Her concentration was so intense that she didn’t hear Veronica come in until she knocked on her open door, two cups of steaming coffee in her hand.
“Good morning, Dominique,” Veronica said, stepping into the office. “I brought you a cup of coffee. We should probably go over the agenda for the week before your first meeting of the day.”
Dominique looked up from her computer and smiled. “That sounds great. Thank you, Veronica.”
When she lifted a hand to brush her hair away from her face, Veronica’s eyes snagged on the huge aquamarine on her finger.
“Is that? Did you?” Veronica trailed off, never completing either of her questions.
Dominique tried to smile, but she knew it didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes, Ronan and I got engaged.”
“Ronan? As in the guy who was here Friday?” Her employee’s voice cracked on the last word.
“Yes. We knew each other as children.”
As she tried to formulate the best lie, anxiety spiked through Dominique. She knew that Veronica sensed it when her employee’s head cocked to the side, and she studied her closely.
This wasn’t going to work. Veronica was an empath. She would see right through any lie Dominique told as long as her emotions were so volatile. And her emotions were going to remain uncontrollable for the next little while. Say five to ten years.
Dominique sighed. “What I’m about to tell you must stay between us. You can’t even mention it to Jasper. Can you do that?”
Veronica shut and locked Dominique’s office door behind her, before bringing both cups of coffee over to her desk. “Of course I can. What’s going on?”
“I did know Ronan as a child. But I owe him a debt. As repayment, he has asked me to commit to marriage to him for the next seven to ten years.”
Veronica’s eyes widened, and she set her cup on the desk without taking a sip. “If you knew each other as children, how on earth could you owe him a debt that is worth seven to ten years of your life?”
“I made a mistake when I was eleven. One that caused us both to be cursed by a sorceress. This curse means we’ll both be alone for the rest of our lives.”
“Wait, you were eleven? How old was Ronan?”
“Thirteen.”
Veronica leaned back in her chair, lacing her fingers together. “It sounds like you were both children, you even younger than him, so how does that make you responsible?”
Dominique picked up her coffee and sipped it, trying to think of the best way to explain. Finally, she answered, “Even when I was a child, I wasn’t. Every action, every word, had to be weighed. Measured. I had to consider the consequences of everything I did and said. He wasn’t like me. He was still a child in many ways. Still coddled and spoiled to some extent. I knew better than to do what I did. But I didn’t care. Not that day.”
Dominique drank more coffee, her thoughts back on the day that Zephira cursed them. How she knew she should listen to him. She knew she should’ve gone back to the castle. That she was inviting trouble by walking into the forest.
But she’d felt as though she were suffocating. The walls closing around her. Even in the royal gardens, there had been stifling walls. She’d been desperate for space, for room to breathe, without someone standing inches away.
“I think you should cut yourself some slack,” Veronica stated. “Even if you were half-grown at the time, you were still a child and you made a mistake. Adults make mistakes, too. That’s no excuse for someone to claim a debt and treat you poorly. Especially over something that happened decades ago.”
Dominique didn’t agree about the debt, but she did agree about poor treatment. “I won’t let him mistreat me,” she assured Veronica. “Now, I have to leave Friday morning for a weekend in the fae realm. I won’t have phone service there, so if there’s an emergency, you’ll have to use the crystal here at the office.”
Veronica nodded. “I can do that. Oh, I forgot to tell you Friday,” she began. “We had an applicant for the administrative assistant position. Her name is Zelda.”
The name had Dominique’s mental antenna quivering. “Zelda? Auburn hair, dark eyes? Tall?”
Veronica looked shocked. “You saw her on Friday?”
Dominique shook her head. “No, I met her at the deli by my house on Saturday afternoon. We ate lunch together because there was only one empty table and two of us.”
“What a coincidence,” Veronica said.
Dominique didn’t think it was a coincidence. But she wasn’t sure what the woman’s motivation could possibly be. She may have just wanted an idea of who she might be working for, or she could have had an ulterior motive.
“She’s by far the most qualified candidate and I’m almost certain she’s fae,” Veronica continued.
