Page 230 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

“You want to know why she stayed?” I snarled. “Because she’s magnificent. Because she saw what I was and chose it anyway. Because she’s mine, and I’m hers, and you can’t comprehend that, can you? You can’t understand choosing connection over control.”

Love is control, he sneered. The ultimate dominion. She controls you even now, makes you weak, makes you—

“Makes me more than you ever were.” I was finding my footing now, remembering who I was beyond these ancient memories. Even as I begrudged the thought, I realized what Soriven had known all along. “You had power. You had fear. You had everything except the one thing that mattered.”

And what’s that?

“Someone worth fighting for.”

The words clanged through the mindscape like a badly shaped bell. The Shadow King’s beautiful visions cracked, showing the truth beneath—empty halls, silent kingdoms, the loneliness of absolute power.

You would choose her over godhood?

“Every. Fucking. Time.”

Fool!

The attack came without warning. Not visions now but pure force, the weight of centuries pressing down on my consciousness. I felt myself fragmenting, pieces of Kazimir Blackrose scattering like leaves in a storm.

But through it all, I heard her voice.

“I love you.”

The Shadow King screamed. Those three words burned through his assault. Because he couldn’t understand them. In all his centuries, he’d never felt what they meant, not even through the pieces of his consciousness that had lingered outside of the prison.

But I had. Gods help me, I had.

I thought of Arabella standing in my war room, covered in blood and defiant. I thought of her performing the Lifeweave Ritual, pouring her life into an artifact to save me. I thought of every moment she’d chosen to stay, chosen to fight beside me, chosen to see past the villain to the man.

“I love her,” I said, and the words were armor and weapon both. “I love her more than power. More than conquest. More than your promises of godhood.”

Then you deserve your fate! the Shadow King raged. You could have been eternal! You could have—

“I could have been you.” I gathered every fragment of myself, every memory that was truly mine. “Alone. Hungry. Reduced to a parasite wearing other men’s faces because you never learned the one truth that matters.”

What truth?

“Power shared is power multiplied.” By fortyfold, in my case. I smiled, feeling Arabella’s magic flowing into me, light and shadow twisted together in a way the ancient being could never replicate. “She’s not my weakness. She’s my strength. And you? You’re nothing but a ghost screaming in the dark.”

The Shadow King lunged one final time, trying to overwhelm me through sheer force. But I wasn’t fighting alone. I felt Arabella’s presence, her absolute faith that I would find my way back to her. I felt our bond, stronger than any chain, warmer than any throne.

I wrapped that feeling around myself and pushed.

The Shadow King screamed. His presence, vast and ancient and terrible, compressed down to a single point of absolute rage. For a moment, I thought he might take me with him into whatever abyss awaited.

Then he was gone. Not destroyed—I could feel him somewhere deep, a whisper in the darkest corners of my mind. But no longer in control. No longer me.

I was Kazimir Blackrose. Dark Lord of Skyspire. Husband to Arabella.

And I was myself again.

Consciousness returned swiftly. Every nerve ending screamed as I reconnected with my body. I was lying on the hard ground. My throat felt raw, as if I’d been screaming. The smell of blood and ozone filled my nostrils.

But beneath it all, I felt her. Arabella’s magic still flowing into me, her presence in our bond.

I forced my eyes open.

The first thing I saw was my Bone Behemoth towering above, its massive form swatting shadow creatures from the air like gnats. The second was Nyx, circling overhead with purple fire dripping from her jaws.