Page 36 of Accomplice to the Villain

The hatred in the intruder’s eyes was merely fuel, the beginnings of Trystan’s typical routine when it came to this room. Every man he’d held here began with defiance, then fear, and then finally they broke and begged. In Trystan’s experience, he needn’t do much. The lowlifes he’d brought down here typically were without scruples and without a spine.

“Calvin,” Sage said. “That’s your name, isn’t it? I remember seeing it in your father’s correspondence.”

Calvin Warsen trained his hateful look on Sage, and Trystan stepped back, resisting the urge to lay his fist back into the blackguard’s face. “My father wrote to me when you began working for him,” the man hissed at Sage. “Said you flaunted yourself in front of him so often you were practically begging for it.”

Trystan paused, then rubbed at his chin, sighing, before kicking his boot into Calvin’s ankle. The crack was followed by the fool’s pained cry.

“Who let you in the manor?” he asked calmly, waiting for the man to cease his moaning or for Sage to object. She didn’t.

“Fuck you,” Calvin spat.

Trystan nodded. “Wrong answer.” Another kick to his broken ankle, and Calvin cried out again. Music to his ears. He allowed himself to slip back into old habits, allowed himself to not worry what Sage thought of the display, allowed himself to be what he was always meant to be: a villain. “Someone let you in. And that same someone tied up my chef, I’d guess. I’d like a name.”

“And I’d like you and that bitch’s heads on a pike.” Calvin sneered. “We don’t always get the things we want,Villain.”

Trystan was all too aware of that, but instead of reflecting on the unwanted emotions it dredged up, he instead rammed the heel of his palm upward, causing Calvin’s nose to crack and bend to an unnatural angle.

“You broke my nose!”

Trystan shrugged. “You bruised her brain.” He gestured back to Sage, bending down so that he was eye level with the mess of a man before him. “All things considered, I think I’m being rather generous, don’t you?”

Calvin’s shoulders slumped—the first sign that he was breaking, the veneer of confidence fading as the pain in his body increased.

“Who is your contact inside the manor? Hmm?” Trystan gripped Calvin’s chin. “Why should they go free when you are down here suffering?”

The chains rattled as Calvin thrashed, and Trystan allowed it, allowed the man to weaken himself until he could no longer fight, physically or mentally. “I can’t tell you! If I do, I die.”

“I’m fairly certain if you don’t, you’ll also die.” Sage’s light voice rang through the violence with calm reason, and both men turned to look at her.

She hadn’t moved from her spot, had stayed where she was directly behind him, no hint of fear as she stared at Calvin with confused fascination. Trystan knew he should object to her chiming in, but he couldn’t. He was hypnotized.

Stepping closer to their prisoner, Sage looked silently to Trystan for permission, and for some unfathomable reason, he gave it to her. Nodding slightly, he watched, enraptured, as she bent her knees until she was eye level with Calvin, gifting the bleeding man a saddened smile that outraged Trystan, but he didn’t interrupt—in all honesty, because he was too curious to see where she was going with this.

“How did you get into the manor?” Sage asked, repeating Trystan’s earlier question but gentler, her wide blue eyes imploring.

“I was let in,” Calvin jeered.

“How courteous,” Sage said pleasantly. “By whom?”

“By the fucking bogeyman.”

Sage was oddly serene when she replied, “So it was a man?”

Calvin began to rattle his chains, shaking his limbs but not budging an inch. Sage remained just out of his reach. “I won’t tell you anything.”

Trystan grabbed Calvin by the shirt collar. “If the lady asks you a question, youwillanswer it.”

Sage pushed off the ground to stand, then gently pried his hand from the man’s shirt with a small smile that speared right through Trystan’s heart. “Mr. Warsen, I wonder if, to punctuate my point, you might need a little motivation?” Sage began lifting the hem of her skirt, and Trystan clapped a hand over Calvin’s eyes so hard the chair wobbled from the force.

When Trystan finally dared to look, Sage was staring at him, self-satisfied, with her dagger dangling from her fingers. Trystan removed his hand from Calvin’s face, being sure to knock into the man’s broken nose.

Calvin growled and shook, but he stopped immediately when he spied the dagger in Evie’s hand. He recognized it—Trystan could tell by how his eyes flashed. “Where did you get that?”

Sage tipped the blade underneath Calvin’s chin until he was looking right into her eyes. “Your father forged it. It’s imbued with some sort of magic that’s linked it to me, so I thought he wouldn’t mind if I kept it. Call it severance pay.” She punctuated the statement with a slash to the man’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” He gritted his teeth as Sage gripped the back of his chair and leaned the dagger back at his throat.

“Now. Who. Let. You. In.” To her credit, Sage kept her friendly calm, her composure so together Trystan couldn’t bring himself to object to her commandeering the torture session.