Page 31 of Apprentice to the Villain

Deadlands take her. “I wouldn’t call the dungeons jail.” She straightened her glasses and frowned when she saw Lyssa pull a knit dragon from her dress pocket. “Where did you get that?”

“Blade gave it to me!” Lyssa had an almost dreamy look on her face—the girl had a crush. Well, that made two of them, tragically.

If Blade would just be less charming, if he wouldn’t smile so much in Becky’s direction, if he would just be lesseverything,she might be able to stand it. Though she supposed she could do without his petty theft.

“That wasn’t his to give—it’s mine. I thought I’d lost it.”

Lyssa handed it over readily, and Becky considered the toy from her childhood. It had been a gift from her father, who had fully fueled her obsession with the winged beasts when she was herself a little girl. She swallowed the memory, lest she begin to weep; she detested weeping.

Handing it back to Lyssa, she smiled lightly. “Keep it, actually. I don’t have much need for it now.”

Lyssa stared at her, that wistful expression back. “You have a beautiful smile, Ms. Erring! You should do it all the time.”

She had smiled often…before. But Becky had learned a lesson in the past few years that she would carry with her until the day she laid down for her eternal rest. Bending to meet Lyssa at the little girl’s height, she said, “I do not smile when I don’t feel like it.”

Lyssa blinked, surprised. “Why not?”

“Because we are always expected to plaster a grin on our faces even when we don’t wish to. I used to do it so often, I stopped being able to tell when I was smiling for me or for someone else. So now, I don’t smile unless I’m one hundred percent sure it’ssomethingIwant to do, not something someone else wants me to do.” She smoothed a lock of hair away from Lyssa Sage’s face. “And you shouldn’t, either.”

She could almost see the words sinking into Lyssa’s spongelike mind, the girl appearing a little sad as they registered. “I think… I think Evie smiles when she doesn’t want to. I think she does it all the time.”

And there it was—that was it. The reason Becky could barely stand the woman: she was in a constant state of fulfilling the needs of others, and it reminded Becky just a smidge too much of a person she no longer knew.

“Ms. Erring! Ms. Erring!” Marvin burst through the now empty office, interrupting them, sweaty and out of breath. “I’m.” He wheezed. “Sorry—the stairs, they…” He wheezed again. Lyssa handed him her canteen, and the front guard smiled at her. Lyssa paused for a second, contemplating, then smiled back.

Good girl.

“What is it, Marvin?” Becky gathered her stacks of paper and straightened them neatly.

Marvin gripped his middle, and Becky’s blood turned to ice when she realized he wasn’t just out of shape—he was out of his mind with terror. “The ward,” he started. “The ward over the manor. It’s broken!”

“What?” Becky dropped the papers, time dilating around her so they fell almost in slow motion. “What do you meanbroken?”

“Massacre Manor,” Marvin said gravely. “It’s visible.”

Chapter 18

Evie

Dead. I must be dead.

Evie hadn’t stopped screaming. Her throat had grown raw as she fell, waiting for the impact of the ground, but instead, she’d landed against something soft and dewy. Then the darkness had faded, and when she finally brought herself to open her eyes, she was surrounded by a sea of bright, pale-blue light and countless little clouds.

The sky. She was in the sky, but she had fallen downward. How could that be possible?

Another body landed beside her, causing her to bounce again, and this time she couldn’t help it—she laughed. She was on a godsforsakencloud—there was clearly no other appropriate reaction.

“Sage, are you hurt?” The graveled rasp of his voice made her breathe a sigh of relief, and a warm sliver of comfort eased into her heart that at least if she was dead, they were dead together. When she looked at him, she laughed again: his hair was sticking up in every direction. She’d never seen it so mussed.

“I’m well, but your hair has seen better days,” she responded casually, biting her lip when he started shuffling frantically to smooth it. Leaning over the side of the cloud to see what was below, she felt her face prickle with trepidation.

A field of dandelions.

She swallowed and shook the memories away. Memories of her brother Gideon’s screams, of her mother’s disappearance, of the day her childhood ended—abruptly, traumatically, tragically. These were the small moments of life, when one’s innocent view of the world was corrupted, when the magic curtain was ripped away to reveal something sinister or ugly. A moment when one stopped believing and viewed the world with different, weary eyes.

It was a natural part of life, one of the rules of growing older, but she’d never been very good at adhering to rules. Yes, she’d grown older, but she still had faith in goodness, in people, inmagic.

The soft grass below looked even greener than the patch of land outside the cave—like a mossy cushion. Standing on shaky legs, she walked toward the edge of the cloud, mesmerized, ignoring the boss’s warnings. “Sage, don’t you dare—”