Chapter summary
Chapter 1
Five months after first meeting the Villain, Evie arrives at the castle to find three severed male heads hanging from the ceiling, one missing an eyeball. She carefully steps around the heads, recalling her mother’s advice about normalcy and the bizarre job posting that required comfort with arson, torture, and murder. Upon entering the main office she discovers a burly man’s corpse sprawled across her desk, slashings all over his body. The Villain—tall, dark‑eyed, and surprisingly handsome—appears, lifts the body over his shoulder, and tosses it out a window without comment. Evie greets him politely, offers to fetch a “cauldron brew” from the ogre Edwin, and receives a curt but amused response.
She then climbs the endless, magical staircase, avoiding the door to the Villain’s private chambers, hearing a distant scream from the torture chambers below, and reflecting on the Villain’s self‑imposed moral rules (no harm to innocents, equal respect for women). She remembers her previous life as an assistant to the village blacksmith Otto Warsen and the magical scar hidden under her linen shirt that glows when she feels pain.
Reaching the top floor, a sliding brick wall reveals a hidden ballroom‑turned‑workroom. Inside, Evie meets Rebecka “Becky” Erring, a superior‑bearing administrative professional with round spectacles, who greets Evie with a thin smile and a competitive edge. The room is filled with desks, stained‑glass windows depicting scenes of evil, and a cobwebbed chandelier; severed heads still dangle from the rafters above. Interns whisper about the smell of rotted flesh from the dungeons, and Evie notes her own difficulty making friends.
A sudden crash knocks Evie from her chair; papers flutter to the floor as a heavy black boot and muscular thighs of the Villain appear in the doorway. He is physically attractive, with sharp jaw, black eyes, and a loose‑fitting black shirt. Evie greets him, “Good morning, sir,” and he asks how she fell. She blames a faulty chair, and he offers to call a healer, which she declines, joking about a “chair revolt.” He coughs, barely suppressing a laugh, then warns her not to be careless. The other workers freeze, and Becky watches intently.
As Evie steps back, she notices Kingsley, a tiny gold‑crowned creature perched on the Villain’s desk, holding a red‑chalk sign that reads “OUCH.” She exchanges a brief, sympathetic look with him before moving toward the healer’s quarters to treat the bruise on her backside. While walking, she passes a broken man lying under a loose brick and a weaselly man who had previously thrown rocks at ducks, noting the Villain’s likely indifference to their suffering.
The chapter ends with Evie reflecting on the Villain’s reaction to her clumsiness, the looming discrepancy she has found in the ledger, and the uncertain consequences of confronting it, while still adjusting to her new role as the Villain’s assistant.