Read an extract of Long Live Evil

A story for anyone who's ever fallen for the villain...

Start reading the highly anticipated adult romantasy Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan.

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 darkened head against Rae’s shoulder. “The truth is, she looks like you. I can pretend to be brave when I look like you.”

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.