Page 126 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

The memory that came next made me gasp. I was eleven, standing in the great hall of Solandris’s Sunspire Palace, facing a man in royal robes. King Auremar, though younger, his golden crown catching the light. He’d wanted to see my magic, and I’d been so eager to impress.

The light I’d conjured had been beautiful. Pure. Everything the heroic bloodline was meant to be.

His smile had been worse than any sneer. “Magnificent,” he’d said. “She’ll do nicely.”

Do for what? I had remembered that event very differently—that the king had sent me home with barely a word. Then I realized the original memory had been altered. The image fragmented before I could find out anything more, but the next one provided context. My mother, pale and shaking, arguing with my father in hushed tones. “You can’t let him take her. You know what he does to girls with the bloodline—”

“The king has made his decision.”

“Then I’ll make mine.”

Light burst from my hands, and I was jerked back to the alley.

I stared at my palms, horrified, as golden radiance spilled between my fingers. Not the controlled magic I’d learned to wield, but something raw and primal, responding to the emotions flooding through me with each recovered memory.

Nyx’s head snapped toward me, her silver eyes widening. She moved quickly, wrapping herself around me, her wings folding over us both like a protective blanket.

My magic surged, wild and uncontrolled. This was bad. This was very, very bad. If anyone saw—if the Syndicate realized what power I wielded—

Then something extraordinary happened.

Nyx began to glow.

Not with reflected light, but with her own luminescence. The rosy tint that had been spreading across her scales brightened to a brilliant pink, and I felt our bond flare with sudden intensity. She was absorbing the magic, pulling it into herself.

“Nyx—” I tried to warn her, but another memory crashed over me and more power erupted in response.

The potion was working too well now, memories cascading over one another in a nauseating rush. But Nyx held firm, her body a barrier between my uncontrolled magic and the rest of the Spire. I felt her strain, felt her juvenile abilities stretched to their limit as she absorbed wave after wave of wild energy.

But I couldn’t stop watching the show in my head, couldn’t look away from the truth I’d been denied for so long.

Auremar’s mages arriving at our estate in the dead of night, led by a sorceress in gray robes and hood pulled low over her face. My mother breaking the suppression spells placed on her. The surge of power that followed was wild and uncontrolled. My mother standing between them and my bed, magic crackling around her.

“You want her power?” she’d said, and even in memory her voice made me shiver. “Then take mine first.”

They had.

The battle that followed was brief and brutal. My mother had been strong, but she’d been one against six. I’d watched from a corner, frozen in terror, as they’d worn her down spell by spell. Watched as she’d fallen. Watched as the leader had raised her hand for the killing blow—

And I’d screamed. Not just with my voice, but with my magic. The light that erupted from me had been nothing like the pretty sparkles I’d shown the king. This was raw, primal, the fury of a child watching her mother die.

The memory of that power called to my magic now, and I felt it answer. Golden light exploded around us, so bright it should have been visible to everyone in the market. But Nyx absorbed it all, her entire body shuddering with the effort.

I’m sorry, I tried to tell her. I’m so sorry.

She sent back something that felt like stubborn determination mixed with fierce protectiveness. She’d chosen to be here and shield me from the consequences of my impulsive decision.

At my attack, one mage had been instantly vaporized. Another had clawed at his eyes, screaming about the burning light. The rest had fled, but not before their leader had pointed at me and spoken a word that made everything go dark.

When I’d woken, my mother was gone. My memories were gone. And my father had a story about illness and tragedy that everyone believed because the alternative was too terrible to consider.

The king had killed my mother. My father had let him. And I’d been locked in a tower not just to hide my growing power, but to keep me from remembering what I’d done to those mages. What I was capable of when pushed.

More memories flooded in—fragments of defiance quickly suppressed, moments of clarity stolen away, a childhood rewritten to suit the narrative of a danger-prone daughter who needed a firm hand. But underneath it all, one truth remained constant:

I had always been dangerous. The tower hadn’t been to protect me from the world, but to protect the world from me.

The potion’s effects were reaching their peak now, and I was drowning in years of stolen moments. Nyx’s presence was the only anchor keeping me grounded as memory after memory crashed over me, each one triggering another involuntary surge of magic that she absorbed with increasingly labored breaths.