The Villain

“I heard drowning is the most painful way to die,” Sage said unhelpfully as the water in the room pooled around their calves.

He was still attempting to get the keys but had only managed to knock them closer to the edge of the table. “Speaking from experience, are you?”

Sage kicked up water; the downpour from the ceiling had soaked her, soaked them both. Her undergarments clung to her like a second skin, and Trystan thought quietly that there were many far more painful things than drowning. Like dying without his hands molding to her two perfect—

“Are you having performance anxiety?”

The shoe slipped from his hands and made a plop sound as it hit the water. “I’m sorry?” There was no way he’d heard what he’d just heard. But when

he turned to stare, she was smiling sympathetically.

“It’s all right, sir.” There was no mirth in her tone to indicate that she was joking, but Trystan often misread others’ humor. “Tatianna told me it happens to everyone.” Was she serious? Godsdamn deadlands.

Irritation caused his jaw to twitch, water splashing against his legs as he stormed over to her. The intimidation factor was perhaps dampened by the squishing sound of his boots. But he was satisfied when he caught her cheeks reddening as she admired his chest. There was a clear, sobered focus to her eyes that hadn’t been there when they’d entered the village.

“I can say with the utmost assurance”—his eyes raked over her, and she stopped breathing—“when given the privilege, I have no issue performing.” Water dripped down from her hair onto her lips, the red smeared a bit against her cheek.

Her breaths were coming in short gasps, her chest moving quickly as she reached up a hand and placed it against his bare chest, right over his heart. A twinkle—he was begrudged to call it so, but that’s what it was—a twinkle

appeared in her eyes and a small, amused tilt at her mouth. “I was speaking of your magic, sir.”

Good for you. I’m not.

Clearing his throat, noting the water had made its way past his knees now, he said with a large amount of exasperation, “I surrendered my power so that I could enter the village.”

She pushed him with no force—just censure. “That was incredibly foolish!”

He didn’t look at her, picking the shoe back up and aiming once more for the keys. “It was their only condition upon my entry, and I didn’t want you to be alone.”

He aimed again, missed. Again, missed. Aimed again—and this time hit the keys dead-on…right into the water, where they sank like a stone. Along with his heart.

Someone from the playhouse above would come. He had to believe that. They would not die here, right? Sage would not die here. But the panic raking nails down his spine was spinning a different tale.

“I wish you’d stop doing that,” she said quietly.

The water was to his waist now, nearly swallowing Sage up to her chest. He rushed for her and gripped her hips, hoisting her above the water to give her more space to breathe. But it brought their faces inches apart as her hands fell limply to his shoulders. “Stop doing what?” he asked, embarrassingly out of breath, but he hoped she would assume it was from the exertion.

“Being so nice,” she said calmly, casually, like they were having a normal conversation in his office and not trapped in a cellar beneath the water that was imminently going to lead to their demise.

His face twisted with disgust. Nice? “Well, now you’re trying to offend me on purpose.”

It was the twitch of her red lips that started the prickling sensation in his face and neck. Then the squeeze of her fingers against his shoulders, freezing him in place as he stared at the smattering of freckles faintly dusted across her elegant nose. Her eyes were fixed on his mouth, something desperate in them when she looked up at him.

“We’re going to drown,” she whispered.

He squeezed his eyes shut and saw her laying in her coffin, then saw her standing atop the stairs of the king’s palace with the color back in her

cheeks. He felt a tingle in his lips, and Sage removed a hand to shake out her knuckles, as if reliving an unwanted sensation there.

He forced emotion below the surface, tried to kill every feeling within him so he didn’t need to cope with defeat. He was numb. Until Sage—until Evie

—placed the hand she’d been shaking out against his cheek and said with a crack in her voice that fissured his soul, “Please kiss me.”

There was nothing for the agony as she leaned her head closer to his, as all his muscles froze out of necessity, for if they thawed there would be no more holding back. And why should he? If she wanted reprieve in these final moments, why should he not give it? She couldn’t know what that small request was doing to him, how desperately he wanted to.

How he’d always wanted to.

Her sweet breath brushed against his mouth, and it made him feel drunk— And that word shattered everything. Drunk. The flower effects. That could be the only reason she would ask him for such a thing. His desperation could not extend past the final measly scrap of honor he had left—honor that seemed to only extend to the one person he wanted above all else.

He wondered if she could see the sorrow in his eyes as he said, “I—I can’t do that.”

The wounded look in her own eyes nearly changed his mind, but then, without warning, another window high above them in the corner shattered. Sage screamed, and Trystan pulled her head into his chest, using his body to shield her from the falling glass—as something small and slimy landed on his head.

“By the gods—” “Kingsley!”