Page 168 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

Rage burned through me, hot and bright. They were going to cage her. Sell her. My dragon.

Over my dead body.

I reached out my hand to test the barrier. It sparked and gave me an unpleasant jolt, but there had to be some way… something desperate and probably stupid.

The magical barrier contained me within this dome. They hadn’t bothered to block anything else—why would they? Everyone knew portal magic took years to master. Even Kaz had said it was emergency only, a last resort if I was cornered.

Well, I was definitely cornered.

I’d managed it twice more in training after that first success—each one a little larger, a little more stable. But never under pressure. Never with my life on the line.

My hands moved before my brain could catch up, tracing the gesture Kaz had drilled into me just days ago. Three degrees off and I scatter myself across dimensions.

No time to worry about wrist angles now.

I slashed at the air. The space between here and there shimmered, reality bending in a way that made my stomach lurch. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened. Just like in training. Just like every failed attempt where Kaz had sighed and corrected my stance.

Then I felt that thin membrane between spaces that he’d described. Without his steadying presence, without his power amplifying mine, it felt like trying to thread a needle during an earthquake. The portal flickered into existence, barely large enough for me to squeeze through, its edges crackling with unstable energy.

Fuck it.

I dove through before I could second-guess myself, praying I’d calculated the exit correctly.

The world twisted, compressed, then snapped back into focus. I stumbled out behind Zaraiah and Pip as they were still watching the dragon. My knees hit sand, and every nerve screamed in protest. But I was whole. I was here, and the magical barrier they’d conjured was over there.

I’d actually done it.

Power crackled around my hands as I pushed myself up, riding the high of not having accidentally dismembered myself across three dimensions. They didn’t know how powerful I really was—hell, I hadn’t known I could pull off emergency portal magic until five seconds ago.

The shadow warriors suddenly snapped back into focus, responding to my will. They rose from every shadow, surrounding us in a ring of darkness.

Nyx’s thrashing suddenly stilled. For a heartbeat, she sagged to the sand, her scales shimmering that strange rosy pink. Then her form flickered—solid, translucent, solid again—like she couldn’t quite decide which realm to exist in.

“No,” Zaraiah breathed. “That’s not—”

With a sound like tearing silk, Nyx shifted. Not quite phasing into shadow, not quite staying corporeal. The barrier, designed to trap a being in one state or the other, couldn’t hold something that was neither and both.

It shattered in a puff of smoke, sending Zaraiah flying backward into the sand.

Nyx shrieked her fury and took to the air. She spread her wings, teeth bared, silver eyes flashing.

“The spell should have worked!” Zaraiah scrambled backward. “I modified it perfectly for—”

Nyx, wait!

My dragon pulled up inches from taking Zaraiah’s head off, hovering with slow wingbeats that sent sand swirling.

“Here’s the thing about being underestimated,” I said conversationally. “It means you’re always surprising people.”

Zaraiah spun to face me. I didn’t give her the chance to use a spell or weapon. A spear of condensed shadow took her in the shoulder, spinning her around. She hit the sand hard.

The doppelganger moved, but I was ready. Light and shadow wove together in my hands—that hybrid magic that was mine alone. It slammed into him like a wall, sending him tumbling across the beach.

“You want to talk about Kazimir’s cruelty?” I stalked toward them, power crackling around me like a violent storm. “Let me tell you what I’m capable of. I killed Hero’s Guild members without blinking. I threw Academia students out of windows for disrespecting my friend.”

Zaraiah tried to push herself up, hand pressed to her bleeding shoulder. “You’re nothing but—”

“I’m the woman who chose the Dark Lord.” I crouched beside her, voice dropping to something intimate and terrible. “Not because he seduced me. Not because he forced me. Because I looked at all that darkness, all that violence, all that magnificent villainy, and thought, ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’ ”