Page 138 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

“Memory?” he asked quietly when the worst of the storm had passed.

I nodded against his chest, not trusting my voice yet.

“Your mother?”

Another nod. He made a low sound of understanding, his arms tightening. We stayed like that for long minutes, my tears soaking his chest while he offered the kind of quiet support I’d never expected from the Dark Lord of Skyspire.

Finally, when I could breathe without hitching, I pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “I saw her before. The sorceress who killed my mother. I saw her days earlier, at the palace.”

His expression darkened, shadows literally gathering in his eyes. “Tell me.”

So I did. I told him about wandering where I shouldn’t have, about the strange corridor and the woman in gray robes with red stitching. About the way she’d looked at me like I was a particularly interesting specimen.

Kazimir’s arms tightened around me. “Gray and red,” he repeated, his voice carefully neutral. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. And I was wearing a ring,” I whispered, touching my bare finger where the ring had once sat. “The night she died, I was wearing my mother’s ring. The one she’d just given me.”

Kazimir’s jaw clenched, and I felt his magic pulse with barely controlled fury. But his touch remained gentle as he wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“It’s connected, isn’t it?” My voice cracked on the words I’d been afraid to voice. “The sorceress saw me that day, and then a few days later she came for me and… my mother tried to stop her. What if”—I had to stop, swallow hard before I could continue—“what if my mother died because I went wandering where I shouldn’t? Because I drew that woman’s attention?”

The question hung between us, heavy with guilt and grief. I searched Kazimir’s face, desperate for him to tell me I was wrong, that it was just coincidence, that a fourteen-year-old girl’s curiosity hadn’t signed her mother’s death warrant.

But Kazimir had never lied to make me feel better, and he didn’t start now.

His silence was answer enough.

41 Accept Help from Heroes

(Even When It Physically Pains You)

Kazimir

Pass the jam, would you?” Sebastian asked Vex, who was seated across from him at the war room table.

The massive obsidian surface—the one Arabella and I had destroyed and subsequently replaced—was currently covered in an incongruous spread of breakfast foods. Scones (Sebastian’s contribution that I refused to eat on principle), bacon, eggs, and Griffin’s very first attempt at pancakes that had somehow achieved sentience and were trying to escape their plate.

“Raspberry or blackberry?” Vex asked.

“Raspberry, please. Though they’re both excellent. Who made these?”

“—and then,” Griffin continued, gesticulating wildly with a piece of bacon, “this apprentice applicant writes that his greatest magical achievement was ‘successfully animating his grandmother’s dentures to bite his uncle at a family dinner.’ Can you imagine?” He turned to Sebastian with a grin. “I mean, points for creativity, but that’s not exactly what we’re looking for in a citadel enchanter.”

Sebastian laughed, nearly dropping jam onto his shirt. “Are you going to accept him?”

“Of course not.” Griffin paused with his bite of wriggling pancake halfway to his mouth, then added sheepishly, “Though I did ask for details on that spell matrix. Purely for academic purposes.”

I listened to this exchange while pretending to study the maps spread between the food. Griffin had clearly overcome his hero worship somewhere on our journey and was now treating Sebastian like an old friend rather than a deity to be revered from afar.

“The kitchen staff made them,” Vex replied to Sebastian’s earlier question. “Though I did suggest adding cardamom to the blackberry. It pairs well with the fruit’s natural tartness.”

“Brilliant!” Sebastian beamed. “There’s this little bakery in—”

“For fuck’s sake,” Thorne interrupted, stabbing a sausage. “We get it. You like jam. Some of us are trying to eat without a side of courtship rituals.”

“No one’s forcing you to listen,” Vex said mildly, though I caught the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You could always take your breakfast elsewhere.”

“And miss whatever chaos is about to unfold?” Thorne gestured at the room with his fork. “Not a chance. Besides, someone needs to make sure the pretty lord doesn’t accidentally seduce half the citadel with his earnest appreciation of preserves.”