Long Live Evil, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Rees Brennan
Excerpt from These Deathless Shores copyright © 2024 by P. H. Low
Excerpt from How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying copyright © 2024 by Django Wexler
Cover design by Ben Prior | LBBG
Cover illustration by Syd Mills
Map by Rebecka Champion (Lampblack Art)
Author photograph by Edel Kelly
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2024934967
ISBNs: 9780316568715 (trade paperback), 9780316568722 (ebook)
E3-20240625-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Chapter One: The Villainess Faces Death
Chapter Two: The Villainess’s Plot Begins
Chapter Three: The Lady Does Dark Magic
Chapter Four: The Villainess Commits Blasphemy
Chapter Five: The Lady and the Tiger
Chapter Six: The Cobra’s Spy
Chapter Seven: The Villainess, the Spymaster and the Secret
Chapter Eight: The Villainess Strikes a Bargain
Chapter Nine: The Cobra’s Wicked Heart
Chapter Ten: The Villainess, the Heroine and the Competition
Chapter Eleven: The Villainess, the Heroine and the Horde of the Undead
Chapter Twelve: The Cobra and the King
Chapter Thirteen: The Villainess Approaches the Tomb
Chapter Fourteen: The Villainess on a Mission of Seduction
Chapter Fifteen: The Villainess and the Death Day
Chapter Sixteen: The Villainess Gives It Up
Chapter Seventeen: The Villainess Shall Go to the Ball
Chapter Eighteen: The Cobra’s Night of Crime
Chapter Nineteen: Hark, What Lady Through Yonder Window
Chapter Twenty: The Villainess on the Romantic Balcony
Chapter Twenty-One: The Cobra in the Cauldron
Chapter Twenty-Two: My Lady’s Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Villainess and Longing for Revenge
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Villainess Storms the Queen’s Trials
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Lady That Shall Be Queen Hereafter
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Villainess Foiled by the Ice Princess
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Lady’s Lies Laid Bare
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Villainess Is Justly Punished
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Lady Is Long Dead
Chapter Thirty: The Cobra in New York
Chapter Thirty-One: The Villainess and the Dread Ravine
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Villainess in the Greenhouse of Good and Evil
Chapter Thirty-Three: The End for the Golden Cobra
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Villainess Under Siege
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Lady’s Guide to Escape
First & Last Chapter: The Villainess and the Emperor
Acknowledgements
Discover More
Extras Meet the Author
A Preview of These Deathless Shores
A Preview of How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying
For my brother, Rory Rees Brennan –
a real hero, better than in any book.
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Every tongue brings in a several tale
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Richard III
SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER ONE
The Villainess Faces Death
Ours is a land of terrible miracles. Here the dead live and lies come true. Beware. Here every fantasy is possible.
Time of Iron, ANONYMOUS
The Emperor broke into the throne room. In one hand he held his sword. In the other, the head of his enemy. He swung the head jauntily, fingers twisted in blood-drenched, tangled hair.
A scarlet trail on the hammered-gold tiles marked the Emperor’s passage. His boots left deep crimson footprints. Even the ice-blue lining inside his black cloak dripped with red. No part of him was left unstained.
He wore the crowned death mask, empty of the jewel that should adorn his brow, and a breastplate of bronze with falling stars wrought in iron. The red-gleaming metal fingers of his gauntlets tapered into shining claws.
When he lifted the mask, fury and pain had carved his face into new lines. After his time in the sunless place he was pale as winter light, radiance turned so cold it burned. He was a statue with a splash of blood staining his cheek, like a red flower on stone. She barely recognized him.
He was the Once and Forever Emperor, the Corrupt and Divine, the Lost and Found Prince, Master of the Dread Ravine, Commander of the Living and the Dead. None could stop his victory march.
She couldn’t bear to watch him smile, or the shambling dead behind him. Her gaze was drawn by the hungry gleam of his blade. She wished it had stayed broken.
The hilt of the re-forged Sword of Eyam was a coiled snake. On the blade an inscription glittered and flowed as if written on water. The only word visible beneath a slick coat of blood was Longing.
The girl with silver hands trembled, alone in the heart of the palace. The Emperor approached the throne and said—
“You’re not listening!”
“That’s a weird thing for the Emperor to say,” Rae remarked.
Her little sister Alice sat on the end of Rae’s hospital bed, clutching the white-painted steel footrest as if she’d mistaken it for a life raft. Alice was giving a dramatic reading from their favourite book series, and Rae wasn’t taking it seriously.
Life was too short to take things seriously, if you asked Rae. Alice’s rosebud mouth was twisted in judgement. Rosebuds shouldn’t get judgemental.
When Rae was four, her mom promised her a beautiful baby sister.
Alice came to her in springtime. The apple blossoms in their yard were snowy white and tinged with pink, dawn clouds in front of Rae’s window all day. Their parents carried baby Alice over the threshold, wrapped in pink wool and white lace that made her seem another curled blossom. Under Rae’s eager gaze, they drew back a fold of blanket with the reverence of a groom unveiling his bride, and showed the baby’s newborn face.
She wasn’t beautiful. She looked like an angry walnut.
“Hey funnyface,” Rae told Alice throughout their childhood. “Don’t cry. You’re ugly, but I won’t let anybody tease you.”
Life turned out ironic so often, fate must have a sense of humour. As Alice grew, the bones in her face clicked into the perfect position, even her skeleton shaped more harmoniously than anybody else’s. She was beautiful. People said Rae was pretty too.
Rae wasn’t pretty any more. Even before, Rae knew pretty wasn’t the same.
Beauty was like a big umbrella, both useful and awkward to handle. Three years ago, the sisters had gone to a convention for fans of Alice’s favourite books.
Time of Iron was a saga of lost gods and old sins, passion and horror, hope and death. Everyone agreed it wasn’t about the romance, but discussed the love triangle incessantly. The books had everything: battles of swords and wits, despair and dances, the hero rising from humble origins to ultimate power, and the peerless beauty who everybody wanted but only he could have. The heroine overcame her rivals, through being pure of heart, to become queen of the land. The hero clawed his way up from the depths to become emperor of everything. The heroine was rewarded for being beautiful and virtuous, the hero for being a good-looking bastard.
Alice attended the convention as the villainess known as the Beauty Dipped In Blood. Rae didn’t understand why Alice wanted to dress up as the heroine’s evil stepsister.
“I’m not the one who gets confused between costumes and truth.” Softening the words, Alice had leaned her newly
At the time Rae hadn’t read the books, but she wore her cheerleading uniform so they’d both be in costume. A line formed asking Rae to take their picture with Alice. The guy at the end of the line stared, but another guy carrying the First Duke’s double-bitted axe told jokes and made Alice laugh. It was nice to see her shy sister laughing.
When Rae held up the last guy’s phone, his hand strayed to Alice’s ass. Alice was thirteen.
“Hands off!” Rae snapped.
The guy oiled, “Oooh, sorry, m’lady. My hand slipped.”
“It’s fine.” Alice smiled, worried about his feelings even though he hadn’t worried about hers. “Everybody say ‘cheese!’”
Alice was the nice sister. Rae considered the guy’s smirk and his phone.
“Everybody say ‘Fish for it, creep!’”
Rae tossed her ponytail, and tossed the phone into a trash can overflowing with half-eaten hot dogs. Being nice was nice. Being nasty got shit done.
The guy squawked, abandoning underage ass for electronics.
Rae winked. “Oooh, sorry, milord. My hand slipped.”
“What are you dressed as, a bitch cheerleader?”
She slung an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “Head bitch cheerleader.”
The guy sneered. “Bet you haven’t even read the books.”
Sadly, he was correct. Sadly for him, Rae was a huge liar, and her sister was obsessed with these books. Rae shot back with one of the Emperor’s lines. “‘Beg for mercy. It amuses me.’”
She strode away, declining to be quizzed further. Usually she remembered every tale Alice told her, but Rae was already worried about how much she was forgetting from classes, conversations, and even stories.
That was the last time Rae could protect her sister. The next week she went to see the doctor about her persistent cough, and the weight and memory loss. She began a battery of tests that ended in biopsy, diagnosis and treatments spanning three years. Part of Rae stayed in that final moment when she could be young, and cruel, and believe her story would end well. Forever seventeen. The rest of her had skipped all the steps from child to old woman, feeling ever so much more than twenty.
Rae was past the time of hoping for magic, but Alice fulfilled every requirement for a heroine. Alice was sixteen, beautiful without knowing it, and cared more about her favourite book series than anything else.
Sitting on Rae’s hospital bed, Alice pushed her glasses up her nose and scowled. “You claim you want a refresher on the story, but you get surprised by key events!”
“I know every song from the musical.”
Alice scoffed. Her sister was a purist. Rae believed if you were lucky your favourite story got told in a dozen different ways, so you could choose your favourite flavour. None of the musical’s stars were hot enough, but nobody could ever be as hot as characters in your imagination. Book characters were dangerously attractive in the safest way. You didn’t even know what they looked like, but you knew you liked it.
“Then tell me the Beauty Dipped In Blood’s name.” When Rae hesitated, Alice accused: “It’s as if you haven’t even read this book!”
That was Rae’s guilty secret.
This was her favourite series, and she hadn’t really read the first book.
Rae and her sister used to have book sleepovers, cuddled together reading a much-anticipated book through the night or telling each other tales. Alice would tell Rae the stories of all the books she was reading. Rae would tell Alice how the stories should have gone. Back then, Rae hadn’t believed Alice when she said Time of Iron was life-changing. Alice was a literary romantic, falling in love with the potential of every story she met. Rae had always been more cynical.
Reading a book was like meeting someone for the first time. You don’t know if you will love them or hate them enough to learn every detail, or skim the surface never to know their depths.
When Rae was diagnosed, Alice finally had a captive audience. During Rae’s first chemo session, Alice opened Time of Iron and started to read aloud what appeared to be a typical fantasy adventure about the damsel in distress getting the guy in a crown. Rae, certain she knew where this was going, listened to the fun parts with blood and gore, but otherwise zoned out. Who cared about saving the damsel? She was astonished by the end, when the Emperor rose to claim his throne.
“Wait, who’s this guy?” Rae had demanded. “I love him.”
Alice stared in disbelief. “He’s the hero.”
Rae devoured the next two books. The sequels were wild. After his queen was murdered, the Emperor visited ruin upon the world, then ruled over a bleak landscape of bones. The books were grim and also dark. The series title might as well be Holy Shit, Basically Everybody Dies.
Under the eerie skies of Eyam, monsters roamed, some in human form. Rae loved monsters and monstrous deeds. She hated books which were like dismal manuals instructing you of the only moral way to behave. Hope without tragedy was hollow. In the strange, fascinating world of these books, with its glorious horror of a hero, pain meant something.
By the time she finished the sequels, reading began to make Rae feel sick, adrift on a sea of words. Even listening to the books led her mind into the fog. She did want to find out the actual events of the first book, so she tricked Alice into reading it aloud as a ‘refresher’. If any voice could hold Rae’s attention, it would be that best-beloved voice.
Except they were now at the end, and Rae had still managed to miss a lot from the first book in the Time of Iron series. She feared her super-fan sister was catching on.
Time to play it cool. Rae said, “How dare you question me?”
“You constantly forget characters’ names!”
“The characters all have titles as well as names, which I find greedy. There’s the Golden Cobra, the Beauty Dipped In Blood, the Iron Maid, the Last Hope—”
Alice gave a scream. For a minute, Rae thought she’d seen a mouse.
“The Last Hope is the best character in the book!”
Rae lifted her hands in surrender. “If you say so.”
The Last Hope was the losing side of the love triangle, the good guy. If you asked Alice, the flawless guy. Alice’s favourite wasted his time longing for the heroine from afar, too busy brooding to use his awesome supernatural abilities.
The parade of guys professing love for the heroine was a blur that bored Rae. Anybody could say they loved you. When the time came to prove it, most failed.
Alice sniffed. “The Last Hope deserved Lia. The Emperor is a psychopath.”
The idea of deserving someone was wrong-headed. You couldn’t win women on points. Alice must be thinking of video games.
Rae overlooked this to defend her man. “Have you considered the Emperor has great cheekbones? Sorry to the side of good. Evil’s just sexier.”
Rae wanted characters to have tormented backstories, she just wished they wouldn’t be annoying about it. The Emperor was Rae’s favourite character of all time because he never brooded over his dark past. He used his unholy powers and enormous sword to slaughter his enemies, then moved on.
Alice made a face. “The thing with the iron shoes was creepy! If a creep is the true love, what does that teach girls?”
What thing with the iron shoes? Rae decided it wasn’t important. “Stories should be exciting. I don’t need to be preached at, I can do literary analysis.”
Rae was supposed to be valedictorian and get a scholarship. Instead Rae’s and Alice’s college funds were gone. Rae was twenty and never going to college.
They didn’t talk about that.
“If the Emperor were real, he would be horrifying.”
“Lucky he’s not real,” Rae snapped back. “Everyone who thinks books will make women date assholes underestimates us. If stories hypnotize people, why isn’t everybody terrified movies will turn boys into drag-racing assassins? I don’t want to fix the guy, I want to watch the murder show.”
She refused to have another argument about the Emperor being problematic. Clearly, the Emperor was problematic. When you murdered half the people you met, you had a problem. Stories lived on problems. There was a reason Star Wars wasn’t Star Peace.
After Lia was killed, the Emperor put her corpse on a throne and made her enemies kiss her dead feet. Then he ripped their hearts out. ‘Now you know how it feels,’ he murmured, his face the last thing their fading vision ever saw. Villainous characters had epic highs, epic lows, and epic loves. The Emperor loved like an apocalypse.
