Page 48 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

He raised a scarlet eyebrow and didn’t budge.

“You don’t believe me? Fine. I’ll prove it.” Violet lifted a hand toward him, and sure enough, the Shadow Fairy took a step back, bringing the ruby into his mouth and closing his lips. Her hand hung in midair, her chest filling with relief. She lacked a lot of basic life skills due to her situation, but she was good at bluffing.

The redhead eyed her, his mouth tipping down at the corners. He spat the ruby back out into his hand and shoved it in his pocket. “What,” he began, braving another step back toward Violet, “in the name of the sky deities—” he stopped before her again, nearly pinning her against the brick wall, proving he was less afraid than she thought “—is that scent doing on you?”

“Mor’s scent? I thought you already knew about that when you mistook me for his girlfriend or whatever—”

“Not Trisencor’s scent, Violet. The other one.”

He looked back and forth between her eyes.

Violet debated how to even reply to such a question.

“Listen, you might not believe me, but I actually have no idea what you’re talking about. Why does everyone keep telling me I smell?” Violet asked.

He tilted his head, his broad smile finding its way back like he knew something she didn’t.

“And if you’re going to kill me, just get on with it. Seriously, the wait is murdering me all on its own. This is worse than actually dying!” she said to him, and he burst out laughing.

His laugh was buttery and smooth—Violet couldn’t help but notice. He didn’t sound like a psychopath either. That was a double threat.

“Oh dear, Violet. Trust me, the dying part would be infinitely worse than this,” he assured. “But I won’t kill you unless I decide I want to bring Trisencor anguish. You understand,” he drawled, flicking a bug off the shoulder of his black coat.

“Well, you got it all wrong. I’m not Mor’s girlfriend or lover or anything. I’m just his secretary, and he doesn’t think about me like that. I don’t even think he’s capable of those sorts of feelings,” Violet said with slight sarcasm.

The redhead chuckled again. “Oh Violet, you foolish, little, naïve human. Let me tell you something about Mor Trisencor.” He took yet another stride in, and this time the buttons of his coat brushed her shirt. He slapped a hand against the brick wall beside her head, blocking any escape path, forcing her to stay put and listen.

“Mor feels things,deeply,” he said.

Violet wasn’t sure she was still breathing. She tried to avoid looking right into his dark eyes.

“Because of thosefeelings, Trisencor will forever be marked as a traitor to the Dark Corner, forever hunted, forever despised. He’s a slave of the North, bound for death by even his own Queene. Death will forever follow him.” The redhead’s expression turned cruel. “He will always feel strongly, yet his heart will never be able to truly love anyone, lest what he loves be stolen away and ruined as his past continues to catch up with him the way I did.” The fairy’s metallic-scarlet hair glistened in the sunlight as he whispered, his breath scented of sweet roses and sugar. “What you need to understand, Violet, is that Mor is notallowedto love. Everything touched by his heart will be destroyed. Fairy forces have sworn to make it so.”

The silence filled with thick, dismal notes and a warm wind swept into Violet’s hair. Even if she could have formed a response, she didn’t want to. What kind of person would say such a terrible thing about someone else?

Shuffling sounds filled the alley, and Violet looked to the entrance with hope. But it wasn’t Mor or Dranian.

Fairies Violet recognized from the knitting store filed in, two of them appearing via teleportation with a popping sound around the redhead. One of them dropped to assess Gretchen who still laid motionless on the pavement.

The old woman who’d heckled Mor in the yarn store, the one Violet now knew was namedFreida, called from the end of the alley where she stood with the other women, “If you take her, Shadow Fairy, we’ll follow you through the wind. But if you leave her behind, we’ll stay put. It’s your choice, but you had best decide quickly,” she said.

The redhead’s hand slowly slid off the brick wall beside Violet’s face. “I don’t want any trouble, females. I’m not here for you.”He didn’t look or sound afraid; frankly, he looked ready to fight them all. He even drew out his sword handle. But he seemed to take inventory of all the women, and he slid his handle away again. He turned back to Violet and looked deeply into her eyes in a way that made her sure he never intended to really let her go. He smiled.

“You can call me Luc, dear Violet. We might as well be on a first name basis since we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

Without another word, he stepped back and vanished into the air.

22

Violet Miller and the Present

For two days Violet had let those dreadful words play over in her mind. For two days she’d tried to keep herself from thinking about the fact that Mor wasn’t allowed to love. Violet’s heart broke further with each passing second she spent thinking of what her boss must have endured to be labelled in such a way in his lifetime.

Violet watched Mor’s bothered expression as he dropped his fingers from her temples, and the memory of the alley fizzled away from the forefront of her mind. For a moment, they both stood there in silence, looking at each other. She wished she knew what he was thinking, now that he knew what she’d been told about him.

Finally, Mor said, “He’s not lying. Death does follow me.”

Violet looked between his dual-coloured eyes. “That would make a catchy article title.” It was all she could come up with. She hadn’t even said it with enthusiasm.

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