“Nefarious—well. You must have gone to hero school.” Velarre squirmed on the couch, turning around to watch him, her elbows comfortably planted in the gold-gilt plush. “However, there are three things I ought to tell you, noble sir.”

“Top of my class,” Torash said with a noticeable swell of his chest. “But . . . what is it?” To him, the situation seemed straightforward enough: she was a damsel in distress—a fairly lovely one, at that, both for the damsel and the dress—and he had just broken the lock of her prison . . . in fact, he had shattered the entire door.

“Number one—look around you.” Velarre fluted her wrist in a languid gesture. “I have velvet and silk, gold and jewels, the finest delicacies and privacy whenever I wish it. I’m not sure how you could call that either dire or foul.”

She stood then, making her way over to the window. A small smile played about her lips, whimsical. “Second of all, have you read the legal codes of half the neighboring countries? Some of them are scarcely governed at all. Wouldn’t it be hard to usurp a land that no one ruled in the first place?”

“I—there is no shame in a land where people live by their own personal code.” Torash blinked at her. “What is the third thing?”

Velarre leaned over and pulled on what appeared to be a curtain tassel. The floor opened exactly like a Venarian flytrap and snapped up the startled barbarian.

She rose leisurely, sighing. “Third: I’m the evil overlord, thank you very much. Men!”