Adversary to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain #4)

Prologue

Once upon a time…

It wasn’t often that one would find themselves dreading the end of the work week, the last grueling day before the welcome reprieve of the week’s end. However, it also wasn’t often that an office was run by the kingdom’s most notorious villain…

And that villain detested the week’s end.

Trystan Maverine was not certain what first brought upon such fast and efficient ire.

Perhaps it was the aching quiet that awoke him with the Saturday-morning sun.

Or how he’d begun actively avoiding the kitchen and Tatianna’s quarters for fear his old life would bleed into his new one, the only one he’d know until the day of his inevitable demise.

It could have been that with the days off for his workers, he wouldn’t get to exercise his new life’s purpose—evil.

But as of late, what he’d begun to hate most was the absence… the absence of her.

Evie Sage had not yet been in his employ for more than four weeks.

Could it truly have only been a month? It felt like years.

Taxing, confusing, mildly agonizing years.

But in that time, his assistant had proven herself shockingly capable of catering to his every villainous whim, adapting to his evil ways with a smile so big and bright, he was surprised it hadn’t yet cracked her face in half.

It felt as if it had cracked his.

Melodic laughter filtered in through the open gap of his office door.

He knew who the perpetrator was, though how could he not?

If the sound itself did not give her away, the very act of laughter would have.

No one had dared laugh in The Villain’s office before her, at least not loudly enough for him to hear.

It was enough—on this dreary last day of the work week—to push him over the tyrannical edge.

“Sage!” he boomed, slamming the door all the way open.

The laughter ceased, thank the gods, but when his assistant turned toward him, her smile remained, making him feel a bit like she’d smacked him over the head with it.

Surely that was why he felt so dizzy? He cleared his throat, hoping she didn’t notice the way he’d nearly stumbled over himself at the sight, only to realize that Sage was alone.

What had made her laugh so? It was then he saw the papers in her hands.

“You’re cataloging my torture session from this morning, correct? ”

She nodded vigorously, a few curls that had broken loose from her pins bouncing up and down along with her head. “Yes, of course, sir. I will have it done in just a few minutes!”

“It is the one in which I cut out a man’s tongue and force him to swallow it?”

She blinked. “Yes, sir. Was there another incident you wish for me to catalog of the same”—she paused, her nose scrunching as she contemplated—“variety?”

If he were to ever, at any point in time, deign to snort? It would have been right then.

“No, Sage.” He took a beat, then continued. “Though I admit to feeling curious as to what about that endeavor you find so amusing.”

Her cheeks turned so pink he could practically feel the heat of her skin from where he stood—at a safe distance. “Oh, well. It’s very silly.”

He stared.

She began fidgeting with her braid, twirling the end of it around her finger.

“Not the torture itself, of course! That isn’t silly at all.

I was writing mindlessly of the details, and when I looked down, I realized I had written that the man had been…

tongue-tied—” Another haphazard giggle burst out of her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

He stared again; this time, his lips parted on an exhale of disbelief. “Tongue…tied?”

“You know! The expression about when you cannot think of what to say and your tongue gets twisted around? And then I laughed because this man would not say anything because…you, uh—killed him,” she finished, sounding sheepish, though still battering him with that wide smile.

He could feel his own mouth tugging up at the corners so abruptly he had to turn away.

“I am sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to offend you with my musings.”

“You didn’t,” he replied roughly, hating that she had such an effect on him.

Thankfully, there were few witnesses. Only a couple of workers were lingering, all appearing to be gathering their things. Including Rebecka Erring, watching the two of them with eyes that noticed far more than was comfortable.

“Do you ever get tongue-tied, sir?”

Her unexpected question pulled him from the confines of his mind, floundering, as he couldn’t recall the last time anyone had asked him anything of a personal nature.

Even more so when he realized it had been completely unmarred by any sense of fear.

No, there was only curiosity in the blue eyes blinking back at him.

“What do you think, Sage?” he drawled, burying the eagerness for her answer so far beneath the earth, it would take splitting it in half to uncover.

She took him in, and he resisted the urge to straighten his shoulders, wondering what it was she saw. “I’m not sure,” she finally said. “To be honest, I’ve never been tongue-tied a day in my life, but I think that’s due to speaking before my brain catches up to my mouth.”

He had come to know this about her. It had, in its own disgusting sort of way, become endearing—if anything could be so to a man born for evil. But her lack of pretense was refreshing…and so innocent he often wondered how she’d made it this far in life without disaster.

Aside from working for him.

“You are nothing if not unwittingly honest, Sage,” he deadpanned.

She beamed as if he’d just said her hair was made of gold, her eyes chipped with diamonds. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

Someplace, somewhere, a pixie just lost their wings, he thought caustically.

Pinching his nose, he let out a sigh. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

Her gratitude may as well have been a boulder for the pressure that slammed into his chest. Generally, he detested any form of joy, but this was a new feeling entirely, her presence placing him in a constant state of sickness to the stomach.

He wondered how kind she would think him if he likened her to food poisoning.

“Finish your work for the day, then be gone.” He dismissed her before he did something nonsensical, like comparing her effect to bad fish.

Which would have been as dishonest as it was ridiculous, because the blasted woman always seemed to smell like the vanilla candies she ate daily—or, he suspected, hourly.

Turning on his heel, he banished her from his sight, hoping the two days away would at least give him time to rid his memory of this awful interaction.

But then she stood from her chair, scraping it against the stone floor as she called out to him. “Sir? Before I go…may I ask: what is the office policy on romantic fraternization?”

Never mind.

The interaction was currently burning itself into his brain.

Slowly, he turned back around. “My office,” he replied coolly. “Now.”

She scrambled to follow, traveling quickly behind him through the office door, grabbing the chair she usually occupied from its station in the corner—the same chair that had become the heart of their daily unspoken war.

The first battle cry had been him shoving her seat as far from his desk as he was able, followed by her fully disregarding that action and moving it closer.

Since then, it had become a ritual of sorts between them, and despite his annoyance, he never told her to stop.

Merely watched, his face impassive, not assisting when the chair inevitably got caught on the uneven tile on the floor—instead finding sick amusement in her stumbling to right the chair, relishing her adorable little frown at the furniture’s betrayal.

He should get the floor tile fixed.

He wouldn’t.

But he probably should.

When she sat, he moved slowly to take his own chair. Her nervousness was palpable. He attempted to enjoy it. “Why,” he drawled, his hands folded atop his sleek black desk, pushing his shoulders back, “pray tell, are you asking me about office fraternization?”

She didn’t appear to be cowed, but then again, she never had been any time he’d made the attempt. It was a wonder why he kept doing it when it was growing clear that she enjoyed it. It was another wonder why in the deadlands he cared if she wanted to fraternize with coworkers.

Romantically.

Not sensing his churning anger, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, rolling her lips inward and fidgeting with her hands.

“One of the men in accounting insinuated he would be…um…agreeable to furthering our acquaintance outside of a work setting this week’s end.

I told him I had to see if it would break any rules. ”

Indeed, there would be something breaking, but it would likely be the body of whichever bloody math nerd had asked her in the first place.

This was a place of business. Not a matchmaking service.

Kingsley hopped atop the desk, holding up a sign as if he’d been able to read Trystan’s thoughts.

Yikes

Trystan grabbed the sign and unceremoniously flung the thing out the open window.

Sage blinked at him, then smiled down at Kingsley, who nuzzled himself into her palm.

“What do you mean by ‘furthering your acquaintance’?” he asked, expressionless, but underneath the surface, his heart began to pick up speed as if he were being chased—in this case, by basic human emotion.

“A date,” she explained, looking at him with the concern you’d have for an elder who kept misplacing their house keys. Sighing, she gestured down at herself. “I’ll admit, it threw me to begin with, because I assumed everyone in the office found me odd.”

“You are odd,” he responded immediately…resisting the urge to smack his forehead into the smooth wood of his desk.

“Thank you for confirming.” She grinned with a wave of her hand, lighthearted sarcasm dripping from the words.