Page 112 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

Had been shaping me my entire life.

My mother’s runes hadn’t just enhanced my magic—they’d cracked open something that had been sleeping inside me since birth. Each cut had been a key, awakening instincts and hungers that felt both foreign and inevitable. And now, with the Heirloom activated, with my connection to Arabella—Soriven’s own descendant—with the ley lines still singing against my palms, whatever had been dreaming inside me was finally waking up.

And it recognized what I’d just touched.

It wanted to go home.

I was the monster in the fairy tales. The darkness that had once threatened to devour the world. The enemy of everything Arabella’s bloodline represented.

Triumph surged through me—vicious and ancient. Finally. Soriven’s descendant, right here, vulnerable. Destroy her. Consume her bloodline’s power and—

No.

That wasn’t me.

I forced my eyes open, forced myself to look at her across the circle. Arabella stood with her chin raised, power still crackling around her fingers, watching me with those sharp hazel eyes that had never once looked away from what I was. She’d seen me at my worst—manipulative, cruel, ruthless—and she’d chosen to stand beside me anyway. Not because she was compelled or coerced, but because she’d decided I was worth the risk.

The fragment inside me screamed for her destruction.

But I looked at her and felt something the Shadow King had never known in centuries of existence.

Fear.

Not of her power, though she was formidable. Not of her bloodline, though it had bound the Shadow King once before. I was terrified of losing her. Of watching that fierce intelligence dim. Of never again hearing her sarcastic commentary on my villain monologues or feeling her magic twine with mine in perfect, chaotic harmony. Of a world where Arabella Blackrose didn’t exist to challenge me, infuriate me, match me step for step.

The ancient consciousness inside me wanted vengeance.

I wanted her safe.

The fragment saw an enemy.

I saw the woman who’d performed a ritual that could have killed her just to save my life. Who’d stood in front of the Hero’s Guild and claimed me as hers. Who’d looked at the darkness in me and instead of running, had smiled and asked what we were going to break next.

My mother’s voice echoed in my memory: I love you, my son. This will make you strong.

Love, in her mouth, had been a prelude to pain. A justification. The last time someone had claimed to love me, it had left scars I still carried.

But Arabella had never said those words to me. She’d simply shown me. With every defiant glare, every moment she chose to stay when she could have run, every time she’d matched my darkness with her own and made it something we could wield together instead of something that would destroy us both.

And I realized, with the kind of clarity that only comes when you’re staring into the abyss of losing everything that matters—

I was in love with her.

Had been, probably, since the moment she’d set fire to my carefully laid plans and forced me to see her as more than a tool. Since she’d made me want to be seen, not as the Dark Lord or the monster, but as Kazimir. The man who could be vulnerable with her and not find a knife in his back.

We’d danced around those words for weeks now, both too proud or too afraid to say them first. And now I understood why the silence had felt so heavy. Because love wasn’t just a feeling—it was a choice. A vulnerability. The ultimate surrender of control.

The memory surfaced then—hazy and dreamlike, but undeniably real. The vision in the Heirloom chamber. I’d been drowning in the Shadow King’s consciousness, ancient and terrible and hungry, and something had pulled me back. Not duty. Not ambition. Not even self-preservation.

Her.

I’d chosen Arabella over the Shadow King’s power once before. Some part of me, buried beneath the fragment’s influence, had recognized what mattered. Had chosen love over vengeance without even understanding what I was doing.

Without knowing it, she’d been saving me all along.

And the terrifying truth was this: If I’d somehow activated the Heirloom alone, if she hadn’t been there at my side in that chamber, the fragment would have already consumed me. I’d be nothing but a shell, a puppet for an ancient evil to wear like a favorite coat.

The Alchemist was saying something about the other bloodlines and their true reason for delay after we arrived. I heard none of it. Sensing my distraction, Arabella linked her hand with mine, her fingers warm and solid and real.