Chapter 5
Evie
Evie was daydreaming about being alone forever.
The blissful thought had invaded her mind all day. Running away from all the problems of Rennedawn, all the pain. The temptation to move herself to the mountains, to hide among the trees. Where she couldn’t hurt anyone. And no one could hurt her.
With a deep breath in, Evie took a step toward Trystan’s office, raising her hand to knock on the closed door.
“Enter,” Trystan’s low voice rumbled.
She jolted, fist pausing just before connecting with the wood. How did he know she’d be there? Was he so attuned to her? Or to the gilded ink circling her pinky, the one that let him know when she was in danger. Regardless, it was a foolish thought—running away. She’d not make it far.
And further, he’d never forgive her.
None of them would.
By the gods…am I becoming a pessimist?
Shivering, Evie pushed open the doors, then took in the scene before her with pleasant confusion. Trystan stood in front of his desk, her usual chair occupied.
Marv.
“Oh, are we gathering for tea?” Evie asked lightly, trying to keep her voice from shaking as she entered and closed the door.
The dark magic came in with her, swirling around to play with her hair.
“Hello, Marv dear. How did you sleep?” She wasn’t trying to unsettle him; the magic was acting of its own accord, but Marv’s wide eyes still stared at her, at the magic surrounding her, like she was a ghost and was paralyzing him with fear.
“We-Well, Ms. Sage. Thank you,” Marv squeaked as Evie rounded his chair to face him, standing beside Trystan.
“Marv and I were just discussing that, actually, Sage,” Trystan said coolly, staring with more deep emotion than Evie had ever seen him aim toward a prisoner.
This betrayal hurt him more than any other; she could see it.
The same look she was sure he’d found in her own eyes after her father. After Gideon. After her mother.
Her mother.
Shaking away thoughts of Nura she could not bear, she focused all her attention on Trystan. “Were you really going to steal my fun and question him without me?”
“I left a note on your desk to come see me at once,” Trystan objected, brow furrowed. “What did you think that was for?”
Allowing a small smile to tilt her lips up, Evie felt her soft heart cradled by his concern. “I wasn’t certain. It was vague, and you did an inappropriate doodle at the bottom.”
His eyes widened, and Marv’s lips parted, eyes darting between them rapidly.
“I did no such thing. I drew a doodle of us”—he waved a hand between them—“torturing Marv.”
Marv made a choking sound, and Evie pulled the bit of parchment from the pocket of her blue skirts and stared. “Is this not meant to be you on top of me?”
Marv made an altogether different kind of choking sound as Trystan gaped at the drawing. “It’s you and me questioning a witness! Hence the chains and the—”
She wheezed into her palm, and Marv looked at the ceiling, hands bound in cuffs folded in his lap.
“I was attempting to be—” He swallowed. “Fun…for you.”
Don’t fall for it, Evie!
One could not fall when they’d already face-planted in the dirt.
Marv murmured, “It does look a little suggestive, sir.”
“Did I ask you?” Trystan bit out. “You’re here for torturous questioning, not opinions!”
“Of course, sir.” Marv gave a hand-bound salute in his chair most earnestly. “Apologies.”
“Let’s start with an easy one. Why did you ransack my office?” Trystan held the hilt of his sword, ready to use it.
Marv mumbled, “Sir, I was locked up since yesterday. Three other guards told you that.”
Trystan sighed. “I realize that, Marvin, but who else would want to sabotage me in such a way?”
“King Benedict, the Valiant Guard, numerous citizens, nobility, the interns.” Evie listed off the options with a lift of each finger, trying to school her features.
But Marv objected again. “Please believe me. I won’t cause you any more harm, and for the harm I’ve already caused—I am so very, very sorry.” The front gate guard’s voice cracked.
Evie sucked in a breath, her scar pulsing at her shoulder, her dagger echoing the call at the belt by her waist.
She wasn’t sure how she knew, but that horrid feeling when she’d realized her father was a traitor…
was nowhere within her when she looked upon Marvin.
With Griffin, it had been an instinctual tell that she was facing someone who had hated her all along.
Wretched and soul-altering. Yet now, it was not present in the slightest.
“Marv. Did you really do this?” Evie asked softly.
“Sage!” Trystan objected. “The questioning is meant to be torturous.”
She gave her boss a smirk. “I think listening to you panic over a lewd sketch was torture enough. Don’t you?”
Marv’s eyes shot down, his wild hair streaked with whatever grime lined the dungeons below. “I’ll tell you, Ms. Sage. Yes, I did give Miss Lyssa the notes to go see your father. But I—I didn’t know they were meant to hurt her. Not until it was too late.”
“Too late for what?” Evie asked carefully. “Gideon mentioned you spun some fantastical tale that no one believed?” It was a statement she asked like a question, and Marv shuddered, shuffling his boots.
“I am in debt,” Marv wheezed, shame coming from him in palpable waves.
“I wasn’t in my right mind that night—too much drink at a tavern in the east end.
It was late. I barely noticed the man. Or men, I suppose.
They joined me at the card table. It didn’t appear a bad idea to make a wager for money.
The first man was so very bad at it. I thought I was sure to win. ”
“You were hustled,” Trystan stated without sympathy, but also without anger.
Marv nodded, sighing shakily. “When I lost…I panicked, and that is when the others showed up.”
“Others?” Evie gently slid the spare chair toward Marv and seated herself next to him. “What others?”
“A group of men. Valiant Guards out of uniform. They told me the debt would be forgiven if I did them a favor, and I didn’t see the harm in it at first. But the vow had to be marked in permanent ink. I was too drunk to realize the foolish thing I’d done until it was too late.”
The truth was evident in the words, but Evie wasn’t certain if she could trust her instincts any longer, when her faith in people’s goodness was so often thrown back in her face. “In ink? As in a second employment bargain?”
“More of an agreement to pass along the notes from your father to Lyssa. They’d be slid underneath the barracks door with my name marked on them.
I tried to ignore them, but then the mark…
” He nodded down to his right arm, and Evie took that as her cue to help him roll up his sleeve, revealing an ugly growth of black veins climbing up his arm toward his neck.
“Every time I resisted, it grew closer to my heart. I think it’s poison. ”
There was a beat of silence as she and Trystan processed his words, trying to understand them from every angle, every decision he could have made instead. “Why did you not come to us, Marv?” Evie asked sadly.
His brown eyes watered until a tear streaked down his cheek, his lip curling against the onslaught of emotion.
“Oh, Ms. Sage! I was a coward, and I convinced myself your father meant Miss Lyssa no harm. After all, she is his flesh and blood! I vow to you that I would’ve allowed myself to perish before I harmed her. ”
“You did harm her,” Trystan murmured with deadly coldness, looking at Marv like a roach beneath his boot, disgust distorting his sharp features. “And here you sit. So, tell me, Marvin. Were you me…would you allow such a man to live?”
“No, sir.” Marv’s back went straight, his chin tilting high, prepared to face his possible death with a semblance of dignity. “I wouldn’t.”
Trystan nodded, then unsheathed his sword.
“No!” Evie gasped, leaping between them, holding out a hand. The dark mist spilled from the tops of her fingers, and before she could understand what was happening, it was swirling upward, gripping the sword, wrapping itself around the steel like it was corporeal, bending the metal until it warped.
The pulse of the darkness was so profoundly gratifying that she felt a singular wave of relief. The sort you only find in being yourself, perhaps for the first time.
Trystan didn’t react with as much alarm as she did. In fact, the former villain stared at the ruined weapon with a small smile, satisfaction in his black eyes. “Well done, Sage.” There was pride in the compliment and a suspicious lack of surprise.
“Did you—did you trigger the magic on purpose?” Her pulse skyrocketed, heat rising to the surface of her skin, as the dark magic grew.
Even with his hands still bound, Marv managed to scooch his chair just an inch or two backward.
Trystan smiled wider, brushing a finger along the shadow-looking mist. “Extraordinary.” She felt the caress like nails lightly dragging along her scalp. “The sunlight,” he murmured, seemingly entranced, and Evie finally understood why.
When the mist hit the sunlight, the smokelike magic did not disappear—it sparkled.
“Is it…is it supposed to do that?” Evie whispered, feeling it slowly seep back into the tips of her fingers. The light beamed off it like a black diamond, sending a thousand colors about the room.
“It never did with me.” Trystan took her hand as the mist continued to recede beneath her skin.
She’d done that somehow, merely with the will of her mind.
He turned her fingers over, examining them with a feigned bland look.
“Naturally, your magic would look like it was shot by a glitter cannon,” he stated dryly.
She wrenched her hand away, a hysterical giggle bubbling out of her mouth until she knocked into Marv’s chair. The front gate guard’s gaze remained fixed on the ceiling, though he wore a forced frown that made her believe he’d been smiling a moment prior.
Trystan, for his part, was still watching the dark magic, fixated on it as it left the sunlight to return to her. “How fascinating. It reflects light like a jewel.”
Evie stared at him. The rush of gladness from using the magic was fading, and the rush of warmth with it.
“And why do you think that might be? Or was that not something you considered when you decided to deliberately provoke me into using it?” The resentment didn’t need to be stated; it was clear in her glare, in her voice.
“You’re motivated by protective instincts.
” Trystan’s face darkened before hardening.
“I know that you want to pretend this magic isn’t here.
That would be easier for you, and deadlands knows you deserve a little easiness after all you’ve been through, but ignoring this magic will not make it go away.
And every second you fight it will have been another second you could have used to master it. ”
The words started hard, but they softened toward the end. Earnest worry took the place of Trystan’s defensiveness, his eyes roving her face as if to memorize it.
“I don’t want you to be ashamed of this part of you,” he finished quietly.
“It’s the part that’s destined to kill you.” Her voice broke, and she clasped her elbows, folding herself inward.
His lip curled up, his gaze tender. “I’d go happily, I’m sure.”
He was choosing now to be charming.
Because I likely committed a heinous crime in a previous life and this is my due.
Marv cleared his throat uncomfortably, and the spell broke. The thread holding her eyes to his snipped.
Trystan’s whole body shuddered as he took a step back, and she panicked at the way he pulled at his collar. Was he uncomfortable with her? With her having his magic? With his magic now looking like a foggy art project Lyssa threw up?
But then words tumbled fast and furiously from his mouth. “It is fitting—that the magic sparkles in the sunlight.”
The words didn’t register in her mind fast enough, before she bumbled audaciously, “What?”
Trystan looked at the floor as if waiting for a trap door to knock him down to the basement. When he looked back up, an odd tension locked his shoulders. “The magic mimics its user.”
That was…a compliment? He’s giving me a compliment during a bloodless torture session?
Her mouth fell open in tandem with Marv’s, shock locking all her muscles in place, her eyebrows flying toward her hairline. “Sir…are you…are you trying to flirt with me?”
“I think you asking that question is a clear indication of how well I’m doing,” Trystan replied flatly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And I beg you not to call me ‘sir’ any longer. It makes me feel like I’m your employer.”
“But you are,” Marv interjected quietly, foolishly.
The consequence? Trystan grabbing the back of Marv’s chair with lethal swiftness, pointing the disfigured sword at his face. “She is my accomplice, Marvin,” he said calmly, like they truly were just chatting over tea. “Do you know what that means?”
“Sh-She is your partner, sir?” Marvin stuttered.
“She is my equal,” Trystan stated firmly, with grit and resolve that made her knees want to melt.
Straightening back up, he tossed the sword toward the corner of the room like it was a crumpled piece of paper and folded his arms. “You’re no good to me dead, Marv.
Tatianna will see if the poison can be cured, and then we shall ask you all the questions we like without fear you’ll enter the afterlife too soon. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir!” The front gate guard and suspected traitor nodded his head, his spiky tendrils bobbing with the motion. “I’d be most grateful!”
Trystan nodded, making for the door. “Sage, come along.”
Evie froze, not liking the airiness of his tone. “Come along where?”
“You and I are going for a walk.” He began walking backward toward the door, flicking a gold coin at her. When she caught it, a large smile transformed his expression into one of mischief. “Keep that.”
“For what?” she asked, helplessly following after him.
He chuckled darkly, and nerves twisted knots in her stomach when he gave his unpredictable reply.
“Why, for the wishing well, of course.”