She took a tiny step backward. “But I’d hardly want to be the first, so I’ll just—I’ll just head there now.” She made a wide path around him, passing his office. She spied a scrawny-looking man inside, lying underneath a brick that had come loose from the wall above. No doubt, after he’d been slammed into it.
Kingsley sat on the edge of the boss’s desk, as he always did these last few months, his wide, unblinking expression taking her in before his webbed foot lifted one of his tiny communication signs. This one in red chalk, reading, Ouch.
Evie had grown quite fond of the tiny creature’s presence. He mostly just sat there, observing and offering up quiet counsel with the slab of slate the boss gave him to write on. His tiny gold crown always at attention on his slimy head.
Ouch indeed, Evie mouthed back to Kingsley before returning her attention to the broken man lying on the ground.
She tried to muster the sympathy she should feel for the pain of another person, but she’d seen so many men come and go from that room that she was trying to save her sympathy for those who deserved it.
A weaselly-looking man, whom she was almost certain she’d seen throwing rocks at a group of ducks last week in her village, did not make the cut. A smile graced her lips as she struggled to remind herself the boss was most likely not beating this man to a pulp to defend a few ducks’ honor. Her mind also begged the point that even if he wasn’t intentionally defending the ducks in question, he had by association.
Which for some reason was just as adorable.
She forced her smile into an even expression and continued forward to the small hallway that led to the healer’s quarters. For the bruise. On her ass.
Before she could throw her head in her hands at the disaster that was her morning, she remembered her boss on his knees before her, handing her the discarded papers, the sliver of his chest, his laughter.
Perhaps her morning was not a complete disaster.
Of course, there was no telling what his reaction would be when she returned to her desk and had to admit to him the discrepancy she’d found in the books that morning. She didn’t know everything about The Villain yet, but she did know that he detested disorganized recordkeeping, almost as much as she hated stray eyeballs.
Chapter 2
Evie
“Bend over.”
Evie didn’t move. “Perhaps you could buy me dinner first.” Honestly, even a dinner at the nicest tavern wouldn’t entice her to bare her backside to the healer. Surely magic could work through the cloth of her skirt—if she said it in her head, perhaps she could will it to be true.
She sat on the exam table and held back a wince at the pain when she shifted, her gaze holding the healer’s in a game of chicken Evie had no intention of losing.
There wasn’t a day since Evie had known her that the healer did not wear at least some element of pink. Today, the dainty color made its usual appearance in the form of tiny bows pinned throughout her lovely hair, making her look younger than her twenty-seven years but no less tough an adversary. The healer raised one dark brow at Evie’s refusal to move.
“Come on, Tati,” Evie said with a pleading grin. “I’ve already met my humiliation quota today, and I’m afraid revealing my backside to you would break the meter.”
Eventually, Tatianna sighed and pushed a dark braid of hair behind her ear, her large brown eyes narrowing as her hands began to glow a warm yellow.
Oh, thank the gods.
The light drew Evie’s attention to the gauzy sleeves of yet another lavish gown hugging the woman’s generous curves. Evie usually felt too guilty to spend her wages on anything so frivolous as a new gown—but that didn’t mean she didn’t envy the healer’s lovely wardrobe.
Tatianna moved her hands toward Evie, hovering in front of her shoulders without actually touching her, and suddenly Evie’s backside felt like the time she had sat on the hot stones in the village square after a day of summer sun beating down on them.
“You’ve bruised your tailbone, little friend. Quite badly in fact.” Tatianna’s voice was like clear water, crisp and smooth, pulling her lightly from her panic. She exhaled a sigh of relief. A bruise she could afford.
“Of course I have.” Evie rubbed her forehead. “And how much is it going to cost me for you to heal it?”
A long stretch of a smile spread across Tatianna’s face, which to those who didn’t know her would set even the most anxious person at ease. But Evie did know her—and that smile was, for lack of a better word…scary.
“Hmm,” the healer said, tapping her chin in contemplation. “If you want it fully healed, I want two secrets.”
“Which means you’re getting two secrets, because in what world would I want to go about my day with a painful bruise on my backside?” Evie rubbed her temples and raised a brow. “How big of a secret are we talking?”
Walking toward her table of salves and potions, Tatianna chuckled as her dress swished back and forth. “Nothing blackmail-worthy but better than idle gossip you’d hear in the kitchen.”
Evie dug in her brain for something sufficient as Tatianna sifted through her tinctures and moved her glowing hands over a small bowl as she worked. Sharing secrets was hardly something Evie took issue with; she was an open book for the most part. She’d often had trouble keeping overly personal things in, especially with Tatianna.
If she could pay everyone with her private, ridiculous thoughts and habits, she’d never have to work again.
Hopping off the table with nervous energy, Evie wandered over to the shelf by the door and found a small bottle. It was a charming little thing. Evie thought it would make a good ornam—
“Don’t touch that!” Tatianna screeched, making Evie’s heart race.
“What? Why? What is it?” Evie frantically looked at the bottle and the hand that had almost touched it. “Does it turn people into frogs or something?”
“What?” Tatianna shook her head, confused. “No, it’s a slow-acting sedative. It’s very potent.”
Evie pulled her hand back as if burned, frowning as Tatianna smiled and said all too casually, “I keep my frog potions in a different cabinet.”
A choked noise left Evie’s throat, but before she could ask if the healer was kidding, she continued.
“A secret, if you please,” Tatianna said, turning back to her brewing potion.
Evie paused in contemplation and then grinned. “I had a dream about the boss last night.”
A series of crashes and a screech came from the direction Tatianna was standing, but it was so unlike her to lose composure that Evie wondered if there was some other figure in the room she could not see.
Tatianna whirled around then, knocking several more things over in her flurry to face Evie.
Evie’s mouth opened, her hand going to her face as if something was written there she couldn’t see. “What?”
There were not enough thieves in Rennedawn’s east-village slums to steal the wicked twinkle in Tatianna’s eyes. “Oh, and what did you and the boss do in this dream, you naughty little assistant?”
Evie huffed a laugh and attempted to bend over to pick up the discarded parchments but immediately straightened when she felt her injury protest. “You are very presumptuous to assume it was anything but innocent.”
Tatianna scoffed in indignation, sweeping the contents back onto the table with a slight wave of her hand. A rare gift for healers but a useful one for Tatianna, who sometimes needed to use her abilities to mind-bend objects out of a wound without touching them.
“Have you seen the man? As if anything associated with him could ever be innocent.” She paused for dramatic effect, hands coming up with a flourish. “He’s a walking vice.”
Evie circled her hand above her own head in the shape of a halo, but the healer merely laughed and began mixing contents back into the bowl, hands once again taking on their warm yellow glow.