Page 7 of Apprentice to the Villain

The guard lifted his helmet to expose his gaunt face and what Trystan assumed was an eternally scowling expression. Did Trystan look like that when he scowled?

“I’m not wearing a mask,” the guard said.

He sighed. “Pity.”

The guard’s face twisted with rage as he raised a fist. “You godsdamn—”

But the man was stopped by the guard to Trystan’s right. “Stay your hand, Sir Seymore, and worry not. I will be the one to bring him into the ballroom for the unmasking.” This new guard’s deep voice sounded oddly familiar, but his face was covered, only his green eyes visible.

Had he seen those eyes before?

While Trystan was contemplating that possibility, his own eyes drifted toward the end of the hall. His vision was still blurry and strained from so long without light, but he could make out the brown door, slightly ajar. His tongue pressed to the roof of hismouth—an escape route. Was he to be taken to the unmasking immediately? The open door should’ve looked like doom, but all he saw was freedom. He simply needed a good enough distraction and a way to remove the magically suppressing cuffs cutting off the blood supply to his wrists…

His gaze roamed over a larger window beyond the bars, and the night sky blinked back at him. Of course, he knew it was irrational to wish, but as the star out the window twinkled, daring him to—as it had once before—he found himself doing it anyway.

He wished to find Sage.

He wished to tell her he was sorry.

He wished to be better about revealing how he felt, bit by bit.

And perhaps, most importantly—he wished to have a godsforsaken tea party with her little sister, Lyssa.

It felt ridiculous, but it was that thought that somehow energized his languid limbs as he heard the green-eyed guard unlocking his cage.

Not yet. Not yet. NOW.

He sprinted through the open door, the chains dragging behind him, the metal biting into his hands as he gripped it. The muscles in his legs burned as he ran, but he couldn’t stop—the exit was so close. His breaths were coming in uneven pants, his sock-clad feet making him slide against the stone. Gods knew where his boots had disappeared to.

Mildly mortifying, he thought through breathless gasps,how hard I fought to keep them. They’d been a gift from Sage.

Nearly to the door, he could hear the guards yelling behind him. The loudest voice belonged to the green-eyed knight, who was begging him to halt. The pure desperation—and was that a hint of fear?—in his voice made Trystan pause as he put a hand on the door.

“Don’t go in there, Mr. Maverine. You’ll regret it, I swear.”Ah,Benedict had finally revealed Trystan’s true name to the Valiant Guards. It would no doubt spread to the kingdom next, the Maverine name damned, his family ruined.

Intolerable.

Not that they would be affected—but that hecared.

He pushed on the door and heard Benedict’s satisfied voice from behind him. He should’ve paused, should have listened to the warning bells in his head, but his mind and body had gone haywire; he couldn’t trust his instincts any longer. They were as good as a broken compass.

This was why he could ignore the malicious subtext in Benedict’s order. “No, men. Let. Him. Go. Let himsee.”

Trystan didn’t wait, just exited the hall and sprinted to what was hopefully a stairwell but—no. It wasn’t a stairwell; it was a small room.

And what he saw inside proved once and for all that wishes were not made for people like him.

Only horror.

Chapter 4

The Villain

Trystan had never believed death to be beautiful.

It was logical in his mind, necessary—even enjoyable, if the person very much deserved it. But never beautiful, never so achingly difficult to look at that his entire body froze, his muscles tightening so hard that they pulsed beneath his flushed skin. Never so painful that his brain could not connect the pieces of what he was looking at.

For on the marbled white table before him, in the small room with stone walls and dim, flickering light, lay his assistant, Evie Sage.