Page 85 of Adversary to the Villain

Suddenly, her dagger vibrated in her hand, the scar on her shoulder tingling unpleasantly. She grimaced, willing it to go away, but the sensation only grew until her shoulder felt on fire and the dagger was nearly uncontrollable.

“Magical daggers are truly a wonder,” Benedict said. “But be careful; they sometimes have minds of their own.”

Evie gripped the hilt, her heart pounding, fear choking her as her magic answered the call, coming to meet the dagger as it continued to glow.

“Evangelina.” Trystan stepped up beside her, facing off against Benedict at her side. “Let me help you.”

“Trystan, stand back,” she pleaded, fighting the dagger’s movements, fighting an impulse that was too horrific for her to even fathom. Her hands didn’t feel like her own. They weren’t. They couldn’t be. The gentle voice in her head was crying out desperately, trying to pull her hands up, up—

Because those hands took the dagger—and they stabbed Trystan Maverine in the shoulder, just above his heart.

An astonished expression formed on Trystan’s face as a nightmare unfurled before Evie’s eyes. A bad dream. It was a bad dream. It had to be.

He dropped to his knees.Wake up.Please wake up, Evie.

“I didn’t mean to,” she started. “I don’t know…how I did it—”

“Move away!” Clare screamed at her, and Evie fell back a step, her eyes never leaving Trystan’s. He held tight to the dagger in his shoulder. Blood. He was bleeding.

I made him bleed.

If that gentle part of herself hadn’t resisted, would she have stabbed Trystan through the heart?

“Isn’t that a shame.” Benedict grinned, then kicked his horse’s flank until it broke into a run through the forest. In mere seconds, he was gone, his men following loyally behind him.

And Evie realized a truth that had been chasing her since she was young.

Life was not made for the gentle.

Evie’s spirit had been battered and bruised, ripped at, torn, and tested. So much pain and sadness, it was too much for her body to handle. Everything was too loud, and every brush of wind against her skin stung, the agony rising so high inside her until she gripped her head and screamed.

Something broke.

Or many things. All she could hear was her, shattering. All the times she’d bent this way and that for the people she loved—all the time she’d spent making herself expendable. And yet her father disowned her, her brother stayed away, and now her mother, too, was gone.

They would never stay.

No one ever would.

Except, perhaps, him…and now she’d hurt him.

Her screams grew louder, and through the haze she could hear several people yelling her name. When her eyes opened, she saw the devastation she’d wrought—the proof that she was indeed the kingdom’s scourge.

The trees. Oh, gods, the trees.

Felled. So many blown to smithereens, the rest completely stripped of color, of magic. She’d destroyed them all. “No,” she choked out, spinning in a circle to find nothing untouched. Even the dark mist was still seeking to harm, wanting to take her pain and turn it outward. She couldn’t hold it in.

“Trystan.” She took a step forward, but Clare stopped her with a hand.

“Stay back, Evie,” Clare ordered, but Trystan’s pained eyes glared at his sister as he shoved her away, locking instead with Evie’s.

“Don’t, Sage. Don’t—” His brows pulled together, his head shaking stiffly, and he winced as he pushed himself to his feet, still clutching his shoulder.

But she’d already turned.

And she did the one thing she vowed she’d never do.

She ran.