Page 119 of Apprentice to the Villain

He’d never felt smaller than he did in that moment.

“Sage.” He tried to gentle his voice, stepping a little closer as they walked. “Please don’t cry over me.”

“I’m not crying over you!” she insisted with a sniffle. “You’re so self-centered.”

He cleared his throat. He didn’t know why Benedict was working so hard to destroy him; all it took to fell The Villain was the sound of his apprentice crying. “Would it make you feel better if I let you try your hand at torture?”

She side-eyed him. “You’re trying to make me laugh, and it’s not going to work.”

“Well, that’s fortunate. I’m not very funny.” He got closer still, then bumped her shoulder. “C’mon, Sage. Ripping off some fingernails? Listening to the knights’ screams? I’ll even let you use the torture rack.”

She kicked a rock, sullen, but he thought he could see the tiniest beginning of a smile. “What’s a torture rack?”

“It’s a device that stretches your limbs apart until they snap off.”

She gagged. “What? That is so gross!” She slapped his arm. “You always assume that the only way to get information out of someone is pain. But I’d be far more willing to spill all my secrets if I felt pleasure.”

He coughed, hard, banging on his chest. It was a wonder he still had any oxygen left around this woman.

She frowned at him. “Are you well?”

“No.”

The smile grew on her lips, and now it stayed there. Though he turned away, he could feel her eyes on him still as they moved.

They were nearly to the doors of the fortress when a scream wrenched the air—high, piercing, and bloodcurdling—and Sage startled, a look of pure horror on her face.

“Sage? What is it? Are you all right?” he asked. The scream sounded again, louder this time. “For the love of the gods! Who in the deadlands is screaming?”

She shoved the fortress’s door open and said without feeling: “My mother.”

Chapter 74

Evie

Evie raced down the halls of the fortress in an unseeing haze, focused only on finding her mother and fixing whatever had broken her. She barely heard the boss’s voice in her ear trying to reassure her, barely saw as a door creaked open in front of her. Her eyes were fuzzy. Everything was.

Panic. She was in a fog of panic. Her mother screamed again, causing Evie to collapse to the ground. “Make it stop! Make it stop, please!” She curled up, trying to get so small she hoped she could disappear. “Help her. Someone help her!”

Then suddenly, she felt something warm and slimy plop into her hands.

She blinked as if waking. “Kingsley?” The frog prince peered up at her, stark concern in his golden eyes.

At that moment, Clare and Tatianna flew into the room, the screaming growing louder with them. Evie flinched and closed her eyes, but she felt someone lifting her up in his warm arms. “I got you, sweet Evie. I got you,” Blade said as he placed her upright in a chair, where she sat with Kingsley in a death grip.

Tatianna nudged Blade aside, then began pushing Evie’s hair back and off her neck, tying it with the pink ribbon Tati always wore around her wrist—her first one, her favorite one. “No, Tati,” Evie protested weakly.

“Hush, little friend. You’re only borrowing it. Take deepbreaths. There is no danger. It’s only the memory plant. Hold Kingsley close—animals can help calm the mind.”

It took a second for her to process what her eyes were seeing. The screaming wasn’t coming from her mother; it was coming from the long, delicate-petaled flower Clare had dropped in the corner of the room. It was a memory flower.

A memory flower that echoed her mother’s screams.

“What is that? What’s wrong?” Becky slammed the green room doors wide, then closed a hand over her mouth when she saw the memory flower. Renna came in after her, looking panicked and frazzled.

“Poor Evie! Please, we must silence it somehow!” Renna cried. “Evie, please don’t listen. Don’t look at it.”

Tatianna glared. “We got it from a secret room hidden in the hall. There are hundreds of these things. We were conveniently locked in until Blade heard us banging on the walls.”