Page 13 of Adversary to the Villain

His eyes widened, and Marv’s lips parted, eyes darting between them rapidly.

“I did no such thing. I drew a doodle of us”—he waved a hand between them—“torturing Marv.”

Marv made a choking sound, and Evie pulled the bit of parchment from the pocket of her blue skirts and stared. “Is this not meant to be you on top of me?”

Marv made an altogether different kind of choking sound as Trystan gaped at the drawing. “It’s you and me questioning a witness! Hence the chains and the—”

She wheezed into her palm, and Marv looked at the ceiling, hands bound in cuffs folded in his lap.

“I was attempting to be—” He swallowed. “Fun…for you.”

Don’t fall for it, Evie!

One could not fall when they’d already face-planted in the dirt.

Marv murmured, “It does look a little suggestive, sir.”

“Did I ask you?” Trystan bit out. “You’re here for torturous questioning, not opinions!”

“Of course, sir.” Marv gave a hand-bound salute in his chair most earnestly. “Apologies.”

“Let’s start with an easy one. Why did you ransack my office?” Trystan held the hilt of his sword, ready to use it.

Marv mumbled, “Sir, I was locked up since yesterday. Three other guards told you that.”

Trystan sighed. “I realize that, Marvin, but who else would want to sabotage me in such a way?”

“King Benedict, the Valiant Guard, numerous citizens, nobility,the interns.” Evie listed off the options with a lift of each finger, trying to school her features.

But Marv objected again. “Please believe me. I won’t cause you any more harm, and for the harm I’ve already caused—I am so very, very sorry.” The front gate guard’s voice cracked.

Evie sucked in a breath, her scar pulsing at her shoulder, her dagger echoing the call at the belt by her waist.

She wasn’t sure how she knew, but that horrid feeling when she’d realized her father was a traitor…was nowhere within her when she looked upon Marvin. With Griffin, it had been an instinctual tell that she was facing someone who had hated her all along. Wretched and soul-altering. Yet now, it was not present in the slightest.

“Marv. Did youreallydo this?” Evie asked softly.

“Sage!” Trystan objected. “The questioning is meant to betorturous.”

She gave her boss a smirk. “I think listening to you panic over a lewd sketch was torture enough. Don’t you?”

Marv’s eyes shot down, his wild hair streaked with whatever grime lined the dungeons below. “I’ll tell you, Ms. Sage. Yes, I did give Miss Lyssa the notes to go see your father. But I—I didn’t know they were meant to hurt her. Not until it was too late.”

“Too late for what?” Evie asked carefully. “Gideon mentioned you spun some fantastical tale that no one believed?” It was a statement she asked like a question, and Marv shuddered, shuffling his boots.

“I am in debt,” Marv wheezed, shame coming from him in palpable waves. “I wasn’t in my right mind that night—too much drink at a tavern in the east end. It was late. I barely noticed the man. Or men, I suppose. They joined me at the card table. It didn’t appear a bad idea to make a wager for money. The first man was so very bad at it. I thought I was sure to win.”

“You were hustled,” Trystan stated without sympathy, but also without anger.

Marv nodded, sighing shakily. “When I lost…I panicked, and that is when the others showed up.”

“Others?” Evie gently slid the spare chair toward Marv and seated herself next to him. “What others?”

“A group of men. Valiant Guards out of uniform. They told me the debt would be forgiven if I did them a favor, and I didn’t see the harm in it at first. But the vow had to be marked in permanent ink. I was too drunk to realize the foolish thing I’d done until it was too late.”

The truth was evident in the words, but Evie wasn’t certain if she could trust her instincts any longer, when her faith in people’s goodness was so often thrown back in her face. “In ink? As in a second employment bargain?”

“More of an agreement to pass along the notes from your father to Lyssa. They’d be slid underneath the barracks door with my name marked on them. I tried to ignore them, but then the mark…” He nodded down to his right arm, and Evie took that as her cue to help him roll up his sleeve, revealing an ugly growth of black veins climbing up his arm toward his neck. “Every time I resisted, it grew closer to my heart. I think it’s poison.”