Page 161 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

Amaryska turned in a slow circle.

My shadows deepened instinctively, wrapping tighter around my form until I was less a person and more an absence of light. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought she’d spotted me. But her gaze passed over my hiding spot without pause.

“Send word to His Majesty,” she commanded. “Someone is collecting bloodlines. Someone with significant shadow magic capabilities.”

Someone. Not my son. Did she know? Of course she knew. Amaryska was never a fool.

“The Dark Lord?” the eager mage suggested.

“Possibly.” She tilted her head—that same gesture she’d made while deciding which bone to carve next. “Double the collection teams,” she ordered. “And send scouts to check the other kingdoms. If someone is collecting them…”

“They’re planning something,” the second mage finished.

“Or preventing something.” Uncertainty flickered in her voice. “We will return to the capital. I need to consult the old texts.”

They left, my mother’s gray robes disappearing into the darkness.

I released my hold on the shadows and remained on the rooftop. My hands were shaking.

She was hunting the same bloodlines. Which meant Auremar was planning another ritual sooner than we thought. We’d been right to act quickly.

The runes in my bones burned hotter. All of them now, not just the shoulder blade. A symphony of remembered agony.

You’re not seven. You’re not twelve. You’re not seventeen and bleeding in a demon’s lair.

I was thirty-three. The Dark Lord of Skyspire. I’d killed my father at his own dinner table. I’d escaped a demon that should have broken me.

My mother was just another enemy. Another obstacle to remove.

Except my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

A clock tower chimed somewhere in the distance. Time to return to Skyspire. To sort our rescued bloodlines and plan the next move. To hold my wife and tell her that her mother’s killer was my mother.

I couldn’t keep that from Arabella any longer.

I raised my hand to tear open a portal back to Thorne—

“I knew it was you.”

The voice slithered from the darkness behind me, and every muscle in my body locked.

Not metaphorically. Not feeling frozen. Actually, physically unable to move.

Turn around. Face her. Kill her.

Nothing happened.

I heard her footsteps. Soft. Measured. Twelve steps to my door.

Move. MOVE.

“Still so dramatic.” The footsteps stopped. She was close enough that I could smell her, and it made me feel sick. “Though I suppose I taught you that.”

My body finally obeyed, turning slowly.

Amaryska stood at the rooftop’s edge, gray robes rippling in the evening breeze. The red stitching looked like fresh wounds in the moonlight.

“Amaryska.” The Dark Lord spoke through my mouth, cold and controlled. (The child underneath was screaming.) “I thought you were dead.”