Page 104 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

She’d defied me from the moment we met, and I’d never been so enchanted.

Tell her she is nothing but a tool for your power.

“I like you,” I said, ignoring the whisper. “And you’re sexy.”

I knew that was the wrong answer even as my stupid mouth supplied it. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. Not literally—though with our combined magical potential, that was always a possibility—but emotionally. Arabella’s face went carefully blank, a sure sign I’d fucked up royally.

“That’s it?” she asked, her voice deceptively light. “You kidnapped me, married me, and bound our lives together because I’m likable and sexy?”

Put that way, it did sound rather thin.

“What do you want me to say, Arabella?” I spread my hands. The dragon was now emitting a low, threatening rumble. “That I was drawn to your defiance? Your strength? The way you never back down, even when facing a Dark Lord who could snap your neck with a thought?”

“I want you to tell me the truth,” she said. “All of it.”

The truth. Such a simple request, and yet so impossible to fulfill. How could I tell her that from the moment I saw her, something in me recognized her? That when she stood before me on that road, refusing to cower, I felt as if I’d been waiting my entire life for someone who would look at me and see not just the monster, but the man?

Weakness. This is weakness. She makes you weak.

“You’re my wife,” I said, the word feeling inadequate for what she had become to me.

She stepped into my space, glaring up at me. “Do you feel anything for me at all?”

“Of course I do!” I roared. “Do you think I’d let just anyone see me collapse in a heap of agony? Or tell them my deepest secrets? I’ve killed men for looking at their reflections in my polished boots, Arabella. You have turned my entire world upside down, and you’re asking me if I feel something?”

“Then what is it?” she demanded, tears welling in her eyes, which only made me angrier. “What is it you feel? Say it!”

I reached for her, but she stepped back.

The words she wanted—needed—to hear lodged in my throat. Those three words. The ones I’d never said to anyone, not even my mother. Especially not my mother, whose idea of “love” involved carving runes into her son’s bones.

Love is a lie. A trick. A weapon to be used against you. The whisper was almost a shout now, the voice disturbingly familiar. I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block it out.

“You can’t say it either,” I pointed out, deflecting.

“I fed my life force into your precious artifact!” Her voice cracked. “I literally poured pieces of my soul into that crown to save you. If that’s not—” She stopped herself. “What more proof do you need?”

“Words,” I snarled, closing the distance between us and lowering my voice. “Just three simple words that you seem as incapable of saying as I am. They don’t matter.”

The moment the sentence left my mouth, I knew I’d made a catastrophic error. Arabella went very, very still. Then, without a word, she walked to the wardrobe, pulled out my cloak, and threw it at my chest.

“Get out,” she said quietly.

“Arabella—”

“Get. Out.” Her magic flared, the air around her crackling with power. “If the words don’t matter, then neither does this conversation.”

Kill her, the voice screamed. Kill her kill her KILL HER—

I grabbed the cloak, my hands shaking with the effort of not listening to the violent urges. Maybe distance was exactly what I needed right now. Before I did something truly unforgivable.

“Fine,” I said, slinging the cloak around my shoulders. “Enjoy your night with the lizard.”

I left without looking back, closing the door with deliberate softness when what I wanted was to blast it off its hinges.

The apartment had other bedrooms, of course. But I’d be damned if I’d wake Marlowe to make up another bed, or let anyone know that the fearsome Dark Lord had been kicked out of his own bedchamber by his wife, who preferred to sleep with a pink dragon.

Lightning flickered occasionally beyond the tall windows, illuminating the bizarre outlines of bone archways. This was the God Spire. I, Kazimir Blackrose, Chair of Dominion, was not supposed to skulk on a sofa like a cast-off dog.