Just then, Evie saw another foreboding figure across the way—several, in fact. All men dressed in silver. Carrying very large weapons, some of them glowing. The king’s Valiant Guards!
She struggled against the hand, but the man’s other arm was locking her against him and he wrapped a heavy leg over her ankles, effectively holding her still.
“Lwet meh go.” She’d dropped her knife when she fell, so she felt around in the grass for it with her free arm.
“Relax,” he ordered again.
Right. That was likely, considering a strange man, whom she was certain was the thing these men were hunting, had her pinned to the ground. But she’d sought this out, hadn’t she? She’d followed a literal river of blood—what else did she think was going to happen?
“Em suc a fwool.” Evie sighed long and hard.
Suddenly, the hand was gone from her mouth and the voice was in her ear once more. “What are you mumbling about?”
“This is just very typical for me,” she whispered.
“Being pulled to the ground by a stranger?” he said in a tone that sounded suspiciously curious.
“Well, not this exact situation. But if I told someone about how I ended up here, nobody would think it out of the ordinary.” She jabbed her elbow into his ribs, causing her captor to curse and grunt. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt?” She did it again, making her point.
“Enough!” he hissed before he pointed a tanned hand to the men searching the trees on the other side of the stream. “Those men do not care that you are an innocent who stumbled into the arms of a demon. They will kill you without a moment’s hesitation, and they will do it laughing.”
“A demon?” Evie chuckled quietly, attempting to turn her body to get a look at this man with such a high opinion of himself, but his arms tightened around her once more, keeping her in place.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked without a hint of arrogance in his tone. And yet, the casualness with which he just knew his reputation had preceded him made Evie’s stomach do backflips.
She’d been called many disparaging things in her life. Alarmingly all beginning with the letter F. Flighty, foolish, forgetful, and, by a strange turn of events, she was finally able to add the final F.
Fucked.
She knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
The Villain, King of Darkness, Haunter of Dreams, had his arms around her. Worse, even, she was not nearly as afraid as she should’ve been. In fact, she wasn’t afraid at all, so much as she—
Oh dear. Was she laughing?
She was. She couldn’t help it, and if she was any louder, those men would be over here in seconds. The Villain seemed to sense this, too, because she blinked and his hand was wrapped around her mouth once more.
“We’re going to slowly crawl behind that tree.” He pulled Evie up so she could see the large oak in question. “And then we’re going to run.”
“We?” she asked as she was suddenly flipped around and shoved in the direction of the tree. There was no room to argue, so, as instructed, she kept low and crawled until she was safely leaning against the other side of the trunk. Breathing heavily and startled to see blood brushing the back of her arm, Evie turned to see if The Villain was still there.
Gone.
“Where in the deadlands did he—”
“Here.”
Evie spun in the direction of his voice, stunned. “How did you get over th—” But her words cut off when she saw him.
In her defense, there was a lot to take in.
Her first thought was the wanted posters had it all wrong. This was not an older, scarred man with a gray beard. In fact, no gray laced through his thick, dark hair, either. He had high cheekbones above the two-day shadow that ran along a very hard jawline. She figured he couldn’t be more than six or seven years older than she was. If she had to guess, she’d put him at no more than…twenty-eight, twenty-nine? That couldn’t be right, though. There had to be a rule somewhere that evil overlords needed to be at least fifty, maybe sixty if they were pushing it.
But not young! And not, even more disastrously, beautiful.
He was, though: beautiful. His skin was tanned and smooth. As if his off time from terrorizing people was spent lying in the grass, perhaps daintily drinking out of a teacup and reading poetry with his pinky raised.
The thought brought a hysterical giggle to Evie’s lips. The Villain lifted one of his perfectly thick brows that framed the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. Eyes that assessed her in pinched confusion. It seemed he didn’t fully put together that she was another living, breathing human being, because he looked at her as if her very existence was a mystery.
“You really shouldn’t look like that,” she said and surprised herself by almost thinking the befuddled look on his face was endearing.
He’s a murderer! Her conscience rebelled, but the rest of her, the part that wasn’t attached to her very wise brain, found him far too pretty to care.
Taking a careful step in his direction, Evie tried to dig inside herself for the fear she knew was there. Any minute now, she’d be paralyzed with fright and run screaming in the other direction, but he was within arm’s length now and she hadn’t turned yet.
Hmm. No fear, but she did feel mild concern—a sound indicator she hadn’t completely lost her good sense. Until, of course, her mild concern was clouded with embarrassing thoughts of what he would smell like if she leaned in close and took a whiff.
“Is there something about my face…that is displeasing to you? Or is it perhaps that I’m bleeding from three different wounds, courtesy of the men in your village?” His voice was quiet, and outwardly he appeared calm, but Evie could see a muted fury behind his dark eyes.
Did he think she was judging him?
“Um, yes— The blood’s not great…but I was referring to the fact that you look like you were carved out of marble, and I just think that as a rule of thumb, inherently evil people should be grotesque-looking.”
The fury winked out as if never there in the first place, his only response to blink.
“You just can’t kill people and be pretty. It’s confusing.” Evie began unwrapping the wool scarf her little sister, Lyssa, had given her on her last birthday, stepping closer to The Villain and holding it up like a signal of peace. “For the blood, Your Evilness.”
Taking it from her in a gripped fist, The Villain twisted the scarf around his middle and cinched it tight to stanch the bleeding. “You think I’m pretty?”
Oddly enough, Evie had the feeling he would’ve preferred to have been called grotesque for the way his face twisted with distaste.
“That’s not a think scenario—that’s just objective. Look how symmetrical your cheekbones are.” She closed the distance between them and placed her hands on either side of his face.
His eyes widened and so did hers when she realized what she was doing.
“You’re touching my face,” he said flatly.
“…Yes.”
“Are you happy with that decision?” He raised one dark brow again.
He’s a professional killer, right? Maybe he’ll murder me now if I ask very nicely.
“I was trying to prove a point.” She shrugged, letting her hands drop back to her sides.
Shaking his head, a small dose of wonder in his eyes, he said, “You are chaos.”
“Would you mind writing that out as an employment reference? I’d have a job within the week, and I desperately need work.” Before he could reply, there was a quiet rustle in the bushes beside them that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end.
Twisting her head in the direction of the noise, she took a wary step closer to The Villain, who grabbed her shoulders quick as lightning and tugged her toward him. “What—”
She heard the arrow before she felt it.