stood next to me. The next, he appeared sitting on top of the throne.
I winced, expecting the branches to impale him, but nothing happened. He tossed one leg over the other and placed both hands on the throne’s arms, sitting as casually as if the thing had been made for him. Since he was the Lord of Grimnight, I supposed it had.
“Teleportation is—” he shouted. The words were muffled, snatched out of the air by the other trees sprouting across the room before they reached me.
He teleported back to the entrance. “Teleportation is one of the few skills—I mean, one of the many skills I excel at. Because I am a great and terrible evil, so of course there’s a whole long list that I will teach you …
once you’ve … earned it.” His sentence slowed down as he fought his way through it.
“Thank you, sir.”
He shook a finger in my face. “You shall address me as master, his lordship, or some variation that highlights my wickedness. Understood?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Excellent.” He clapped his hands together and surveyed the room again.
“The first task you must complete as my apprentice is to clear out this room. I can teleport, but my audience will need to walk. Can’t have them tripping and breaking a leg.
The pain would distract them from my grand malevolence. ”
I straightened, waiting for his instructions.
What spell would he teach me? And more importantly, would anyone else be helping me?
So far, the lord was the only person I’d met in the lair, but someone else should be here too.
Someone it’d been a very long time since I’d seen.
The whole reason I’d chosen this mage as my master.
The lord snapped his fingers, and an axe appeared in his hand. “Here.” He passed it to me. “The plants fight back, so try not to die.” Then he turned on his heel, cloak flaring around him dramatically, and walked away.
Was that it? That couldn’t be it. He had to be forgetting something. “Wait.”
His shoulders twitched and he turned around, eyes narrowed in displeasure. “Understand this, Wilde: you do not give me orders.”
I lowered my head in contrition and murmured, “Please, Master, I have a question.”
He heaved a sigh over the heavy burden of one little question. “Yes?”
“Does anyone else live in the lair?”
“Do you mean minions? No, I haven’t hired any help recently.”
“Or someone else,” I hedged.
His expression remained blank, confused.
Don’t tell me I’ve apprenticed myself to the wrong mage.
It’d taken longer than I’d expected to find Brutus Arnulf again, and when I did, he’d earned that pending title, becoming the Lord of Grimnight.
But if I’d somehow gotten the wrong man, if this wasn’t Treasure’s father, I’d have to start my hunt all over again.
I couldn’t just say ‘I’m looking for Treasure’ because evil mages used your desires against you. Once he knew what I wanted, he would dangle the promise of Treasure over my head at every opportunity.
“It’s just you and I,” the lord said. “Which means if you don’t do the work, no one will. Now, clean this up—” he waved to encompass the whole throne room “—and once you’re done, I’ll show you to your room.”
“But that’ll take—” A shadow hand grabbed my jaw and clamped it shut.
“No backtalk,” the lord scolded. “You’ll have to break that terrible habit.”
I waited to speak until the grip on my jaw eased. “Yes, Master.”
“That’s exactly what I like to hear. Get to work.” Without another word, he disappeared.
I turned back to survey the room. At first, I thought the forest had encroached on the lair, but when I looked closer at how the trees had grown through the windows, I realized the forest had broken out. I needed to learn more about the lord’s history and the evil lair I would be calling home.
And I needed to figure out what had happened to Treasure.
Present Day
The Lord of Grimnight’s Evil Lair
Exhausted
One of the few things the Lord of Grimnight had properly taught me was teleportation. Finding an inn in Bane might have given me more opportunities to coincidentally run into Trey, but it would also cost money and take more time than simply teleporting into my bedroom at the lair.
Though it would have taken less energy.
Lightheaded, I stood at the end of the bed trying to catch my breath. Then I gave up and plopped face first onto it. Though I hadn’t made the bed before leaving, the sheets were freshly cleaned, every tucked-in corner crisply aligned.
I clutched the top blanket, twisting it out of order, wishing the bed still showed the mess Trey and I had made of it.
If I inhaled deeply enough, I could trick myself into smelling traces of musk.
If I closed my eyes, I could picture him beneath me, lips parted, face flushed, eyes squeezed shut in unbearable pleasure.
My cock stirred at the memory, and I shifted my hips, wishing Trey really was beneath me right now. He still could be, if the damn lord hadn’t acted so recklessly.
“Wilde!” The imp’s shriek barely preceded the heavy thump on my bedroom door.
From the sounds of it, the imps were taking turns throwing each other at the door rather than knocking.
“Wilde!” The second shriek was louder with a wobbly undertone of fear. “We can’t find the master!”
My eyes snapped open. In my concern for Treasure, I’d forgotten about the Lord of Grimnight. No matter how much the imps searched the lair or the world around us, they would never find him.
I pushed myself to my feet and trudged to the door.
Any arousal drained away as I switched to my professional persona.
I opened the door just as two imps had tossed another one.
Bop’s small purple body zoomed straight toward me.
Its beady black eyes widened, and it swerved to the side.
It flew a few feet into the room, then scrambled backwards, frantically waving its arms through the air to propel itself faster.
Once it was back in the hall, it shrank in on itself and used its batlike wings to hide its face.
“I’m sorry, Wilde! I didn’t mean to invade your privacy!”
“It’s fine.”
Bop slowly lowered a wing and peeked at me through the gap. “It is?”
Rubbing my temple, I focused on all three imps. “Why are you looking for the master?”
“Minion interviews!” Mimsy exclaimed.
“What? We’ve already hired—” I stopped, because technically, we hadn’t. Dammit, I did not have time to interview new minions. Waving my hand, I said, “Tell them they’re all hired.”
The imps blinked at me, exaggerating the motion by opening their eyes wide and closing them with an almost audible flap. “But what will the master say?”
I didn’t have the time or energy to think up a plausible story, so I simply said, “The master left on a special mission. It’s top secret.”
They gasped in unison.
“I’m in charge while he’s gone. Understood?”
The imps bobbed excitedly in the air and offered me their best salutes. “Yes, sir, Master Wilde.”
I imagined the lord hissing in displeasure at the address. He’d never liked when the minions showed us the same level of respect.
“Tell the new minions they’re hired, assign them a few bedrooms, and I’ll speak with them in the morning.”
“Right-o, we’re on it!” The imps fluttered away. As they turned the corner, one exclaimed, “Wow! A hundred new minions!”
“Wait!” I shouted. They didn’t hear me in time, so I had to run after them.
I reached out to grab one imp by the tail but caught myself in time.
The master always yanked them around, but I’d seen the genuine pain on their faces when he did so.
Abusing minions was not the type of evil I aspired to be.
The imps eventually halted on their own when they noticed me. “Yes, Master Wilde?”
“Did you say there are a hundred new minion applicants?” The last time the lord had recruited new minions, I’d already been working with Treasure to ensure his mission’s success.
The lord conducted the interviews on his own and I hadn’t met any of the new staff until I’d returned.
He’d hired two crews, one of lacertians and one of orcs, for a total of two dozen minions.
Since he was a low-ranking evil mage who offered pitiable wages, I assumed those were the only crews who had applied.
“There’s the goblins, the orcs, the lacertians, the wolves—”
“Wolves?”
“The ones who live in the forest.”
“Those aren’t minions, those are ghosts.”
Bitsy shrugged, bobbing up and down with the motion.
“They’ve applied for the job.” That cleared up, it continued with its list. “There’s also an ogre, a cyclops, a group of vampires, a manticore, and a minotaur.
You don’t see either of them often. Then there’s all the humans, lots and lots of them, like, so many. ”
The variety of creatures washed over me. I doubted all of them had applied to the minion position the first time the lord had posted the offer, which meant something had gone wrong this time. It sounded like the advertisement had lured in every evil creature and band of mercenaries.
I ran both hands through my hair, pushing it back from my face. I didn’t have time to interview a hundred minions.
No, wait, more importantly, I didn’t need any minions.
I was not the Lord of Grimnight. I wasn’t even a full-fledged evil mage; I was only an apprentice. My ‘plot’ didn’t need any help from minions. In fact, the fewer people hanging around the lair, the better.
But if I didn’t hire anyone, a hundred out-of-work minions might revolt and attack the lair.
I decided to stick with the familiar. “Hire the orcs and the lacertians, send everyone else away.”
“Why those two?” Mimsy asked.
Its companions immediately shushed it and pushed down on its head. One sat on top of it while the other hid it with its body.
I wasn’t the lord; I wouldn’t lash out at Mimsy for questioning me. “We can’t hire vampires because we don’t have enough to feed them—they’ll eventually turn to snacking on the other minions or our prisoners.”
“We don’t have any prisoners,” Mimsy said, pushing aside its companions.
“Exactly.”
The imps stared at me blankly for a second, then gasped, their hands flying to their mouths. “They’d eat us!?”
I nodded, and they stopped questioning that decision. “As for the humans, they can’t see in the dark without potions, so they’re useless—”
“But the sun came back out.”
I stared at the imp for a long moment. “It what?”
“It should still be out there.”
All the windows in my bedroom were covered with heavy curtains. I strode back in and yanked the first curtain to the side. Bright light poured in, burning my eyes. I shielded my face against my arm and squinted at the scene. The sun had started to set, hovering over the tops of the trees.
Fifty years ago, the original Lord of Grimnight had cursed the city of Traumstead into the Grimnight Forest. His magic raised ancient trees that devoured the city, blocked out the sun, and cast the forest into perpetual night. If the sun was shining on the Grimnight forest again, that meant …
Treasure had broken the curse.
It’d almost been the last thing he’d ever done, but somehow, he’d succeeded.
A disbelieving laugh escaped me. Every day he amazed me.
No wonder so many minions had applied to work here if the curse was broken—the forest no longer scared them away.
I looked down at the street, confirming that the forest still existed. The trees hadn’t suddenly disappeared overnight, but they had lost some of their malevolence. They no longer looked ready to snatch up unwary travelers and swallow them whole.
Without the cursed forest acting as a barrier around the lair, I’d need to shore up our defense. As if I needed more on my plate.
At this rate, Treasure would already be in Misfortune before I finished reinforcing the lair.
What would an evil mage do in this situation? Master always strived to do the least amount of work and spend the least amount of money. “Tell them how much it pays.”
“But Master always says to hide that information until they’re ready to sign the contract.”
Mimsy smacked Bop on the back of the head. “Wilde’s the master right now. If he wants us to tell them, we tell them.”
I waved them off. “Find a room for anyone who stays. The rest can see themselves out.”
“Yes, sir!” The imps performed their bobbing salute again, then fluttered down the stairs.
I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it, staring at the sunlight streaming through the window. Things were changing in the Grimnight Forest that I couldn’t control, but I didn’t have time to worry about it now.
My main concern was, and always would be, Treasure.