Page 11 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

She gave a small, smoky sigh that smelled of burnt hair. Then she burped again, and a distinctly human-shaped tooth clattered to the ground.

“Charming,” I muttered, though my mind had already drifted back to Sebastian’s arrival and the disturbing gaps it had revealed in my own history.

The cellar incident happened when I was fifteen—a full year after my mother died protecting me. A year after they’d altered my memories and locked me in the tower for the first time. And yet, even after all that, I’d still had enough spirit left to defy my father. The thought should have made me proud, but instead it filled me with a cold, creeping dread.

How many times had they done this? How many memories had they stolen? My mother had died when I was fourteen, but I’d been made to believe she’d died from an illness when I was eight. Six years of my life with her, just… gone. And if they could erase that, what else had they taken?

What else had they done?

Kazimir thought some of those suppression runes in the tower were too old to have just been for me. Had my mother been locked there too, her own power suppressed the same way mine would be?

A bitter taste filled my mouth. It was a grim sort of irony that Kazimir and I were both navigating our own peculiar brands of amnesia. He’d woken from the Heirloom’s activation with no recollection of the cataclysmic vision he’d experienced. He didn’t remember the ancient, malevolent Shadow King screaming for vengeance from behind my husband’s storm gray eyes. He didn’t remember the crushing weight of centuries of rage and imprisonment that I’d glimpsed through our bond, a darkness so profound it had nearly swallowed him whole.

I’d seen it. I’d seen the entity wearing Kaz’s face, twisting his features into a mask of hate.

And I hadn’t told him.

Part of me insisted it was for his own good. He was already battling the ghosts of his past; he didn’t need to know he was also the vessel for a slumbering evil with a penchant for world domination. The other, more honest part of me was simply a coward. How do you tell the man you—you’re falling for that he might be possessed by a cosmic evil?

I hoped my own missing memories didn’t conceal a similar secret. Though if I did have an ancient entity living inside me, I prayed it was at least one with a decent sense of humor and a less homicidal agenda.

I finally found Kazimir near the edge of camp, a black-clad silhouette under the gloom of the trees. The heavy cloak he was shrugging into was one I recognized—the same midnight wool he’d worn the day he’d snatched me from my carriage, its hem and collar stitched with runes that shimmered faintly in the moonlight. Once, he’d told me it looked “suitably dramatic.” I would die before admitting he was right.

He moved like a dark god, all six-feet-plus of arrogant Dark Lord wrapped in barely leashed power. That insufferable confidence came from knowing he could destroy anyone in his path, and it showed in the way he carried himself.

Sharp planes and wicked beauty defined his face: high cheekbones and an aristocratic nose paired with a mouth that had no business looking so kissable when it regularly issued death threats.

He was a kidnapper. A villain. A warlord who’d upended my entire world and usually made me want to wipe that arrogant smirk off his face.

But damn it all, when he was close, I forgot every sensible reason I’d had to run.

Sensing my presence, he turned. The look in his eyes when they found me was a wave of possessive heat that washed over me and settled deep in my bones. It chased away the chill of the missing memories, the lingering horror of my father’s sins, and the weight of the secrets I was keeping. In Kaz’s gaze, I wasn’t a broken thing with pieces missing. I was his. Seen. Wanted.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

I offered a small, crooked smile. “Wondering if you’re ever going to get a new cloak.”

A corner of his mouth tugged upward. He didn’t push for the real answer, and a quiet sort of gratitude bloomed in my chest. He knew today had been a shock. He was giving me the space to process it. It was one of the things about him that constantly surprised me—this undercurrent of quiet respect that ran beneath the violence and the dominion magic.

“Where have you been, anyway?” he asked, adjusting the drape of the cloak over his shoulders.

“Playing chaperone. I had to shoo Griffin away from Sebastian’s tent before he serenaded him.”

Kazimir’s expression darkened. “He’s going to be a problem.”

“Griffin or Sebastian?”

“Both.” His gaze narrowed. “Have you considered that your dear Lord Sebastian might be a spy?”

“Would you have let him into our camp if you thought he was?”

“Maybe,” he said, and the infuriating thing was, my truth-sense didn’t so much as tingle. He was just that devious. “The enemy you see is less dangerous than one you don’t.”

“He’s not a spy, Kaz,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He’s just a man who’s very good at baking. And apparently, smart enough to seek protection from the only person who could help him, no matter how intimidating that man looks in a cloak.”

Kazimir flashed me a devilish smile. “I’m taking the northern ridge,” he said, changing the subject. “Getting the lay of the land.” He wasn’t using a portal, conserving his magic for the inevitable battle tomorrow. Instead, he would ride part of the way and climb the rest.

“I’m coming with you,” I announced.