Assistant to the Villain

The next morning, Blade Gushiken’s voice was laced with earnest amusement. “I think you’re going to wear a hole in the floor, boss.”

Trystan nearly took the man’s head off.

But he halted his pacing of his office floor, not caring for the nervous looks his employees were giving him through the doorway. Or did he care?

He ran a hand through his hair. He couldn’t think properly under these conditions.

Without Sage, he’d had to go back to drinking his cauldron brew black, as Edwin thought he always did. The ogre had been his village’s baker when Trystan was just a boy, and he was one of the only beings in this world Trystan really believed was all goodness. It’s why Sage had to spend her mornings covertly adding sweetness to the brew. If Edwin found out Trystan didn’t like the drink he’d worked so hard to develop, it might wound him.

Caring about other people is very irritating.

He thought of his assistant and began pacing once more. Trystan expected her to fly through the doors of his office that morning, a demure apology on her lips and perhaps a pastry for him in hand.

A sensible explanation for why she had that letter in the first place would follow, and all would go back to how it was.

Trystan had spent the night clearing his head and was prepared to meet Sage’s pleading with logical and fair judgment. After all, he’d been seconds away from telling her a secret that he’d scarcely spoken aloud to anyone.

The worst of it was wanting to trust someone. If you remained indifferent, the fallible could never fail you and you would remain safe. Trystan had wanted to trust her, and that was not Sage’s fault but his own.

In addition to that problem, the office seemed to be going to shambles.

Rebecka had reported three interns nearly brawling to the death that morning because they’d been placed on the same cleaning crew in the dungeons. He hadn’t been aware Sage knew the interns well enough to avoid skirmishes among them. Clever, but not clever enough to make him rethink her obvious transgressions.

Then there’d been some sob story about one of the men’s betrothed sleeping with his cousin, and Trystan had tuned out his Humans and Magical Creatures Resource Manager before the melodrama rotted his brain.

But that had only been the first issue of the day. It seemed that in the few months Sage had been here, she’d ingrained herself into nearly every moving wheel in his organization, like vines weaving through the foundation of a very old house, becoming a part of it. The Villain had had a fully functioning business before her, hadn’t he? One would have no clue, since the sky seemed to be falling at nearly every point of the morning thus far.

A weapons shipment came in, but only Sage, ever the notetaker in her gold-foiled journal, had any idea which shipment they had been expecting. It had taken twenty employees away from their current tasks to open every crate so they could catalog what was inside.

Their magical filing cabinet, envy of all because of its ability to alphabetize any document that entered the enchanted space, had broken. The A’s were where the X’s should have been, and the L, M, N, O, and P files had simply been…eaten by the wood.

When Trystan had finally brought himself to ask if there was anyone who knew how to fix it, they replied as if they’d rehearsed it for his own torture. “Ms. Sage usually knows.”

He avoided Tatianna when he could, and for good reason, as the woman traded in office gossip. But an hour ago, Trystan had found himself feeling desperate to prove he was right to distrust his assistant, so he’d leaned into the healer’s domain to ask if she’d heard anyone in the office sharing an incriminating secret with her about Sage. The healer had looked at him with such venomous disdain, Trystan thought she must have been poisoning him with her eyes.

He felt like his whole body was burning.

“No,” she’d replied flatly. “I haven’t.”

The Villain had nodded and cleared his throat and then left the healer’s room feeling almost…embarrassed?

What a nightmare this was.

And as if everything wasn’t already ripping apart at the seams, Blade was now occupying Trystan’s attention with something he knew would turn his already sour mood into straight-up rotten.

“Don’t you have a beast to tame?” Trystan barked at Blade, praying to the gods that the dragon trainer would leave him to sulk.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about—” Blade turned as Rebecka made her way to The Villain’s desk to set down another chalice of the foul, non-sugared brew. “Good morning, Rebecka.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She nodded happily, a wide smile spreading beneath her thick frames.

Blade frowned at her back as she returned to her new desk—right outside Trystan’s office. The dragon trainer walked over and closed the door behind her before turning to Trystan again. “I don’t care how hard you need to beg—just do it, please. That was terrifying.” He shivered, like Ms. Erring’s happiness was a sign of an apocalyptic end.

“I don’t beg. For anything,” The Villain insisted, crossing his arms and noting his shirt didn’t feel quite as soft as when Sage managed the launderers. Today, his shirts were scratchy and irritating.

“Sage is the one who made the dramatic declaration and quit. She is the one who must apologize, if I still allow her a position here after her obvious deceit with that letter.”

The dragon trainer stiffened, his hands fidgeting as his eyes darted toward the extra growth in Trystan’s usually cleanly honed stubble on his chin. “Rough night?” Blade asked.

“I’ll cut your tongue out,” Trystan threatened.

“Right.” Blade nodded. “Fair. Before you do that, can you settle a matter for me?”

Trystan pinched the bridge of his nose, battling away a writhing headache. “What?”

“I would like your permission to name the dragon.”

He narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Did you not name him already?”

“All the books say you’re not supposed to name them until after they’ve completed their training,” Blade insisted.

“And how reputable is this book you’re taking such careful advice from?”

“Well…” He chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m unsure. Mostly because everything it’s told me to do thus far seems to only anger or frighten the wits out of him. But I figure I would be a little crabby, too, if I had nothing to call myself.”

“I have a few things I’d like to call you.” Trystan tried to add a threatening edge to his voice, but all his senses felt duller this morning, like he’d been in the dark for too long.

“Can you suggest a few for the dragon first?” The hopeful look in the trainer’s eyes reminded Trystan too much of someone he needed to stop thinking about before he sent a chair through the window.

“I don’t know.” Trystan paused, a strange thought coming over him. “Fluffy. Name him Fluffy.”

Blade’s head whipped backward, mouth falling slightly open. “Fluffy…sir?”

“It’s an adequate name, I’m told,” he muttered defensively. Trystan didn’t like the appraising look in the trainer’s eyes. “Now get out of my face, Gushiken. I’m very busy.”

Blade nodded, taking a step backward. “Right away, sir.” He spun toward the door but stopped, his palm above the handle. The brawny man swallowed hard, then turned back to face Trystan, looking like he was about to lose his lunch.

“What—?”

But Trystan never finished his sentence, because Blade’s words were tumbling out so quick, several veins in the man’s forehead began to pop.

“It was me, sir! The employment offer from King Benedict—it was mine.”

Trystan froze, idly wondering how his heart could be pounding in his chest when his blood had turned to ice.

“Explain,” he bit out, the word so clipped and cold, he watched Blade shiver.

Gushiken stepped forward, pushing his shoulders back, clearly trying to summon bravery. His story spilled out in waves, and Trystan didn’t speak until he knew the dragon trainer had finished.

Blade spoke of his childhood in the kingdom’s capital, his father’s political career on Rennedawn’s council, Blade’s affinity for animals and magical creatures. How he’d only kept the letter to remind himself that he’d made the right choice coming here.

Trystan’s body went taut when Blade’s story pulled in Evie. While Blade spoke, Trystan kept his face impassive, but his mind was racing, adrenaline pumping through him.

“She kept the letter to make sure I fessed up. She gave me the chance to tell you myself because she is kind and a good friend. But make no mistake, sir; she is completely loyal to you. This whole thing is all my fault. If you want to fire me or, you know…murder me? I completely understand.”

I wanted to give…someone else the chance to tell you first.

Sage’s voice cut through the pounding blackness that was feeding into The Villain’s mind, like a rainbow slicing through the endings of a vicious storm.

I should say thank you. For proving even promised trust can be broken.

Sage had stumbled backward like he’d struck her—because he had. But The Villain had been too stubborn, too triggered by his past betrayals to see anything but his own hurt.

Trystan had called her a hypocrite when it was becoming glaringly obvious the only person guilty of hypocrisy was himself.

She had wanted him to have enough faith in her, to trust her, and instead he’d punished her. Trystan held Blade’s gaze. “You should not have kept this from me, Gushiken.”

Blade nodded, ducking his head. “If I had known the trouble it would cause, believe me, I wouldn’t have.”

“Believe you?” Something dark was creeping into Trystan’s voice as he begrudgingly realized what it felt like to be wrong. It felt horrible. “I don’t know what to believe right now. But believe this: if you ever find yourself lying to me again or implicating another employee because of your carelessness, you will find your head adorning my rafters.”

Blade looked queasy, and Trystan resisted the urge to chuck the man through the window.

Gushiken waved both hands in front of his face. “No, no! I promise to never keep a secret from you again, sir! I will head to the healer now to have a magical oath burned into my flesh, in fact.” And with that, Blade turned to take off toward Tatianna’s quarters. As he pulled the door open, he sheepishly glanced back at The Villain, something vulnerable in the man’s expression.

“Um, sir…does this mean I can keep my job? That the dragon and I can remain?”

It wasn’t mercy, what Trystan said next, but it was alarmingly close to it. “Yes. Against my better judgment, you may remain.”

“Thank you, sir!” Blade said, his voice far away as Trystan had already moved toward a stained glass window, unlatching the glass and pushing it open to let the summer air waft over him.

The sunlight hit his face, but he felt no warmth, like Sage had dragged even the power of the sun away with her.

He hadn’t realized the dragon trainer was still standing in his office until Trystan heard him ask a question so small and quiet, he nearly missed it.

“Sir…what about Evie?”

When Trystan remained silent, he heard Blade’s footsteps fade away until they were gone completely.

But the dragon trainer’s question echoed through his mind so many times, Trystan wanted to scratch it out.

What about Evie?