Page 217 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

My truth-sense confirmed the guard was telling the truth. “How do we get there?”

“A tunnel,” the guard whimpered. “From the old temple ruins on the north side of the fields. But it’s heavily guarded, and the entrance is warded.”

Sebastian stepped forward, his expression grim. “The Chamber of Petals. It’s an ancient site used for ceremonies involving the Golden Roses since the time of the First Hero.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You know about this?”

He nodded.

I turned to Thorne and jerked my head toward the guards. He moved swiftly among the bound guards, slitting their throats one by one. The last one, the one who had spoken, stared at me with wide, betrayed eyes as Thorne approached.

Sebastian made a small noise of protest, but it was half-hearted at best. I glanced at him, surprised by his lack of resistance.

“What?” I asked as Thorne finished his work. “No lecture about mercy or the sanctity of life?”

Sebastian’s expression was troubled, but there was a hardness in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “We’re at war,” he said simply. “And I’ve seen what Auremar is willing to do. Some lines can’t be uncrossed.”

I studied him for a moment, wondering what exactly had happened to change the gentle boy I’d known into this grimly practical man. But there was no time to dwell on it. “If they’ve moved the prisoners to the ritual chamber, they must be planning to use them sooner than we thought.”

“The temple ruins are at least a mile north of here,” Sebastian said. “And if the guard was telling the truth, the entrance will be heavily defended.”

“Then we’ll fight our way through,” I replied, shadows coiling around my hands in anticipation. “The time for stealth is over.”

Through our bond, I felt a surge of dark triumph from Kazimir, followed by a wave of something wilder. He was fully in his element now, reveling in the battle. The sensation was both thrilling and concerning—there was an edge to his emotions that felt almost foreign.

I pushed the worry aside. Kazimir could handle himself.

“Let’s go,” I said, heading for the cellar stairs.

We moved through the palace with less caution now, our pace quickening. The few guards we encountered were dealt with swiftly—Sebastian’s plant magic or my shadows binding them, Thorne’s blades finishing them off.

I felt a strange exhilaration as we fought our way forward. The power of the Heirloom hummed through me, amplifying my magic to levels that would have terrified me just months ago.

The feeling of power from the ley lines all the way from beneath the God Spire was intoxicating, and I wondered what it would feel like to draw on the ones beneath Solandris.

We burst through a side door and into the palace grounds. The north temple ruins were visible in the distance, a crumbling structure of white stone set at the edge of what had once been the Golden Rose Fields. Now the fields were a blackened wasteland.

Once again, the sight of the devastation hit me harder than I expected. The Golden Roses had been the pride of Solandris, their beauty legendary throughout the realms. To see them reduced to this…

“Auremar has much to answer for,” I murmured. Beside me, Sebastian let out a long exhale.

“Tell me about this Chamber of Petals,” I said as we moved quickly across the scorched earth.

“All those with heroic bloodlines learn of it eventually,” he said, his voice tight. “It’s where the traditional harvesting rituals are performed—where those of us with the First Hero’s blood feed drops of our life force into the roses during harvest to ensure they bloom again and their essence remains potent. The ceremony’s supposed to follow the ancient forms exactly, renewing the magic with each generation. I remember going with my mother when I turned sixteen.”

I glanced at Sebastian, who gave me an apologetic look. I’d never had the same opportunity with my mother.

His expression darkened. “Though looking back, Auremar had already started changing things—drawing more blood than tradition called for, harvesting out of season, pushing for higher yields.”

I noticed he wasn’t rhyming. Whatever was running through his head, it wasn’t panic.

As we neared the ruins, the true scale of the defenses became clear. We dropped into a crouch behind the blackened remains of what had once been an ornamental hedge, using it for cover.

A contingent of guards stood at the temple entrance, at least twenty of them, along with what appeared to be three mages in the distinctive gold-trimmed robes of the Royal Arcanum.

“That’s a lot of security for some ruins,” Thorne observed drily.

“Obviously our captives are there,” I said.