Page 21 of Realm of the Wicked

I snapped my head up, but Damien hadn’t bothered to look up at me when he spoke. He acknowledged me, but I was nothing more than another fixture in the room to him.

‘Are you planning on speaking at all to me, or are you just going to hover there for the rest of the morning?’ he continued. ‘Hovering doesn’t bother me, but you’ll probably get tired far sooner than it takes for me to finish.’

Agatha said he would be grumpy being interrupted, but he didn’t sound grumpy. Placating, maybe, laced with something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I shifted on my feet, weighing the words on the tip of my tongue, deciding just how much I wanted to offer up, and how much to keep close to my chest.

‘I don’t understand how this works. Why I’m here.’

‘Because you made a deal with a stranger.’ His pen scraped against the paper, and I willed him to look up at me.

‘That’s not a real answer.’

Damien sighed, finally putting his pen down and running a sharp gaze over my face. ‘Sit.’

I didn’t make a move to sit in one of the overstuffed chairs, and Damien rolled his eyes, taking off the brown-rimmed glasses he wore, and setting them down to one side.

‘Please sit, Stella.’

I slouched into the uncomfortable leather chair across from his desk. He drummed long fingers on the top of his shiny desk.

‘If you’re asking what’s required of you while living here, the answer to that is nothing. There is nothing required of you being here. I don’t expect you to clean up after me, or make me meals. I do, however, expect you to join me for dinner – which I’m sure Agatha already explained – and I appreciate respect in all aspects. That includes not interrupting me when my office door is closed. You might not like what you walk in on.’ He raised a dark brow, looking over my shoulder at the heavy door I’d left open. ‘I’ll let it go for today, but you’d do better to remember that next time.’

A flush rose over my cheeks, and I desperately tried to bury it deeper. I needed to remember he was dangerous.

‘Agatha said time works differently here.’

‘She’s correct. We’re still on Earth, technically, but my estate sits outside of time. It makes it easier going back and forth between your realm and mine. We call it the Fringe.’

I nodded like all of this wasn’t absolutely insane to process. Like everything he’d told me so far was normal, just an average day. ‘Does that… does that mean I won’t get older either?’

Damien cocked his head to the side. ‘Do you want to grow old?’

A lifetime flashed before my eyes: a life I’d never had a chance to think about, and now never would. A white dress, and a gentle smile in a dark tux. Kids running around me, laughing and playing. My hair growing gray, new wrinkles appearing at the corners of my eyes. Sunsets lasting just a bit longer, closer and closer together. I’d spent so many hours mourning the life Grace wouldn’t have that I forgot to dream of my own.

The thing about that life I hadn’t considered was that it only made sense if you weren’t alone. If you had someone to spend it with. I had no one. Not any more.

So when I pulled my eyes away from Damien’s sharp gaze with a shrug, I said, ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t given it much thought.’

Damien made a quiet noise in the back of his throat. ‘You will still age here. Just much slower. However, time will remain as it is for Grace. Nothing will change for her.’

Nothing, except for her older sister disappearing from her life. An older sister that would soon become the younger, as the tides of time wiped away at her life.

When Damien spoke again, his voice was softer. ‘Grace can’t miss what she doesn’t remember, Stella. As far as she’s aware, her life is the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that.’

‘But it’s not, is it?’ I whispered. I snapped my gaze up to meet his steady stare. ‘Why me?’

A flicker of uncertainty flashed through Damien’s eyes, but he didn’t look away.

We stayed like that for a minute, maybe two. Maybe a year, a decade, a lifetime. We dared the other to be the first to speak, the first to crack, but neither of us wanted to acquiesce.

Damien sighed, put his glasses back on, and turned back to his notebook. A dismissal.

Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t ready to leave. If he wouldn’t answer my question willingly, I’d break him down until I had my answer.

Understanding why I was here felt like the key to unlocking the other answers I was so desperate for.

I looked him over carefully while he stared intently at the small, black notebook. I almost could’ve read his mind, like he seemed to do earlier, thinking that if he didn’t look up, I’d disappear. He didn’t belong here. In this role. A curly lock of his dark hair fell in front of his forehead, catching on the edge of his glasses.