Assistant to the villain, p.1
Assistant to the Villain, page 1
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Star Bringer, by Tracy Wolff and Nina Croft
Bloodguard, by Cecy Robson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
644 Shrewsbury Commons Ave., STE 181
Shrewsbury, PA 17361
rights@entangledpublishing.com
Red Tower Books is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Liz Pelletier
Cover art and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Interior map art by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Interior design by Toni Kerr
TP ISBN 9-781-64937-580-3
Ebook ISBN 9-781-64937-552-0
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition August 2023
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
At Entangled, we want our readers to be well-informed. If you would like to know if this book contains any elements that might be of concern for you, please check the book’s webpage.
https://entangledpublishing.com/books/assistant-to-the-villain
To Mom and Dad,
for the hours of my childhood you spent telling me stories
and the years you spent listening to mine,
know that yours will always be my favorite.
And for all of you,
this is what I think it would be like to be the morally gray
fantasy villain’s personal assistant.
Prologue
Once Upon a Time…
It was an ordinary day when Evie met The Villain.
Another failed attempt at the job fairs in her village. Another day with no source of income. Another day she was letting her sick father and little sister down. Which was why her mind was preoccupied as she wandered to the trees lined like fences at Hickory Forest’s edge—and walked right in.
The forest had once been frequently populated but was now the very last place anyone with common sense would choose to wander. Especially alone. Well, unless your name was Evangelina Sage and a forbidden forest seemed far more inviting than going home and admitting to your family that you’d finally found a job…and given it away.
Evie sighed, reaching out to let her fingers drift across the scratchy bark of several nearby trees as she wandered past. The forest really was quite beautiful.
The Kingdom of Rennedawn was one of the more modest of the enchanted kingdoms, and avoiding Hickory Forest when it took up so much of its land was a challenge. Still, its citizens had managed it well enough so far.
It had remained that way since a dark figure known as The Villain’s emergence nearly ten years ago. There were too many rumors of him hiding out near the forest’s edge to steal victims to torture. Evie knew little about the evil figure, but she was almost certain he had better things to do with his time than stalk the trees like a forest sprite. Though she’d not seen any of those, either—they tended to live farther north.
“The Villain,” Evie scoffed, walking deeper into the trees and shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her simple brown dress. “Perhaps he would be less murderous if his moniker wasn’t so ridiculous.”
Unless, of course, the name had been bestowed upon him at birth, in which case Evie would applaud his mother for her incredible foresight.
Evie stumbled over a wayward branch, yanking her hands out of her pockets to catch herself with a nearby tree, then trudged toward the murmuring sounds of a stream.
As she walked, she sifted through her meager knowledge of the man, most of which she’d gotten from poorly drawn wanted flyers. In them, he was always portrayed as older, with a gray beard broken up by large scars running down his face from grappling with his victims, and his teeth were often drawn jagged, like he’d rip out your heart with them—or perhaps needed to see a dentist.
So many rumors had trickled through the lands about the kingdom’s greatest foe that Evie wasn’t certain what to believe. She knew The Villain had burned one of the fishing villages in Western Rennedawn to the ground years ago. The kingdom had been devastated with famine after the loss of fishing for months afterward until they’d finally rebuilt. And there were many other stories of horror. Petty larceny seemed a staple of The Villain’s to-do list as well, often stealing into noble homes to frighten the families and make off with their precious heirlooms.
Slowly approaching the stream—wider than she thought it would be—Evie marveled at the beauty of the sun coming in through the gaps in the trees, giving the flowers bordering it an ethereal glow. For a moment, she almost forgot about her predicament, it was so breathtaking a view. But then it all came rushing back.
Her father still didn’t know she’d lost her job at the blacksmith last month. She’d been so sure she could find something else before her family noticed that the table was a little sparser at dinner or that their small cottage was colder for lack of firewood. She’d have to tell him tonight, though. They were down to their last meager food stores.
With a heavy sigh, she knelt down along the edges of the stream, her knees sinking into the spongy moss. She ran her hands through the clear blue water, then splashed some of the cool liquid against her face and neck, hoping to calm her racing heart.
She was in trouble this time. And not from some mythical villain.
No. She’d done this to herself.
The worst of it was that she’d nearly had a good position handed to her. At the fair this morning, she’d been offered the sole new maid posting for a noble family on an estate not far from her village. It wasn’t ideal because of the distance, but she’d been ready to take it happily. Until, of course, she’d turned to see another woman standing beside her with such hope in her smile-lined eyes that Evie’s heart had constricted in her chest. More so when she’d seen three young children standing behind the woman.
Evie had handed her the certificate of employment and watched her face light up as she grabbed Evie and kissed her on both cheeks.
I did the right thing. So why do I feel like my chest is going to cave in?
Sighing and splashing another bit of red water against her face, she began to list the other upcoming job fairs. Perhaps she could travel to one of the neighboring villa—
Wait… Red?!
Gasping and edging backward into the flowers, Evie felt her eyes widen in horror at the once-clear-blue water now clouded with a deep crimson color.
Blood.
She shut her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. After counting to ten, she got to her feet, nearly tripping over the hem of her long dress, and inched slowly toward the water again. It was clear to see the blood was coming from farther up the stream.
She took a step in that direction, inching one leather boot in front of the other, wholly unprepared for what she might find.
The stream was beginning to resemble a river of blood the farther she walked up it, the opaque red engulfing any remaining blue. It had to have been an injured animal, a large one if the amount of blood was any sort of indication. Certainly not something that warranted Evie’s personal investigation.
And yet, here she was, in the forest that was suddenly getting darker as the sun began its descent behind the trees…fo
Shaking her head, she felt plants getting crushed under her feet as she grinded to a halt. She was going to turn around. In fact, her body had been halfway turned when she spotted a beast with black fur hunched over and hidden slightly among the tall grass surrounding the stream and a giant tree.
Whatever manner of creature it was, the thing was alive—groans and muffled sounds of pain were coming from its general direction. Evie crouched, gently lifting her skirts to reach the small blade she kept in a sheath around her ankle for emergencies.
She’d put the poor beast out of its misery. Showing it that much kindness was hardly a burden. But the closer she inched, the less it looked like a creature at all. It almost looked like…
A human hand whipped out from beneath the black fur, which she now realized wasn’t fur at all but a dark cloak. The hand circled around one of her wrists, pulling her down beside it.
“Oof!” She hit the ground hard, her shoulder connecting with the forest floor as an arm banded around her waist and pulled her against their body. She lay on her side, her back pressed tightly against something solid and warm behind her—which was when her good sense kicked in and she started to squirm and shout.
The arm around her waist cinched tighter as a hand closed over her lips. A low voice was in her ear, sending shivers throughout her entire body. “Be quiet, you little urchin, or you’ll get us both killed.”
Just then, Evie saw another foreboding figure across the way—several, in fact. All men dressed in silver. Carrying very large weapons, some of them glowing. The king’s Valiant Guards!
She struggled against the hand, but the man’s other arm was locking her against him and he wrapped a heavy leg over her ankles, effectively holding her still.
“Lwet meh go.” She’d dropped her knife when she fell, so she felt around in the grass for it with her free arm.
“Relax,” he ordered again.
Right. That was likely, considering a strange man, whom she was certain was the thing these men were hunting, had her pinned to the ground. But she’d sought this out, hadn’t she? She’d followed a literal river of blood—what else did she think was going to happen?
“Em suc a fwool.” Evie sighed long and hard.
Suddenly, the hand was gone from her mouth and the voice was in her ear once more. “What are you mumbling about?”
“This is just very typical for me,” she whispered.
“Being pulled to the ground by a stranger?” he said in a tone that sounded suspiciously curious.
“Well, not this exact situation. But if I told someone about how I ended up here, nobody would think it out of the ordinary.” She jabbed her elbow into his ribs, causing her captor to curse and grunt. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt?” She did it again, making her point.
“Enough!” he hissed before he pointed a tanned hand to the men searching the trees on the other side of the stream. “Those men do not care that you are an innocent who stumbled into the arms of a demon. They will kill you without a moment’s hesitation, and they will do it laughing.”
“A demon?” Evie chuckled quietly, attempting to turn her body to get a look at this man with such a high opinion of himself, but his arms tightened around her once more, keeping her in place.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked without a hint of arrogance in his tone. And yet, the casualness with which he just knew his reputation had preceded him made Evie’s stomach do backflips.
She’d been called many disparaging things in her life. Alarmingly all beginning with the letter F. Flighty, foolish, forgetful, and, by a strange turn of events, she was finally able to add the final F.
Fucked.
She knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
The Villain, King of Darkness, Haunter of Dreams, had his arms around her. Worse, even, she was not nearly as afraid as she should’ve been. In fact, she wasn’t afraid at all, so much as she—
Oh dear. Was she laughing?
She was. She couldn’t help it, and if she was any louder, those men would be over here in seconds. The Villain seemed to sense this, too, because she blinked and his hand was wrapped around her mouth once more.
“We’re going to slowly crawl behind that tree.” He pulled Evie up so she could see the large oak in question. “And then we’re going to run.”
“We?” she asked as she was suddenly flipped around and shoved in the direction of the tree. There was no room to argue, so, as instructed, she kept low and crawled until she was safely leaning against the other side of the trunk. Breathing heavily and startled to see blood brushing the back of her arm, Evie turned to see if The Villain was still there.
Gone.
“Where in the deadlands did he—”
“Here.”
Evie spun in the direction of his voice, stunned. “How did you get over th—” But her words cut off when she saw him.
In her defense, there was a lot to take in.
Her first thought was the wanted posters had it all wrong. This was not an older, scarred man with a gray beard. In fact, no gray laced through his thick, dark hair, either. He had high cheekbones above the two-day shadow that ran along a very hard jawline. She figured he couldn’t be more than six or seven years older than she was. If she had to guess, she’d put him at no more than…twenty-eight, twenty-nine? That couldn’t be right, though. There had to be a rule somewhere that evil overlords needed to be at least fifty, maybe sixty if they were pushing it.
But not young! And not, even more disastrously, beautiful.
He was, though: beautiful. His skin was tanned and smooth. As if his off time from terrorizing people was spent lying in the grass, perhaps daintily drinking out of a teacup and reading poetry with his pinky raised.
The thought brought a hysterical giggle to Evie’s lips. The Villain lifted one of his perfectly thick brows that framed the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. Eyes that assessed her in pinched confusion. It seemed he didn’t fully put together that she was another living, breathing human being, because he looked at her as if her very existence was a mystery.
“You really shouldn’t look like that,” she said and surprised herself by almost thinking the befuddled look on his face was endearing.
He’s a murderer! Her conscience rebelled, but the rest of her, the part that wasn’t attached to her very wise brain, found him far too pretty to care.
Taking a careful step in his direction, Evie tried to dig inside herself for the fear she knew was there. Any minute now, she’d be paralyzed with fright and run screaming in the other direction, but he was within arm’s length now and she hadn’t turned yet.
Hmm. No fear, but she did feel mild concern—a sound indicator she hadn’t completely lost her good sense. Until, of course, her mild concern was clouded with embarrassing thoughts of what he would smell like if she leaned in close and took a whiff.
“Is there something about my face…that is displeasing to you? Or is it perhaps that I’m bleeding from three different wounds, courtesy of the men in your village?” His voice was quiet, and outwardly he appeared calm, but Evie could see a muted fury behind his dark eyes.
Did he think she was judging him?
“Um, yes— The blood’s not great…but I was referring to the fact that you look like you were carved out of marble, and I just think that as a rule of thumb, inherently evil people should be grotesque-looking.”
The fury winked out as if never there in the first place, his only response to blink.
“You just can’t kill people and be pretty. It’s confusing.” Evie began unwrapping the wool scarf her little sister, Lyssa, had given her on her last birthday, stepping closer to The Villain and holding it up like a signal of peace. “For the blood, Your Evilness.”
Taking it from her in a gripped fist, The Villain twisted the scarf around his middle and cinched it tight to stanch the bleeding. “You think I’m pretty?”
Oddly enough, Evie had the feeling he would’ve preferred to have been called grotesque for the way his face twisted with distaste.
“That’s not a think scenario—that’s just objective. Look how symmetrical your cheekbones are.” She closed the distance between them and placed her hands on either side of his face.
His eyes widened and so did hers when she realized what she was doing.
