Page 22 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

He materialized behind the commander in a swirl of darkness, one hand gripping the man’s throat. “Your men are dead,” he said simply. “Your outpost is fallen. Do you yield?”

The commander’s face contorted with hatred. “Death before surrender,” he spat.

Kazimir’s expression darkened. “As you wish.”

I felt the surge of power through our bond as Kaz ended the man’s life. One by one, the remaining soldiers dropped their weapons, finally breaking under the weight of inevitable defeat. Victory was ours—swift, brutal, complete.

An eerie quiet settled over the outpost, broken only by the groans of the dying and the crackle of a few lingering phantom fires Kazimir had yet to extinguish. His mercenaries moved through the courtyard dispatching the wounded soldiers.

Kazimir stood in the center of the carnage, a statue carved from shadow and fury. The silver light had faded from his eyes, leaving them the color of a storm-tossed sea. He turned his head, his gaze finding mine—possessive, hungry, and just a little bit proud. I felt myself flush under his scrutiny, my body responding to the unspoken promise in his eyes. Victory made him voracious, and I was more than ready to reap the rewards of our conquest.

Then the world tore apart.

It wasn’t a sound. It was the absence of sound, a pressure that sucked the air from my lungs and replaced it with something burning and foul. A dissonant chord shrieked through my body, a vibration that ran up through the soles of my boots and into the marrow of my bones.

The Heirloom seared my mind.

Dozens of voices screamed at once—not in my ears, but inside my skull. A chorus of pure, undiluted terror, the sound of souls being ripped from their mortal tethers. I saw it. A vision, stark and blinding. A flash of a golden field drenched in blood, of lives harvested like wheat, their essences siphoned into a gaping, black wound in the fabric of reality.

I staggered, my hand flying to my mouth as nausea crashed over me. The world spun, the courtyard dissolving into a smear of gray stone and crimson stains.

A scream ripped through the silence—raw, agonized, and terrifyingly close.

It was Kazimir.

I forced my eyes open, my vision swimming back into focus just in time to see him collapse. He dropped to his knees. The runes carved into his skin blazed with blinding, white-hot light, searing through his clothing and armor. His back arched, his body convulsing in agony so profound it stole his breath.

He clawed at the glowing runes, his jaw clenched so tight I heard his teeth grind. All his control, his impeccable, terrifying dominion, shattered into a million pieces.

No. Not again. I lurched toward him and fell beside him.

There we were. The conquering Dark Lord and his Lady, brought low in the heart of our first victory.

I could only do one thing. My hands were shaking so violently that instead of merely touching him, I draped my body over his and tried to help with his pain.

7 Retreat Under a Poisoned Sky

(and Other Tactical Necessities)

Kazimir

There are levels to pain, a connoisseurship one acquires with enough practice. The clean bite of a well-honed blade is a sharp, honest agony. A broken bone is a throbbing nuisance. Magical exhaustion feels like having one’s soul wrung out like a damp dishrag.

This, however, was a new vintage, and it was fucking foul.

It was a symphony of agony conducted by a mad god, and my own bones were the orchestra.

One moment, I was savoring the sublime, blood-soaked afterglow of a flawless victory, my eyes drinking in the sight of Arabella—fierce, beautiful, and terrifying. The next, the universe folded in on itself. The runes carved into my flesh and bone—the very foundation of my power—blazed with the heat of a failed star. Every sigil screamed in protest, as if my mother’s knife were at it again, digging for fresh bone to brand.

I distantly registered the battlefield. Scattered bodies, the air thick with the metallic tang of blood and conquest. Standard stuff. But the view was quickly obscured by a shimmering veil of agony as my knees decided, without consulting me, to buckle and meet the dirt.

A scream tore itself from my throat—a raw, ragged sound that stripped away every scrap of the Dark Lord’s carefully constructed terror, leaving only the primal agony beneath.

Amaryska’s face swam before my eyes. I was nine. Strapped to a stone altar in my mother’s workshop—a room that perpetually smelled of incense and my own blood. Her version of a nursery.

“Hold still, boy.” My mother’s voice, clinical and dispassionate. The blade in her hand, etched with its own glowing runes, caught the candlelight. “Power requires sacrifice, my darling,” she whispered as the blade bit deep, “and you are going to be so very powerful.”

Unconventional parenting, to be sure.