Page 78 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

Luc frowned, and then nodded and dropped his hands from Cress’s temples. “I suppose it was wishful thinking. I rarely get the secret I want on the first try.” He lowered his voice to say quietly to Cress, “Shame on you for hiding all those cookies from your friends. But I imagine one of them will find your stash in the bottom of the freezer soon.” Luc dug his ruby out of his mouth, and Cress glared.

It took a full second for Mor to realize what Luc had said.

“Secrets?” Mor growled when it dawned on him. “Secrets?! That’s what you’ve been stealing?” He could hardly believe it. “You’ve been luring in human females and stealing theirsecrets? For what, Luc?! What do you need human secrets for?”

“Did you know I stole Violet’s secrets exactly seven times before I got the one I wanted?” Luc disregarded the question and turned to Mor with one of his own. “Do you want to know what her greatest secrets are, Trisencor?”

Mor felt his last bit of life drain from him. He backed up a step, bringing his fairsaber up between them. “No.”

“Yes, you do.” Luc smiled, beautiful and broad. “The first secret—the one I stole from her at that bus shelter—was that once, she hated her life so much she wanted to forget it. How interesting is that? And why was it a secret?” He paced and tapped his chin in feign wonder.

“Vanish, Mor,” Cress instructed from where he stood with blades at his neck. “He is trying to lure you in.”

Luc chuckled. “Nonsense, Prince Cressica. Trisencor isn’t affected by the lure of foxes. He’s proven that enough times.”

“What are you talking about?” Mor gritted out, and Luc looked at him doubtfully as if to ask,“Do you really not know?”

Mor blinked.

Luc released an annoyed sound like it pained him to have to explain. “I never had to forceyouto like me, Trisencor. You were never afraid of me to begin with,” he said aloud, and there was a certain tone in the statement that left a ringing sound in the back of Mor’s mind.

Luc worked his jaw with a look Mor couldn’t read. After a moment, he turned away. “The second of Violet’s secrets was that she was lying to her aunt about her job. The few after that were also a bunch of boring human nonsense I added to my collection. But after a while I discovered a secret I found interesting. You see, ten years ago, Violet made a deal with a pauper fairy to get rid of her memories.Allof them. This was a secret she didn’t even know or remember she had. Isn’t that fascinating?” Luc went on. “And then I thought, ‘Ten years ago… I wonder if by some miracle of the sky deities she could be that same human girl?’ Because call me crazy, I thought she sort of looked like the human from that day. And once I noticed it, I could not unsee it.”

Mor’s voice shook. “Luc. Your war is with me, not with a human—”

“This was the secret that gave it away for me,” Luc went on. “The one that told me she was in fact the human who you abandoned the Shadows for.”

Mor looked over at Cress standing perfectly still. Cress seemed to have no reaction to the news, but he twisted his fairsaber in his grip like he was ready to turn and fight his way out.

Luc’s face curved into a snarl. “But there was one more secret that I found the most interesting of all.”

“Don’t tell me,” Mor said as his rhythms began to hammer.

“She’s in love with you.” Luc said it anyway, and Mor closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing. “That was her greatest secret. That she was falling in love with her fated-to-suffer, very ruined boss.”

The sound of Luc’s footsteps stopped in front of Mor. When Mor opened his eyes, he saw revulsion in Luc’s gaze. “And if I didn’t know any better, I’d guess that flittering thudding in your chest is a sure sign of a fairy crush.”

Why her?The words came back in full swing.

Why was Violet the same human girl that had sent him into such a frenzy on his way out of the Shadow Army? Mor’s heart wasn’t only breaking imagining Violet in that situation, it was aching, angry, set ablaze and feeling the weight of that horrid day all over again since the moment he’d first laid eyes on the human.

“Your war isn’t with Violet,” Mor stated again, clear and steady. “It wasn’t her that made me turn on the Army.”

Luc raised a brow in question, and Mor’s gaze slid across the room to Cress, indicating it was time.

Then Mor said, “I was going to leave the Shadow Army anyway.”

Cress turned and swung at the Shadows.

Mor stabbed toward Luc—

His fairsaber sailed through empty air.

Luc was nowhere in sight. And Mor would have followed him, but he couldn’t leave Cress alone to take on the Shadow Army division alone. The division of Mor’s past who had finally returned for him.

35

Violet Miller and the Never-Ending Kiss Attacks

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