Page 136 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

Claimed. Possessed. Owned. These are words of power. “Love” is surrender.

The fragment was right about one thing: Saying those words would be surrender. Complete, irrevocable surrender of the last walls protecting my mind. I could feel it—how thin those defenses had become, how desperately the thing inside me wanted me to lower them completely.

Every time I looked at her, every moment of tenderness, every wall I let down for her—the Shadow King grew stronger. And if I said those words now, gave voice to the truth that was already carving itself into whatever remained of my soul…

Say it, the voice suddenly purred, shifting tactics with dizzying speed. Tell her. Open yourself completely. Let her see all of you.

The sudden reversal made my blood run cold. If the Shadow King wanted me to say it—

No. I couldn’t. Not yet. Not when I didn’t know if the man saying those words would still be me tomorrow, or something ancient and terrible wearing my face. Not when declaring my love might be the very key the Shadow King needed to finally break free.

“I hope,” I said finally, the words a poor substitute for what I really wanted to say, “that someday you’ll share some of those memories with me.”

Coward, whispered both the Shadow King and my own heart.

Arabella sighed contentedly. “I will. Someday soon.”

I kissed her forehead, but I was already making plans. This Mnemosyne person—whoever they were—had given my wife a potion that could destroy her mind. That required investigation. A memory mage powerful enough to undo deliberate suppression, operating right under the Syndicate’s nose? That didn’t happen by accident. Someone was protecting them. Someone with significant power.

I needed to know who. And more importantly, I needed to know what else they might have done to Arabella’s mind while they were in there.

The whispers agreed. Find them. Question them. Make them tell you everything.

I didn’t argue.

40 Face the Past

(Even When It Destroys You)

Arabella

The gentle sway of the Sky Serpent told me we were still airborne, though the quality of light filtering through the porthole suggested dawn wasn’t far off. We’d dock at Skyspire today. No stopping at Azroth’s Claw, but Kaz had already promised we’d return there for a real visit.

I’d woken with my arm draped across his chiseled chest, my body spooning his in a reversal of our usual position. He was still deeply asleep, his breathing steady and even, one hand loosely holding mine where it rested over his heart.

It was rare—so wonderfully rare—to wake up with him still beside me. Usually, he was up before dawn, already three schemes deep into his day while I was still trying to remember my own name. But these past two days on the ship, he’d stayed in bed with me.

We still hadn’t fully reconciled after our fight, dancing around each other with careful politeness interspersed with bouts of desperate sex. The words that needed saying remained lodged in our throats—those three little words neither of us seemed capable of uttering. But we’d found a kind of truce in the physical—in tangled limbs and shared breath and the way our magic sang when we touched.

I studied him in the pale light. Dark hair spilled across the pillow, longer than I was used to seeing it. It matched the short beard he’d grown during our journey, making him look more like a pirate king than a Dark Lord.

What goes on in that gorgeous, complicated head of yours? Unable to resist, I ran my fingers through his soft hair. My gaze traveled lower, tracing the curve of his shoulder and the muscles that corded beneath his skin.

I pressed a kiss to one of the runes on his back, feeling the slight raised texture against my lips. His skin was warm, almost feverish, but that was normal for him. The bone-deep magic that powered him ran hot.

Pressing my forehead against his back, I breathed him in—winter storms and steel, with that underlying note of clove that was uniquely his. For a moment, I let myself pretend this was simple. That we were just a married couple waking up together, with nothing more complicated than breakfast to worry about.

The Heirloom had other ideas.

A sharp pulse of energy shot through my skull, making me wince. It didn’t like when I got too close to him now, as if it sensed something dangerous in our connection.

Fuck off, I thought.

I carefully extracted myself from the bed, and he made a soft sound of protest.

The last two days on the Sky Serpent had been nice. Not the tense, silent affair I’d feared. Our friends had stopped tiptoeing around us, though I’d caught Thorne giving us the side-eye when Kaz and I emerged from our cabin looking thoroughly disheveled.

At least Captain Brecca hadn’t started a betting pool this time.