Page 13 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

“What was so dangerous about a fourteen-year-old girl that they had to erase parts of her?” I mused aloud.

“Some memories are better left buried,” Kazimir said, his tone grim.

“How many have you buried?” I asked, the question slipping out before I could stop it.

He stiffened against me and fell quiet. I gave him space to decide if he wanted to continue, just as he had for me.

“I remember every excruciating detail,” he finally said. “Every cut, every betrayal, every lesson in pain. I couldn’t forget if I tried.”

There was truth in his voice, the raw, unvarnished agony of a past he couldn’t escape no matter how much power he accumulated. I knew the broad strokes—the mother who carved runes into his bones, the father he’d beheaded at seventeen. But the details were shadows he kept locked away. He’d promised to tell me more one day, a day when the telling wouldn’t break him. I’d accepted it. But now that I’d seen the Shadow King behind his eyes, I wasn’t sure waiting was the right choice.

“What happened to your mother?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know. She abandoned me, and I had… a rough patch. By the time I thought to look for her to exact some vengeance, I couldn’t find her. After some digging, I heard a rumor that she’d been killed crossing the Eastern Sea, but I never got confirmation.”

I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I turned my attention to the forest. The night was crisp and bright, with enough moonlight filtering through the trees for us to see the ground ahead as it steepened. We reached the base of the ridge and dismounted. The rest of the way was a steep climb over loose rock and thorny brush. I was proud of how easily I kept pace with him, my muscles burning in a satisfying way. All our training sessions—the sparring, the dodging of shadow bolts—were paying off.

“You’re slow,” he teased as I scrambled up a particularly steep incline.

“I’m saving my energy,” I shot back, breathless. “For when I have to carry you back down after you trip in the dark and sprain your ankle.”

He chuckled, a low, dark sound that echoed in the quiet night. He reached the top of the outcropping first and turned, offering me his hand. I took it, and he pulled me up the last few feet.

We stood on a narrow ledge of rock overlooking the vast, sleeping expanse of northern Solandris. The air was thin and cold, biting at my cheeks. Below us, the land was a tapestry of shadow and silver, bathed in the light of a thousand distant stars.

“There.” Kazimir pointed to a cluster of dark shapes nestled in a fold of the hills. “That’s the outpost. We’ll take it before dawn.”

It looked like a child’s toy from this height. “When did you start thinking of the army as ours?”

“Around the time you started setting things on fire,” Kazimir replied with a smirk. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure. It’s one thing to fight off sanctimonious invaders in your own home. It’s another to march into theirs and go looking for a fight.”

“It’s all the same when you’re in the thick of it,” he said dismissively. “Stick with me or Thorne. Watch, and learn.”

I bristled at his arrogance. “Are you trying to keep me out of the battle?”

His gaze snapped back to me, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I know better than to try,” he said, his voice dropping. “You’re the Dark Lady of Skyspire. I’d never force you to stay back like some helpless damsel, mostly because you’d probably set me on fire again, and I’m rather fond of this cloak.”

For all his worry and possessiveness, he would never take my agency from me. We both knew it would infuriate me, and he was right—I would absolutely set him on fire. “Besides,” he continued, “what better way to learn than to observe a master?”

“Your modesty is truly inspiring.” We were silent a while longer, breathing in the cold air. “I wish we could just use the ley lines,” I said finally. “We have the Heirloom. We’d sweep through Solandris in days instead of this slow march.”

Kazimir’s jaw tightened. “You think I haven’t considered it? That I don’t want to end this quickly?”

The truth was, we’d both been eager to test the Heirloom’s full potential after that first activation. The raw magic flowing through us had been intoxicating, the entire world bending to our combined will. But our first attempts at wielding it had been… educational.

Three days after the activation, we’d tried channeling the ley lines to reinforce the citadel’s defenses. What should have been a simple strengthening spell had instead torn a crater in the courtyard and left Kazimir unconscious for several minutes.

The second attempt, a week later, had been more modest—using the Heirloom to scry on Auremar’s movements. We’d managed it, but the effort had left us both bleeding from our noses, our minds feeling like they’d been scraped raw.

Since then, Griffin had been poring over ancient texts, running resonance tests, filling notebooks with calculations about ley line harmonics. He’d been muttering about “sympathetic frequencies” and “blood-key calibration” for days. It was why he’d come with us instead of staying at Skyspire. Kaz wanted him close in case he had a breakthrough.

In the meantime, we had benefited from the Heirloom’s power—we just couldn’t bend reality with it yet.

“What about one of your personal portals directly into Sunspire Palace?” I mused. “Kill Auremar, claim the throne, and we could be back at Skyspire in time for dinner.”

“I’ve considered it, but it wouldn’t stop the war.” He shook his head. “No, the conflict has to be fought and won decisively for this to work.”