Chapter 50

Chapter 50

The Villain

Trystan stood waiting outside the cellar door for twenty minutes.

Gods knew why. There were plenty of other things he could be doing: managing mercenary requests, torturing the new workers with something truly cruel—like an icebreaker activity. But instead, he paced nervously, waiting for the cellar door to reopen.

That kiss had rattled his brain loose.

He’d tried to forget it—the way one tried to dodge a brick flying at one’s face. Inevitable, painful, and impossible to truly escape.

He needed a distraction. A disruption. He needed…

Kingsley! The frog entered his line of vision, shortly followed by Gideon Sage, who looked mussed and sweaty as he dove after the frog, only to fall hard on his stomach. The amphibian landed at Trystan’s feet, looking up at him with satisfied golden eyes.

“What are you playing at, Kingsley?” Trystan untucked his arms and crouched, waiting patiently as the frog jotted down a word with his free foot, then held up the sign the animal had been keeping who knew where.

Fetch.

Trystan snorted, and Gideon glared as he stood, pointing an accusatory finger at Kingsley. “Real nice, you deranged turtle.”

Trystan looked at Sage’s brother blankly before lifting an eyebrow. “He’s a frog.”

A patch of sunshine dipped in through the stained-glass window, shining right over Kingsley and his tiny crown. Gideon clicked his tongue. “Are you always this literal, Maverine?”

Trystan frowned and looked at Gideon as he said, “Yes.”

Gideon chuckled. “I see why she likes you.”

Trystan sniffed and began inspecting one of the water-hose installations that Sage had put in months prior for safety. To ensure that it was in working order, certainly not to hide the red tinging the tops of his cheeks.

He didn’t need anyone—particularly not Sage’s brother, a man who’d worked for his enemy—to become aware of the…attachment Trystan had formed to his assistant. Once someone else was made aware of a feeling, it became real, inescapable. Chasing you down like a monster on the hunt.

Like Scatter Day but far less entertaining.

“Sage likes everyone,” Trystan muttered.

Gideon rubbed the back of his neck, still grinning. “Evie doesn’t like everyone.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but Gideon barreled on. “When we were children, she was always agreeing, always doing what she was told. Going above and beyond to ensure both of our parents were always pleased. It never seemed right to me, but they were more critical of her, I think. Expected more.”

After shaking his head and coughing lightly into his hand, Gideon continued, a glassy sheen in his green eyes. “She always hated making a fuss, to the point of her own discomfort. One of the neighbors made her a shawl once that was so itchy she developed a rash, but she refused to take it off because ‘it was a gift.’” Sage’s brother rolled his eyes like this story was endearing and not pinching the daylights out of Trystan’s tiny, unused heart.

“But don’t misunderstand,” Gideon said. “Agreeableness doesn’t always mean true affection, especially for Evie. She’s kept her heart guarded all these years.”

Trystan looked at his feet. “I don’t believe you know her well enough anymore to make such an assessment.”

“Maybe not,” Gideon said, “but I can see she’s not afraid to disagree with you, to argue with you, to say how she really feels. She trusts you not to turn on her.”

She trusts you.

Well, why in the deadlands would he tell me that?

Trystan swallowed and began to pace in front of the door again, Kingsley clinging to his boot now as he walked. “Well, that’s just prudent. I’m her employer, and there needs to be a certain level of trust and honesty for us to have any measure of success.”

Gideon looked at him almost piteously. “You are so far gone, aren’t you?”

Rebecka rounded the corner then, trying to look casual as she eyed the still-closed cellar door. “Has she come out yet?”

A knowing smile curved Trystan’s mouth, and it made Rebecka scoff.

“I am not asking for myself! Nobody is getting any work done! Word of her confronting her father has swept through the office, and it’s causing an uproar. She needs to hurry it up down there.” Rebecka parked her hands on her hips. “If one more guard asks me where the provolone cheese is, I’m going to break my glasses against the cement just so I do not have to look upon them any longer!”

Another head bobbed around the corner, interrupting Rebecka’s rant. “She’s still in there, then?” Gushiken shifted nervously.

Trystan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I gave an order for everyone to return to work.”

Tatianna didn’t sneak around the corner as Blade and Rebecka did but floated around with an authority that Trystan seemed to no longer have. “I thought that was just a suggestion.”

Trystan growled. “Apparently!”

Tatianna smirked and nodded toward the door. “How is she?” But the healer’s immovable composure crumbled for a moment when Clare brushed past her.

It would’ve been more nauseating if even the whisper of a touch from Sage didn’t also make him weak in a way that disgusted him.

And intrigued him…but mostly disgusted him.

“No word yet,” Rebecka said. “But if she’s not out of there in the next sixty seconds, I’m sending all of you back to your desks.”

The door burst open then. Almost as if Rebecka’s ire was so powerful it had conjured her, Evie barreled out into the hallway, blood running down her cheek and neck.

“Sage, my gods!” Trystan yelled, immediately searching her for injury.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Rebecka said. “Can you please tell everyone you’re fine so that they may return to their— Evangelina!” Rebecka yelled, clearly having just noticed the gore smeared across Sage’s body and face. But Sage seemed to only have eyes for Gideon, who was waiting against the wall.

Sage raised her dagger, a wild look in her eyes, and stalked toward her brother, shoving him hard until his back hit the surface. “Eve! What are you doing?” Gideon yelled.

“I’ve just been to see our father.”

Gideon’s eyes darted around before he moved to leave, shouldering past Sage so hard that she stumbled backward, tripping on the uneven ground and slamming to the floor with a pained yelp.

In every life before he’d met her, Trystan would have gone after the knight now darting down the hallway, escaping for reasons that couldn’t have been favorable. But the only thing his body recognized was her hitting the ground—and immediately after that, the uncomfortable sensation playing within his chest at seeing her in even an ounce of pain. He dropped to his knees beside her on the floor in a panic.

But by the time Trystan had shoved enough wisps of curly black hair out of Sage’s eyes to see the violence there, she was already darting to her feet, dagger still in hand.

“Sage, the blood…” he started, trying to sound emotionless.

But it didn’t matter—she was clearly not interested in his concern, just the path she was now tearing down the corridor after her brother, calling back behind her before she distressingly disappeared: “It’s not mine.”

It was like a lightning strike to his skin, sudden and hot. He stared after her with too many tangled bits of feeling that couldn’t sort themselves. Wonder, pride, concern. But it was the concern that stood out in the harshest clarity.

Ellia’s words before he’d crossed into the Heart Village washed over him like frigid water. Do not cause any harm.

Sage was trending closer to darkness, and as much as he enjoyed her deserved ruthlessness, as much as he admired her perseverance and strength, that voice in his mind—the one that reminded him every day that he was only good for one purpose…

That voice wondered if the worst harm he’d ever commit would be to the one person he wanted to save.