Sighing, Trystan gripped the vial of sleeping draught in his fist, using one of his hands to remove his black cloak, watching the garment fall to the ground. He was left in the attire he reserved for his least favorite tasks. Black leather hugged his legs, and boots lighter than his usual donned his feet and shins. His black shirt was tighter than what was comfortable, but he didn’t want to be encumbered by the extra fabric.
The Villain darted around his guards, who continued to wave furiously and keep the guvre distracted. The grass made no noise beneath his feet as he crept closer and closer to the creature’s back. He had one shot to get it into the beast’s mouth before he let out another wave of his venomous breath.
This, upon reflection, was not my most well-thought-out plan.
Of course, Blade wouldn’t have been a helpful solution, either. His résumé, full of raving accounts of all the magical creatures he’d worked with, had been pure exaggeration, clearly.
With a sigh, The Villain realized that his office and its workers were beginning to resemble a badly drawn cartoon sketching. But there was no time for letting that manic imagery weigh him down.
There was a stiffness in his legs as he ran, thighs burning, heart pounding. He dove around one of his guards, Andrea, shoving her out of the way from a blast of the guvre’s breath.
She rolled and landed expertly, then screamed at another of his guards, Dante. “Wave your arms higher, you fool!”
Dante’s arms were already flailing so hard, he looked like a drunk ballerina. “I’m waving them! Trying not to die, Andy!”
Trystan was close enough now to leap onto the creature’s back, but the serpent’s head was too high, too far away. His original plan had been to come at the creature from behind, waiting for him to open his mouth so he could thrust the sleeping draught in. But he only had one shot—he couldn’t waste it.
This was suicide, and it was very probable Trystan was going to die. But dying in the pursuit of revenge was every villain’s dream, so he couldn’t find it in himself to mind very much.
“Hey!” The Villain yelled. His power seeped from his fingers, that familiar gray mist flowing out and around him as the creature turned with a screech so forceful, it blew his hair back from his forehead. Trystan looked for weak points, but a death blow wasn’t an option; he needed the beast alive. Only one weak point was visible on the creature’s foot, highlighted in yellow, barely enough to give it a paper cut.
The guvre shook his magic off, and almost immediately, any sort of hold Trystan had crackled until it shattered. He wasn’t powerful enough to hold a creature of this size for more than a few seconds, but those few seconds were enough.
The guvre’s mouth opened wide, a swarm of purple smoke beginning to fog out. The heat of it hit the top of Trystan’s forehead, and he felt his skin singeing, burning. But The Villain smiled through the pain, for he had waited just long enough. Uncapping the vial with his teeth, he threw the draught right down the creature’s large throat. It disappeared into the now-aggressive wave of heated breath that was burning through his skin so fast, if he stood there a second longer, the bone of his skull would see the sunlight.
The draught didn’t take as long as expected, but neither did the damage from the swamp of breath that melted the bramble where he’d just been standing. A little close for his liking, but he didn’t die, so there was that. The animal teetered to the left, his head jerking and swaying, still spraying the noxious mist.
“Move!” Trystan yelled. “Get out of the way!” His people scattered, flipping and rolling away from patches of melting ground, a rankling cry ringing out as a lick of mist brushed against Dante’s leg.
“Fuck!” he yelled, jumping away and gripping the back of the red leathers he wore. “That hurts!” Dante leaned his neck around to look at the burned-away fabric of his pants, revealing a sliver of his…ass.
The guvre swayed drunkenly for a beat and then finally dropped to a heap with a resounding thud. But his guards barely noticed, too busy laughing at Dante being stripped by their prey.
Trystan sighed; he was so very tired. Wincing and reaching up to feel the wound on his forehead, he added being in pain to his list of complaints, along with the fact that his orderly life seemed to no longer exist.
“When you all cease that annoying sound coming out of your mouths, may I kindly ask you to do your jobs and get the animal to the cart?” The Villain gestured toward the incredibly large, carted cage he’d had made specifically for this purpose.
As soon as his sentence was complete, his guards were already dragging the creature onto the tarp and moving him inch by inch toward his future of imprisonment, as humanely as Trystan could manage. It couldn’t be helped—removing the dragon’s collar had opened up a level of…compassion. It was a hindrance already, but it needed to be minded.
He couldn’t believe he’d done it. Something Benedict had been trying to accomplish for years. This was and would forever remain Trystan’s victory over the man who had ruined everything, had ruined him. A yellow flower among the undergrowth left in the forest caught his eye, and his mind conjured an image of Sage.
Ruined.
He didn’t feel ruined with Evie, though. He felt reborn.
What a fucking disaster.
Chapter 30
Evie
“It’s crooked,” Becky insisted.
Evie pushed the frame higher onto the wall, nearly stumbling from the ladder she was already precariously close to falling from.
“So is your face,” Evie mumbled under her breath, feeling the burn in her biceps from pinning up the sides of the heavy artwork.
“What was that?” Becky called up. Even a couple of feet below her, she still found a way to look down her nose at Evie.
“Nothing,” Evie muttered. She hated herself for it, but the normalcy of their endless display of cutting words gave her a level of familiar comfort. After all the unpredictable abnormality of the past few weeks, it was nice to have something she could count on.
“Really? I thought you said something about my face being crooked.” From somewhere across the room, Evie heard an intern cough into their hands.
“Evie would never say anything like that.” Tatianna’s teasing face appeared below her. “She’s far too moral.”
“I am not,” Evie said with a frown. “I can be ruthless.” Or at least, her version of ruthless.
Distracted by thoughts of doing evil to Becky to prove her point, Evie felt her foot catch against the ladder rung and slide down a peg.
“Careful!” Becky yelled. “Don’t drop it.”
“And of course, don’t fall,” Tatianna added mildly.
Since Evie’s return to work after quitting, Becky had taken it upon herself to bring rule following to…an obscene level.
Just last week, Becky had issued a memo that all employees must be punctual, well-groomed, and without the odious scent of dragon upon their person. Which of course meant Blade had to spend several minutes in the washroom before entering their offices each day—which he didn’t—or risk being written up—which he did.
If that wasn’t enough, Becky had decided that any free and idle moment must be utilized to increase work productivity. She’d cut the spare fifteen minutes they were all given each shift in addition to ten minutes of their half-hour lunch break and replaced them with an “extras” assignment sheet. Every single task on the list was worse than the last.
But it was futile to resist, for the few who did found their paychecks “misplaced” at the week’s end and their desks suddenly moved to the part of the office the spiders seemed to populate.
Startlingly, at the top of the extras list was Tatianna, who’d been given the horrifically tedious task of refilling their ink vials for their office supplies. At the healer’s protests, especially because of the risk to her gowns, Becky had told her this was a good opportunity to wear more appropriate work attire, since her lavish pink dresses were better suited to a ball than to a respectable organization. Tatianna had thrown a pillow at the woman. A pink one.
“Lift up the corner. It’s still crooked,” Becky advised, as though Evie’s arms weren’t shaking with the effort to hold up the large piece of art.