Page 47 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

I pulled out my new leathers—the latest ones Kaz had commissioned for me, reinforced with protective enchantments and flexible enough for light combat. They’d just arrived, and I was looking forward to trying them out. Instead of blue like the last ones, these were black with silver buckles that were enchanted so they didn’t catch the light. Stealth leathers. “Going soft on me? The terrifying Dark Lord I married would have already mounted their heads on pikes.”

“Must be your terrible influence.” His tone was dry, but I caught affection beneath it. “I didn’t used to keep prisoners long enough for them to escape. They were either immediately useful or already dead.”

The word “prisoners” made my stomach twist. That’s what my father was now. What I’d made him. Just like he’d made me one.

“And what was Griffin thinking?” I pulled off my dress. My fingers fumbled with the clasps on the leathers, and I had to try twice before getting them open. “Showing off necromancy to Sebastian of all people?”

“Hero worship,” Kazimir snorted. “Literally, in this case.”

I paused, halfway into my leather pants. “That man could probably make friends with a basilisk.”

“Don’t give him ideas.”

I struggled with a particularly stubborn buckle, cursing under my breath.

“Need assistance?” Kaz pushed off from the bed. “Or is your intention to let our escapees go free?”

“I can dress myself, thank you very much.” But my fingers slipped again. “Fuck.”

He crossed the room and batted my hands away with surprising gentleness. His fingers replaced mine at the buckle.

“Arms up,” he murmured, his breath ghosting across my collarbone as he worked the stubborn leather into place.

I obeyed, watching his face. The concentration there, the care in each movement made my pulse quicken. I blinked, and he was done.

“There.” His hands lingered at my waist, thumbs tracing the edge of the leather. “Ready to hunt?”

A few minutes later, Kaz’s portal spat us out into ankle-deep swamp water. The smell hit next—rot, stagnant water, and something metallic.

“Delightful,” I muttered, pulling my foot free from the mud with a wet squelch.

Above the twisted trees, the storm clouds beneath Skyspire churned endlessly, occasionally lit by flashes of lightning that revealed nothing but clouds and dark floating rock.

Kazimir raised his hand, and shadows peeled away from him. They formed into sleek wolves, ravens, and serpents before dispersing into the murk. The display sent an involuntary shiver down my spine, equal parts fear and something considerably less appropriate for our current situation.

“What exactly lives down here?” I asked, turning in a circle to look at the gnarled trees and clinging fog.

“The magic from Skyspire affects everything below. Mutates it. Makes it unpredictable.”

A branch cracked somewhere to our left, and I instinctively summoned a shadow blade into my hand. The reminder of my power was comforting. Not like the helplessness that kept trying to claw its way up my throat.

Kaz turned to the south. “Stay alert. I don’t want you eaten by an overgrown deer with fangs.”

“You say the sweetest things.” We picked our way through the swamp, following what might have been a path if you squinted and had a generous definition of the word. “How do you even know where they landed?”

“Educated guess based on the Tempest Cage positions and wind patterns.” He gestured ahead where the trees thinned slightly. “They should have bounced somewhere near the old emergency ascension system.”

“The one the Hero’s Guild used to attack us? We still don’t know who told them about it.” The thought had been gnawing at me since the attack. “Who the spy was—or is.”

Better to think about spies than about my father and the last time I’d seen him—during that interrogation weeks ago. I’d walked away from that room and hadn’t looked back. Hadn’t visited. Hadn’t even asked Kazimir what he’d done with him beyond “put him in a cell.”

Like my father had done to me.

“All these weeks later, and we’ve still not heard from Pip,” Kazimir said, ducking under a low-hanging branch that dripped something viscous and green. “He’s the only one unaccounted for.”

I picked my way through the muck, remembering those frantic days after the attack. “We questioned everyone who survived.” A beetle with too many legs scuttled across the water away from me. “Every servant, every guard, every kitchen boy who could still draw breath.”

And I’d used my truth-sense on all of them.