Page 147 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

“This is kidnapping!”

“Preventative custody,” Thorne and I said in unison.

Brightwater looked between us, clearly searching for options. Finding none, he deflated. “Can I at least leave a note for my secretary?”

“No.” I was already weaving the sleep spell, subtle threads of shadow magic designed to induce unconsciousness. No point in having him cause a scene. “Take a deep breath, Lord Brightwater. This will be much easier if you don’t fight it.”

His eyes widened as the magic took hold. “You can’t just—”

He slumped forward. I caught him before he could brain himself on the desk.

“One down,” Thorne said, already pulling out a pre-prepared sack. We’d learned after the third rescue at the border town of Goldmar that unconscious nobles were much easier to transport when properly packaged. “Where next?”

“The Fekete twins. They run a healing clinic in the lower district.” I glanced at Sebastian’s additions to the list. “Apparently, they also make excellent jam. Sebastian was very specific about that detail.”

I opened another portal, this one leading to an abandoned warehouse we’d designated as our collection point. No sense in dragging unconscious bodies all over Kheldvar. Thorne hoisted Brightwater over his shoulder and deposited him inside.

The route to the healing clinic took us through Kheldvar’s notorious Crow’s Nest district—a vertical slum where buildings clung to the cliff face in defiance of gravity and common sense. Unfortunately, it was also heavily patrolled.

“City watch ahead.” Thorne nodded toward a pair of guards checking papers at a bridge checkpoint.

We could turn back, find another route through the Crow’s Nest. But that would add an hour to our timeline, and I had a dozen more targets to collect before nightfall. I sighed. “I don’t suppose they’d accept a bribe?”

“You could try.”

We approached casually, keeping our hoods low. The guards—one veteran with a scarred face, one fresh-faced youth who couldn’t be more than eighteen—barely glanced up.

“Papers,” the veteran grunted.

“We don’t have any.”

The veteran’s hand moved to his sword hilt—a trained response, nothing personal. But the young one made a fatal mistake. His eyes widened as he caught sight of my face beneath the hood.

“By the First Hero, you’re—”

No choice now. The moment my name left his lips, every guard in a three-block radius would converge.

Two shadow spears, two bodies. I was getting quite efficient at this.

“You know,” Thorne observed as I dissolved the corpses, “at this rate, Kheldvar’s going to have a significant guard shortage.”

“They should invest in better training. Specifically, a ‘Don’t Stare at Dangerous Villains’ course.”

“You could have tried the bribe,” Thorne pointed out mildly.

“And when they inevitably refused and recognized me anyway?” We crossed the bridge. “This was always going to end one way. How many is that now?”

“Seven, including the warehouse guard.”

“Still better than that time in Drakenhold when I had to kill the entire palace guard because one of them recognized my boots.”

“To be fair, those were very distinctive boots.”

The Fekete twins were, predictably, in the middle of treating a patient when we arrived. A young boy with scales covering his body lay on their examination table, his mother wringing her hands next to him.

I strode into the clinic with an announcement. “This establishment is temporarily closed.”

The twins—identical women in their thirties with prematurely gray hair—looked up in perfect synchronization. It was creepy as hell.