Page 109 of Apprentice to the Villain

This time, Becky did laugh—very loudly. Just as Blade walked in with a leftover dinner plate, fork poised halfway to his mouth as the sound halted him in place.

“Evie!” Becky said. “Don’t tell me you believed that stupid rumor!” She clutched her stomach, tears coming from her eyes. “I never wanted your job! Could you imagine?”

Blade wiped his mouth, putting the plate down, still looking a little dazed. “Then why did you move into her desk after she quit?”

Becky smacked her forehead. “Because, you fool, it’s the only desk that’s isolated from the others. I merely wanted to be alone. Not to make cauldron-brew runs for the boss.”

Evie’s head spun. “I’m so confused.”

Becky gripped her hands, commanding all of Evie’s attention. “Let me be clear, then. My entire existence is getting to organize and order people about. It is my dream come true, and I wouldneverwant to do anything else. I have the highest salary and command a level of fear and respect I only ever dreamed of accruing. I am content where I am—and just to clear any remaining doubt…”

Evie leaned closer as Becky said in a hushed tone, “There was no villain’s assistant position…until he met you.”

Her breath stalled along with every thought she’d ever had.The world around her moved at a sluggish pace, save for the branch tapping against the window and the draft that seemed to follow, spreading goose bumps up her arms. “What? That can’t be true. He’d been searching for an assistant long before me.”

Becky looked at her with pity. “Evie, before you, the only thing that man had been searching for was solitude and quiet. The other workers weren’t allowed within five feet of his private office, and frankly, they were all too scared to get within ten feet of it regardless.”

Evie squeezed Becky’s hands, still clasped in hers, feeling a tinge of desperation. This was not at all how she remembered her start. Or how she’d been hired. Or…anything. It made her feel like there was a large bubble expanding in her head, inches from popping.

And it did when Becky saw the look on her face and whispered, “The day he hired you, he ordered custom chairs for his office. Very discreetly, but I saw the report, and he made a note that they needed to be comfortable for a woman of short stature.”

Evie wasn’t sure what to say, so that left the only thing she knew to do when she was uncomfortable. She laughed. It was an ugly, strangled sound.

The boss groaned beside them, still too weak to open his eyes. “Stop.” He groaned again. “Telling her things.”

Becky looked at him and then at Evie with a thoughtful expression. “I’m gonna ignore that order.”

Evie clapped her hands together and nodded earnestly. “Good for you.”

Becky rolled her lips inward. “Would this be a good or bad time to tell you that I shortened the leg of your desk chair in the hopes that you’d fall?”

Evie jumped up. “I knew it!”

They both broke into a grin at the same time—so big it felt like safety, like coming home. It felt in part like she’d just gotten apiece of her lost childhood back.

The simple joy of making a friend.

A voice rasped across the room. “All this chatter, and my Becky still hasn’t brought me the cookies I asked her to sneak.” Ramona had awoken.

Becky gave Evie one last smile before going to her grandmother and handing her a wrapped-up bundle from her skirt pocket. She murmured low words in soothing comfort, a soft grin playing on her lips, a few pieces of her hair tumbling out from her pins.

When Evie turned back to Blade, the dragon trainer was focused on Becky in wonder and then possessiveness, like he’d fashion himself a thief just for the excuse to have that smile for himself.

It was sweet, and if she remained in that room in that moment with all her confusion and hurt mingling together, she’d ruin it. She needed air and space and something she couldn’t quite name.

She charged for the door abruptly, knowing if she glanced back at her boss it would only complicate her feelings further. She just needed a moment,one momentto herself. She called back to them when she was nearly out into the hallway. “Might you two look after him while I step outside for some air?”

Blade plopped himself down on the stool she’d been sitting on. “Not to worry, Evie. I’ll keep sentry at his sick bed. I’m sure Tatianna will be by soon to look in on him as well.”

This comforted her enough to enter the quiet hallway and take a deep, shuddering breath. She kept walking until she hit a flight of stairs, then wandered down in a daze, and before she knew it, she was outside, the dusk air so sweet, she took heaping gulps of it as she gripped her hips.

The peace didn’t last—because she had terrible, terrible luck. The clanging of metal in the distance was not so discernible fromthe ringing in her skull; she almost didn’t notice it.

She looked hard through the trees and overgrowth and spotted a group of men. She squinted harder—Becky’s brothers. They’d taken their training outdoors. The exercise was a good aid to digest their dinner, likely. Her stomach groaned angrily.

Eat before you storm out in a huff, Evie!

She should return inside, for many reasons. For one, she was incredibly hungry; for another, she worried for Trystan and didn’t want him to be alone for too long after she’d made him a promise to stay. And if that wasn’t enough, she knew as well as anything that she couldn’t be around this many handsome men at once without saying something that would haunt her at three a.m. in a cold sweat.