Page 86 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

“Yes,Doom. I’m trying desperately to hate you,” she admitted.

It was painfully obvious that she was avoiding saying his name.

Mor nodded, drifting in a little closer. He stopped directly behind her where her floral scent engulfed him—then he thought better of it and scooted back. He pulled out a stool and sat at the island beside the sleeping male intern before Violet could notice how close he’d come.

A few words rolled to the end of his tongue to be said, but he sucked them all back in again, one by one. He scratched his head. He ran a hand through his hair. He flicked an abandoned spoon on the island.

“I made a mistake,” he blurted. He clasped his hands in front of him and squeezed them to near death.

Violet stopped her mixing. When she turned around, Mor nearly burst out laughing at the dollop of batter on the end of her pretty little human nose. “You think?” she said as she strangled the tea towel in her grip.

Mor took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I understand you’re angry, but you’re enchanted, and youshouldbe racing for me with all the rage and passion of a thousand gazelles—”

“Doom.” Violet said it coolly and straight-faced. “I liked being enchanted by Luc more.”

Mor slammed his mouth shut and stood. “What?”

“It hurt less than this.” She tossed the tea towel to the counter with an echoing slap and turned back to her mixing bowl. “You kissed me in front of my house, and then you left me forever. After I told you that I wanted to belong to you like a total idiot. You led me on then pushed me away. Who does that?”

“A pompous fae,” he answered. “One who’s doomed—”

“Andthenyou dove into my memories and tore away suddenly like I had thirty contagious diseases, and you looked at me like… like…” Violet shook her head, unable to come up with anything. “And after that I got kidnapped! While we were apart!”

Mor wanted to go stand at the counter with her, but he sank back onto his stool again. “I’m not going to try and justify what I did. I know I hurt you when I left you to wake up alone. I did it because I thought Luc was aftermeand your proximity to me would get you killed, but I was wrong.”

Violet glanced back at him again with her batter-speckled face.

“He was afteryou,” Mor said, feeling the rush of nerves all over again. “He wantedyou, Violet. Not because he thought you were my lover, but because he realized who you are.”

The batter spoon tumbled from Violet’s hand. She tried to catch it but it clattered to the floor, and the interns snorted and shuffled. Neither of them awoke. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, all the anger draining from her face, replaced by a flickering hope that twisted something in his chest. “Mor… did you find out who I was before?”

Mor stood again, shoving the stool away once and for all. He came to meet her by the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he swallowed. “I’m sorry, Violet, but you and I met before the day you came to my cathedral looking for a job. If you were ordinary, I might have sent you away and never thought about you again, but you had an aroma of fairy-meddling on you, and I think I accidentally kept you around because I wanted to know why.”

Violet blinked up at him doubtfully. “We’ve met before.” It was a question.

“The day before you woke up, you were taken from this realm and into the fairy one. You were brought to a feast for the Shadow Army in the Dark Corner of Ever. And you were saved by someone—a youthful male fairy who…” Mor forgot how to speak as her face changed.

“That boy…” she breathed. “I remembered him when I woke up from a strange dream yesterday. It wasn’t a dream though, was it?”

There’d been a moment in the parking lot after Mor had seen Violet’s memories, after he’d recognized her reflection in the window from her own recollection of the day she woke up in the forest, when Mor was sure he’d accidentally grappled a few strands of her lost memories and sent them back into her mind. He’d lost control—he’d wanted to scream. He hadn’t been able to stop himself, and he had no idea what pieces of her old self he’d given back from that terrible day in the Ever Corners he’d once paid a pauper to make her forget.

Mor swallowed and carefully took her flour-covered hands. “I was sixteen years of age. I was wearing black shells on my shoulders. My shoulders weren’t as broad, and my skin may have been lighter from living under a cloud, and my hair would have been short.”

A tear broke from Violet’s eye and skittered down her face. Mor swiped it away, a blend of things racing through him—mostly relief. He was sure Violet wouldn’t have believed this story if she didn’t have her own recollection of it.

Mor pulled her against him, wrapping his solid arms around her shoulders. There was nothing he wanted more in any realm than to keep her safe now. To tether her to him even. To never let anything happen to her like what had happened that day when she was among his Shadow Army division, and what had happened today when she’d been kidnapped by a Shadow Fairy all over again.

“I should have never left your side. Now that I know you’re who Luc is after, I won’t let go of you, Violet,” he said.

Violet’s arms slowly closed around him. Her fingers hesitantly dug into his shirt, taking handfuls in her fists like she was afraid to let go. “You want to stay together?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yes. You belong to me now,” Mor promised. “You’re mine, Violet Miller.”

The morning crawled in with the smell of warm baking. Mor had just fallen asleep on the couch in the living space when the wild trumpet blasts of the oven rang through the cathedral. He started, flinging himself up to a sitting position and clutching his tiny little blanket. He slapped a hand over his faeborn chest and tossed the blanket aside, rising to stride to the kitchen. He was prepared to put an end to Violet’s manic baking and mixing and wasting of supplies and colossal destruction of his kitchen. But when he entered—seeing that the interns had finally been shaken awake after their long night’s sleep at the island—he saw Violet standing by the oven, holding a steaming tray of muffins in her mitten-covered hands.

She was beaming.

Perhaps he didn’t care about the kitchen or the wasted ingredients or whatever. He slid onto a stool beside the female intern this time. The intern was looking around like she was trying to remember where she was. She gasped and looked at the time telling device at her wrist.

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