The Viin


    Trystan Maverine was ustomed to the sounds of torture.


    Screams of deathly pain, the moans of the hopeless when they realized there was no oneing to their rescue. There were, of course, a few others that were not as pleasant as the first two, but he was used to them nheless.


    Never in the whole of his life had torture sounded like the sshing of bathwater. “Are you almost finished?” he asked irritably.


    “I’ve only been in here for two minutes,” Sage argued. Another ssh. Anothersh of agony.


    “I don’t believe you,” he replied sardonically. He did believe her, but he was beyond reason, his mind—which had never been particrly imaginative—choosing now to conjure up the most distracting, debilitating images.


    Wet, soft skin glistening in the candlelight, a sh of breast just below the line of water, just out of his view. That rosy flush on her cheeks that usually disyed her anger would travel from her head to her toes, from her cheeks, down her neck, down her chest, down her stomach, and perhaps even to—


    He halted his imagining, not out of morality but rather to hide the chunk of wood he’d just unconsciously ripped out of the chair’s armrest.


    “What was that?” Sage asked, water sshing over the edge of the tub. He heard it hit the floor as she moved.


    He chucked the piece of armrest into the fire. “Nothing,” he said quickly.


    “Do you think you could hand me a towel?” she asked.


    Do you think you could gouge out my eyes first?


    “Of course,” he said, hardening his voice to match his other appendages.


    He moved toward the tub, eyes averted upward, but there was a long-known, deep-rooted problem with good intentions—at least in Trystan’s case. And the problem was that they usually ended badly.


    Instead of his eyes locking on the intricate wood carvings and patterns in the ceiling, the memory of the mirror came toote. He was looking right into it, and he saw everything he’d been trying to avoid.


    And just as he’d suspected, his imagination was not worth a godsforsaken thing.


    For nothing he could conjure could mimic the bare slopes of her shoulders, the damp, dark ringlets of her curls dipping into the surface of the water, the flush of her cheek and the sh of her curved thigh disyed in in view, her foot propped on the edge of the tub like an artistic disy.


    For a moment, his mind went nk. It had to.


    “Oh, sir! Make sure you watch for—”


    The warning came toote, and he was too far gone to listen—or to notice the puddle of water just outside the tub. His foot slid out from under him, and his head banged against the brass rim, forcing him tond t on his back.


    Penance. The gods were giving him penance for moving from viin to peeping lecher.


    Sage appeared over him, long hair dripping rose-scented water drops against his forehead, her body just barely concealed by the thin towel that was clinging to her damp skin.


    Penance or a reward. It tormented him just the same.


    “Gods! Are you all right?”


    Yes, he wanted to answer. I, the evilest, most malevolent figure in thend, caught sight of your bare shoulders, and it sent me into a knobby-kneed tailspin. How are you?


    “I’m fine. Are you all right?” he said instead.


    She looked at him strangely. Of course she did. He was acting like a buffoon.


    His assurance had not been convincing enough. She began asking him simple questions.


    “What’s my full name?”


    “Evangelina Celia Sage.”


    “How old are you?”


    “Twenty-nine.”


    “Oh. Really?”


    “Yes,” he said cautiously.


    “I thought you were older,” she supplied.


    “What? Why?”


    “You just seem as if you were born fifty.”


    “Fifty!” he yelled, sitting up so fast Sage fell back onto her arse, the towel riding up to reveal shiny, shapely thighs. “I’m fine. Enough with the questions.” He put an arm out to steady himself and immediately regretted it when his fingers brushed her soft skin, a white-hot shock making his arm tingle and then his lips.


    Clearing his throat, he stood and turned his back to her. “Let me know when you’re dressed.”


    It was a mere three secondster that she responded. “You may turn, but I have a problem.” When he turned, he discovered that she was, in fact, not dressed, still wrapped in the small towel clinging to her every curve.


    Drop the towel, a sinister voice whispered in his mind. Every ounce of moral fiber he’d been born with was being used now with this woman. By the time he left this ce, it would all be gone.


    “They never brought me a nightgown—or anything, really—to change into,” she argued. “This is as dressed as I’m going to get. I don’t think that fis dress will hold up to a second wear.”


    “There has to be something.” He dug within the drawers. Nothing. He opened the cab in the corner.


    Not nothing.


    Most definitely not nothing.


    “Wow. That’s a lot of rope.” Sage whistled. “Lord Fowler’s had a good time in here, I gather.”


    Trystan mmed it shut, pain in his next exhale. “My shirt,” he barked. “You’ll have to take my shirt.”


    “Won’t you be cold?”


    No. I’m seconds away from going up in mes. Thank you so much for asking.


    “I’ll be fine,” he replied. “Just take it.” He lifted the red silk over his head, handing it to her, trying not to notice the way her blue eyes red and remained focused on his chest.


    He didn’t flex. He was stretching. They were twopletely different things.


    “Th-Thank you,” she stuttered out before throwing the shirt over her head. It fell well past her knees. Thank the gods for small miracles. He’d never thought Sage’s height, orck thereof, would be such a boon.


    But then she dropped the towel underneath, and he no longer thought of anything involved as a miracle, because if silk did nothing else, it showed everything, and like the reprobate he was, Trystan found his eyes stuck to her chest. Sage noticed, because of course she did. She noticed everything he didn’t want her to. It was her special skill—along with the nonsense wheels in her mind and making inappropriate shapes with the milk in his cauldron brew.


    “I apologize,” he said. “I didn’t see anything.”


    “Why are you apologizing?” Her nose scrunched. “They’re just nipples.”


    “Sage!”


    “What!” she answered. “I was just staring at yours, and I didn’t apologize. Do you want me to apologize?”


    If he requested an apology from her for merely staring at his chest, then he would need to be burned in a holy sanctuary for the thoughts he’d been having about hers.


    “No,” he rasped. “I don’t want us to talk about nipples at all.”


    “Very well. What body parts do you want to speak of?”


    “None of them!”


    “Ears?” Sage questioned cheekily. “There’s nothing suggestive about ears.”


    At this moment in time, every part of her body was suggestive to him. That was the problem.


    “I don’t want to discuss your ears or anything else attached to you.” His words oozed condescension.


    It was too harsh. It was too quick. The impish expression she had—which, in all honesty, he’d taken morbid delight in—vanished, reced with a meek unsureness that he really fucking hated.


    “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “for making you ufortable. I’ll stop. You’re trying to be professional, and I am ruining it.”


    You ruin everything, Trystan.


    “Sage,” he started, then stopped when she continued.


    “I want you. If that wasn’t obvious—although I’m sure it is obvious and has been obvious, but I realize that you’ve decided to keep us at a distance, and I should be respecting it, and I haven’t been. I’ve been pushing you on purpose, and it’s unkind and disrespectful, so I’m going to stop.”


    “Stop?” he repeated, his feeble heart thudding in his ears, the crackle of the fire sounding miles and miles away.


    “I’m your apprentice. That is enough. I’m giving up.”


    Don’t, his mind pleaded. Please don’t give up on me. My pathetic, tortured soul is in tatters, and unfortunately, it’s yours.


    But none of those words came out. In fact, nothing came out. His mouth opened and it closed, and then it opened again, staying there.


    “You don’t have to say anything, sir. You’re off the hook.” Sheughed at herself, and it was self-deprecating. Gods damn it. “Do you want the couch or the bed?” she asked, turning away to consider the room.


    “You,” he whispered.


    “What?” Sage’s head spun around, eyes wide.


    “You,” he repeated, stalking toward her slowly, giving her every chance to back away, even as his hand buried itself in her damp locks, tugging her head back as she gasped.


    “Me?” she asked, the vulnerability in the question cracking what was left of his reserve, his conscience.


    “You,” he said onest time before he crushed his lips to hers.


    Something in the back of his mind attempted to pull the logic to the forefront once again. Destiny had predicted they’d destroy each other. This was selfish. This was wrong. This was surely the evilest thing he’d ever done.


    But he didn’t care.


    Trystan Maverine was The Viin.


    And it was about time he began acting like it.