Page 135 of Accomplice to the Villain

Trystan’s mother’s house. That was where Kingsley was going.

The same mother who had tried to kill him the last time they met.

Very well. At least she wouldn’t hug him.

Chapter 69

Kingsley

Blurry colors, large people, and a single stone path up to a sizable home. Fly. There was a fly. He wanted to eat the fly.

Something else. He wanted something else, too, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Or who he was beyond what his animal instincts were driving him to do. Chase fly. Eat fly. His tongue shot out, and he missed it, leaping after it through a small window into a kitchen, where he found himself eye to eye with another being.

A human. As he’d been.

It was like waking up from a bad dream where he’d forgotten everything that made Alexander a man, but he remembered now. Just in time for the young woman blinking at him with large green eyes to stumble backward, mouth open.

The end of a broom came down, swatting where he sat, and he quickly leaped to one of the higher cabinets, just missing it. “No, no! Shoo, you pest!” The young woman’s voice was soft, the sort that all staff took on in a grand home, so as not to be seen, so as not to be heard. Even now, this young woman adhered to those instructions. “Get down from there! Right now!”

Alexander was never one to ignore the request of a lady. It was a compulsion to obey. Compulsion and annoying built-in manners. He jumped down to the table, blinking at her, the wooden table creaking under the force with which he landed.

She blinked back at him, tilting her head to the side. She was unsure how to react, if the wrinkle between her eyebrows was anything to go by. “Oh. I didn’t expect you to…listen.”

He had no signs with him to communicate what he wanted to say, so he shrugged. She gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth, drawing his attention back to her green eyes. Like moss, or like a lily pad. He was not as adept at descriptions as he’d once been, but even he noticed that they were deep, and fathomless, and impossibly big, rounding further when he held up a webbed foot, waving.

“Don’t do that!” She slapped a hand down at her side, and twinkling light spilled from her fingertips. The rays hit a nearby flowerpot, turning the once-red roses a bright gold. “Oh, no, no, no,” she said, panicked.

Magic. The girl with the big eyes had just turned the flowers a different color.

“Winnifred? What on earth is all that noise?”

The girl named Winnifred paled. “Nothing, mistress! I slipped on some spilled water.” Alexander didn’t know how this timid thing expected anyone to hear her at such a low volume.

Loud footsteps pounded down the hall. The familiarity of the voice. The kitchen with yellow splashes of paint on the walls. Kingsley had been here before.

Without ceremony, he was scooped up by Winnifred, feeling air rush his ears as she threw him in a cookie jar. “Be silent.” She put the lid on top with a clatter, and then it was dark.Rude.

If he had his signs, he’d tell her so, but for now he’d send the thought her way and hope it stuck.

“Mistress Maverine,” Winnifred said, and Kingsley went still as stone. He’d hopped himself right into the same place he’d turned into a bloody frog in the first place. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You never mean to, Winnifred,” Amara Maverine said sharply. “I don’t appreciate your insubordination when I’ve extended every courtesy to you. I expect you to do your job without fuss or excess noise. I consider crashing soundsfuss.”

“Of course, Mistress Maverine. Again, I am so sorry.” There was a smallness to her response, a smallness that Kingsley recalled Amara Maverine often seemed to evoke.

“My husband’s pulling up the drive. Do you have lunch prepared?”

“Yes, mistress. It is on the sitting room table.”

There was a pause, and even Alexander, stuck in his tight quarters, could feel tension permeating the room.

“What happened to the roses?”

Alexander leaned his head up, peeking just out of the cookie jar. The top sat on his crowned head like a hat. Amara Maverine was ten years older and just as beautiful as always, with jet-black hair and even darker eyes. Silver strands shone in the light, even pulled back in the neat bun at the base of her neck. Her lips were tight, her gaze eviscerating.

Winnifred stared at the roses, appearing calm as she swept a brown lock off her forehead, but Alexander could see the telltale sign of a bead of sweat at her brow. “They came from the gardener this color, mistress.”

Amara’s stern mouth twisted as she looked Winnifred up and down with distaste. “I’m sure. See that they remain red from now on, would you?”