Page 31 of Adversary to the Villain

“The laundry!” She leaped to her feet, pushing her ponytail behind her shoulder. “He— And then I went— But then he— And now—”

“Tatianna!” Blade called her name, feeling like he was trying to pull her back from a bad dream. “Take a breath.Whoare you looking for?”

Her brown eyes shone beneath a veil of tears.

“Kingsley.”

Chapter 14

Kingsley

Alexander William Kingsley had not been human in a very long time.

Long enough that his legs now seemed too large, his head too heavy on his neck, his organs expanding to their natural size with a painful twist. Gods, he was going to retch any moment now.

And then did, barely getting to the window before he emptied the contents of his stomach over the ledge. Mostly flies.

He retched again.

His most recent transformation back to a frog—mere seconds ago—had been sudden and unexpected, lasting only a few hopeless moments of wandering the manor until he’d found himself secluded and turning quite abruptly back into a man.

They said frogs were disgusting. Humans were worse. In every respect, it seemed.

He stood up straight, adjusting the tie on the pants he’d lifted from the laundry, clutching his stomach, noting abdomen muscles beneath his fingertips where there had once been a smooth, portly belly.

He let out a rasping sound. Another attempt at a word, and he’d miserably failed.

Shoving his newly shorn dark locks away from his face, he tossed the scissors he’d found in the closet off the corner hall, then checked his progress in the hall mirror. It was uneven at best, but Alexander had to acknowledge that he’d been surprised he was able to use his fingers at all, let alone have the dexterity to trim the thick encumbrance. At least enough that he could see the worry lines etched into his forehead, his chin shadowed with a faint hint of stubble, and his gold eyes set within the decently attractive face—if he did say so himself—of a human.

Human. He was human again. No gangly limbs, no eating flies, no traveling about on the shoulders of others. He had hands and feet and— He glanced down.

Well, there really weren’t enough ways to express how happy he’d been to seethatagain.

“Kingsley!” a voice hissed from down the hallway, and Alexander groaned. Which, in his long-unused voice, sounded a touch like a dying cow. “I know you’re back there!”

Clare’s voice had been a source of fun and play when they were children. To hear it was to be on the verge of adventure, as it had been with all of them together. Alexander, Tatianna, Malcolm, Clare, and Trystan. There had been a time in his youth that Alexander had thought his friends the center of the universe. And when he became a frog, he’d become an outlier, an ornament to the group, the observer.

Beingobserved was another matter entirely.

He attempted to say Clare’s name—a quick rasp of a sound that was jumbled even to his own ears—but the sound was enough for her to turn the corner and find him with a screech. “Stop wandering off! I told you to stay put.”

Alexander wished there was a way to convey to Clare that hecouldn’tstay put, not when he had fingers that weren’t webbed, his eyeline was about six feet above what it used to be, and he was free. “S-Sorry,” he rasped out, his throat scratching painfully from disuse.

Clare sighed, rubbing at her temples. “I wanted to make sense of it all before I went to Trystan. Before they know about you and reason goes away. You’re human again, yes. But how? Why? And who did it?” She sucked in a breath, and Alexander braced himself for what he knew was coming.

Clare stomped over and then whispered something low, for only his ears, something so absurd and outlandish he stared at her in astonishment. “Alexander. Why would you betray me like this?”

Here it was. She was finally going to say it.

The thing she’d been holding back since he’d found her in the courtyard. This was it.

The time had come.

“Why on earth did you cut your beautiful hair?” Clare continued.

He laughed, or rather rasped out a sound of pure relief, shock, his eyes welling with tears, his chest buoyant at all of it. The look upon Clare’s face, the ridiculousness of what she’d just asked him, the absolute chaos of it. Unbelievable, really.

Clare gaped at him just as Tatianna rounded the corner, Becky and Blade trailing close behind her. “Tatianna! I told you not to bring anyone into this yet!”