Page 237 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

Creatures of contract had rules. Rules could be exploited. I forced myself to nod. “What terms?”

“Simple ones. You release me from my prison—completely and without tricks. In exchange, I leave your wife’s body intact and relatively unharmed. Everyone gets what they want.”

“Define ‘relatively unharmed.’ ”

“Well, possession does leave its marks.” Her left eye twitched violently. “She might have a few lingering effects. Nothing fatal, I assure you. Probably.”

The Alchemist made a sound of disgust. “You’re making a deal with the architect of suffering itself. This won’t end well.”

“It’s already not ending well,” I barked. “At least this way, she lives.”

“If he keeps his word.”

“I always keep my word,” the Shadow King said, and for a moment, genuine offense flickered across Arabella’s features. “I’m not some common villain who breaks bargains for sport. I have standards.”

Her fingers clenched again, drawing more blood.

I looked at her face, cataloging every micro-expression. The way her jaw clenched between words. The rapid eye movements that didn’t match the Shadow King’s speech patterns. The slight tremor in her left hand that came in waves—fighting to surface, being pushed down, fighting again.

She was still in there. Still fighting. Still mine.

For a moment—just a moment—I thought I saw a bit of her flicker in those hazel eyes. A plea. A warning. Or maybe just my own desperate hope.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

The Alchemist sighed, a sound like wind through empty halls. “Then we’re all damned.”

“We were damned the moment Auremar started his rituals,” I corrected. “This is just choosing which hell we burn in.”

The Shadow King smiled with Arabella’s lips, but her eyes—I took a shuddering breath.

Her eyes screamed a warning I was already choosing to ignore.

70 Confess Your Feelings

(Then Put Her in a Coma)

Kazimir

The weight of what I’d just agreed to crashed over me. Free the Shadow King. Save Arabella. Doom the world.

Simple math, really.

“Excellent choice,” the Shadow King said through Arabella’s lips, but her left eye twitched violently mid-word. “Now, shall we discuss the specifics? The anchors are already weakened, but—”

“Shut the fuck up.” I needed to think. How exactly does one free an ancient entity from a prison designed by the First Hero? Destroy the Heirloom? No—we’d need it to fight him later. Besides, the damned thing was still fused to Arabella’s head, pulsing with that sickening dark light.

The Alchemist watched me with disapproval radiating from every inch of their body. “You’re actually considering this madness.”

“I’m not considering anything. I’ve decided.” I studied Arabella’s possessed form, watching the micro-rebellions of her body against the Shadow King’s control. A finger spasm here, a shoulder jerk there. She was still fighting. “But I need somewhere secure to keep her while I figure out the logistics.”

“Keep me?” The Shadow King laughed, and Arabella’s throat convulsed mid-sound. “I’m not a pet to be kenneled, boy.”

Boy. The condescension in that single word made my teeth grind. But I had bigger problems than my pride.

Where could I put her that would be secure enough? The dungeons were out of the question—the dark magic there might strengthen the Shadow King and hinder Arabella. The war room was too central and not secure enough. Our private chambers held too many memories, too many ways for the Shadow King to twist our intimacy into weapons.

Then it hit me. The one place in Skyspire even I rarely ventured. The structure that had resisted every attempt at renovation when I first conquered the citadel, where workers experienced strange accidents and tools broke inexplicably. I’d tested whether that resistance could be useful and discovered it was exceptional at containing dangerous magical items. I’d repurposed it as a vault for things too dangerous to destroy—cursed artifacts, failed experiments, unstable magical items.