Evie bit her lip to keep from grinning. “I don’t know, that seems a pretty accurate likeness. I’d hoped to frame it.”
His face went flat and unamused. “Very humorous, Sage.” He crumpled the poster and tossed it aside. “Benedict wants to keep whatever games he’s playing between us. So I’ll follow the bread crumbs, will play the fool just long enough for him to think he’s won.” His smile was sinister. “And then I’ll take him down for good.”
Somewhere above her head, a bird chirped, with no idea of the melodrama playing out below it. “You make dismantling a well-beloved monarch sound alarmingly easy, sir.”
“Well, there is a very distinct difference between King Benedict and me.”
“What’s that?” Evie asked cautiously.
“I don’t care about being beloved, and I don’t care about doing things the right way. I will blacken whatever parts of my soul I must to keep my business running and to take down my enemies.” Were there thunderclouds ominously appearing behind him or was that Evie’s imagination?
Leaning back against the tree again and sliding down, putting her head between her bent knees, she sighed. “I just don’t understand. You’ve been doing the evil thing for a decade. Sabotaging the kingdom, working as an enemy against him for almost ten years. Why is it that only recently, he’s decided to send someone on the inside to take you down?”
“Perhaps I’ve finally come to be enough of a nuisance, or perhaps since the entire continent knows me to be a vicious, horrid monster, the esteemed king thinks that serving the public my head on a platter when it finally suits him will make him something of a hero.” Trystan sat down hard beside her, yanking a bit of grass out with his fist.
“Or it took him ten years to find someone willing to go undercover against you,” Evie guessed. “Someone who was willing to take the risk you’d find them out eventually.”
The Villain nodded in agreement. “Whoever it is has had an extremely careful method of sharing information with the king. I’ve had a few of my guards keep eyes on some loose ends, but so far, no one has stepped out of line.”
Unless they found a coded way to share the information.
“What could he have done to cause this war between you?” she asked almost to herself. “I have no loyalty to the crown, obviously. Look who I’m working for.” She gestured to him before continuing. “But King Benedict is well-liked, even loved by some. From what I’ve read in the news pamphlets, he spends his days arguing with his council to make magical education more accessible to the rest of the kingdom. He’s the reason women are even allowed employment at all. I heard that he’s now petitioning the council for women’s business rights. I’m not saying you’re wrong for targeting him, as he’s clearly targeting you back, but what started it? What could he have possibly done to deserve such wrath?”
“He stepped on my foot once. Never got over it,” Trystan deadpanned.
Evie laughed and shook her head.
Trystan stood once more, reaching a hand down for her. Lightly pulling her to her feet and turning to the path leading back to the village, he said, “Now I would like to go meet with your village’s blacksmith, and I would like you to introduce me as your employer who is interested in a rare sort of blade.”
The blood in her veins froze, locking her legs in a vise grip. “The blacksmith?” Her hands shook so hard, she shoved them in the pockets of her skirts. “Why do you want to meet with him?”
“Otto Warsen?” The Villain said, pulling a slip of paper from his front pocket. “Blade found the name etched into the bottom corner of the dragon’s collar. Lots of craftsmen do it as a way of marking their work. An advertisement of sorts, so that anyone who admires it knows where it came from and might perhaps want one of their own.”
Evie swallowed a large lump, her legs finally working again, and followed him back down the path, feeling a sickly cold slithering through her. “And whoever requested the collar’s creation, in person, had to have given the order to include the engraving.” She concluded, “Or at the very least, the blacksmith took a bribe to carve it in by another party. It could be our traitor.”
He nodded. “We’ll have to be creative with our line of questioning. I don’t want the man to suspect anything untoward about your employment and make things difficult for you in your private life.”
That hardly seemed to matter when a moment in time that Evie desperately wanted to forget was about to be thrown in her face like a closed fist. “Very considerate, sir.”
“I trust you are acquainted with Mr. Warsen?”
Evie saw familiar faces as they reentered the square, but no one stopped them to talk because of the street performances that had just begun.
“I used to work for him, actually,” she admitted quietly. “Right before I came to work for you.”
He must have heard something off in her voice, because his gaze turned to hers, a pinched look between his brows. “Why did you leave his employment?”
“It was just a difference of opinion,” Evie said, smiling lightly. Keeping her hands in the deep pockets of her skirts, she strutted forward, eager to leave all those feelings pushed to the past and pray to whatever gods had created this world that they didn’t make her do what she’d wished she’d done all those months ago—and hit her old boss in the head with a sledgehammer.
Especially in front of her new boss. But her anger was still raw, her pain twisting and curling inside her.
She was doomed.
Chapter 27
Evie
This excursion was ill-advised, to say the least. The closer they came to the smithy, the tighter the invisible cord around Evie’s throat grew. She should have said no—any excuse would have done. She was usually pretty good at coming up with misleading comments to dissuade even the most curious. The last couple of months of work had been amazing practice.
But some sort of shock had set into her limbs, and now she was about to walk into the last place she ever wanted to be, facing the last man she ever wanted to see again. Any conscious feelings screaming at her to run were muffled behind a thick pane of glass. She would not listen.
She could do this. For Trystan.
Taking a steadying breath and removing her damp palms from her pockets, Evie slid her hands against the sides of her skirt. But a sharp wave of nausea roiled through her when she caught sight of Otto Warsen’s burly form.
His face was smudged with black soot from the forge. He had a cloth in one hand, standing in the outside pavilion of his house, polishing a beautiful-looking sword. Evie felt rather than saw Mr. Warsen’s eyes as he observed her coming, her and her boss.
The Villain.
She was hardly alone or unsafe, so why did she feel like a human sacrifice?
The blacksmith’s gaze was slimy, coating every exposed inch of her skin as he looked her up and down, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to turn back home and step into a scalding bath.
It wasn’t the first time she’d seen Mr. Warsen since she’d quit. Since the night he had asked her to be his companion, his breath thick with rum. She’d seen the rage contort his face after she said she wasn’t interested, and she’d known she had to get up and run, barely feeling the blade slice down her shoulder as she did. But she didn’t stop—she’d kept running and running and running.
She’d never told anyone and never went back. Anytime she saw Mr. Warsen around the village, he smiled and waved in a friendly manner and she swallowed down the bile and moved on.
But there was always that little glimmer, like the two of them shared a secret, and she could tell Mr. Warsen was pleased for it. She wanted to strangle him.
More than that, she pictured how she’d feel if The Villain hung his head in the entryway.
Suddenly, the smile on her face was very real as the two of them approached. “Good morning, Mr. Warsen,” The Villain said, his voice seeming to become smoother. He held his hand out to shake the blacksmith’s, who quickly pulled his hand from one of the leather gloves.