Page 134 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

“A memory mage?” Alarm bells rang in my mind. The God Spire housed countless dangers, many disguised as legitimate businesses, but I’d never heard of such a shop there. “Did you even verify the proprietor’s credentials? Do you have any idea what unregulated memory magic can do to a person?”

“Of course I do.” Her eyes flashed. “I’m not an idiot, Kazimir.”

“Then you’re being deliberately reckless.” I loomed over her, shadows gathering at my feet. “Memory magic is volatile under the best circumstances. The mind isn’t meant to have pieces carved out and shoved back in. People go mad. They lose themselves entirely. They—”

“They what?” She stood abruptly, the stool scraping against the floor. “They die? Like I almost died performing the Lifeweave Ritual? Like I could die any day being married to you?”

Her words took the breath from my lungs. “That’s different,” I growled.

“How, exactly? Because from where I’m standing, our entire relationship is built on risks you decided I should take.”

“I never—”

“Never what? Never lied to me? Never manipulated me? Never kept secrets that could destroy us both?” Her voice cracked slightly, and I saw her swallow hard. “You have no right to be angry about this. None.”

The Shadow King roared in my mind, urging me to show her exactly how much right I had, to demonstrate who held the power here. I gritted my teeth against the surge of foreign rage, focusing on the woman before me—flushed with anger, magnificent in her fury, so achingly beautiful it made my chest tight.

Part of me wanted to deny it, to deflect, to turn this into another verbal sparring match. But the fear clawing at my chest—the bone-deep terror at the thought of losing her to some back-alley magical mishap—wouldn’t let me.

I moved without thinking, crowding her against the vanity. My hands braced on either side of her, caging her in.

“You’re right.” The words came out rough, barely controlled. “Our relationship may have started on a lie. But tell me”—power radiated from me until it rattled the bottles on the table—“tell me if it still is.”

Her breath hitched. Her pupils swallowed the hazel of her eyes. The air between us crackled with magic.

“No,” she whispered.

That single word shattered what little control I had left.

I crushed my mouth to hers, pouring all my frustration and fear and need into the kiss. She responded instantly, her fingers tangling in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt. I felt a sharp pain as she bit my lower lip. Good. I wanted it to hurt. Wanted something real to cut through the voice in my head.

I lifted her onto the vanity, bottles and brushes scattering. She wrapped her legs around my waist, grinding into me, and fuck, I’d missed this. Missed her. Even when she was right there, I’d missed her like a severed limb.

This wasn’t about making up. This wasn’t about forgiveness or understanding or any of that emotional nonsense we’d been dancing around. This was about need, pure and simple. The need to claim and be claimed, to lose ourselves in something that made sense when nothing else did.

“This doesn’t fix anything,” she gasped against my mouth.

“I know.” I bit down on her lower lip, soothing it with my tongue when she hissed. “Don’t care. Just want you.” I moved lower, nipping at the tender skin of her throat. “I hate when you put yourself in danger.”

Yes. Mark her. Claim her. Make it hurt.

Once again, the whispers were getting harder to distinguish from my own thoughts.

“And I hate watching you fight battles I can’t help with,” she gasped, her head falling back to give me better access.

I stilled, my hands on her thighs. She wasn’t talking about external enemies. She’d seen the war raging in my head these past days, the way I’d been pulling away, fighting something she couldn’t name but clearly sensed.

“Arabella—”

Her hand slid between us, finding me hard through my trousers. “Whatever it is, whatever you’re not telling me”—she squeezed, making me hiss—“stop trying to protect me from it.”

I captured her wrist, but gently this time, pressing it against my chest where my heart hammered. “Some battles”—I struggled for words that wouldn’t be lies—“some battles have to be fought alone.”

“No.” Her eyes met mine, fierce and knowing. “They don’t. Not anymore.”

The fragment roared at her defiance, at her presumption, but beneath that foreign rage was my own stunned realization that as she’d been watching me struggle, she was worrying about me the way I worried about her.

“I never thought—” I started, then stopped. Never thought she’d care the same way? Never thought I was worth worrying about?