Page 48 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

The memory of those exhausting interrogations made my head ache. Hours upon hours of sitting across from terrified staff members, feeling for that telltale prickle behind my eyes that would signal a lie. None of them was the spy. They were all genuinely shocked by the attack, genuinely loyal—or at least, genuinely more afraid of the Dark Lord than the Hero’s Guild.

Which is why Kazimir decided to question the dead. He’d suggested it so casually, as if raising corpses for interrogation was as mundane as checking the weather.

I suppressed a shudder. The Necromantic Wing of the dungeons had reeked of death magic and preserving salts as Kazimir worked his necromancy on the fallen. One by one, he’d animated the bodies of those who’d died defending Skyspire—or attacking it. Their slack faces and clouded eyes had haunted my dreams that night.

“You questioned everyone except Sims,” I said.

“His loyalty was never in doubt.” Kazimir’s jaw tightened. “He died protecting the citadel. Protecting us.”

The dead had shambled forward at his command, their voices hollow echoes of what they’d been in life. Each one had denied being the spy or knowing who it was. Watching them speak, I’d felt nothing. No prickle of deception or cold tingle of lies. Just an unsettling blankness where my truth-sense usually resided.

“I still don’t know if my magic even works on the undead,” I admitted, stepping carefully around a puddle that reflected too many colors to be natural water. “For all we know, every corpse you raised could have been lying through their rotting teeth.”

“Regardless, Pip is still our likely culprit.”

“You really think that nervous kid was a spy?”

“Everyone’s a spy until proven otherwise.”

The swamp gave way to slightly firmer ground, though “firm” was relative when everything squelched. We emerged into a small clearing dominated by the twisted metal remains of what had been an elegant magical lift system. Now it looked like a giant had used it for target practice, all bent beams and shattered crystal matrices.

“I always imagined a great black void down here,” I admitted, eyeing the wreckage and thinking about how my father must have felt, plummeting through the air. I imagined his terrified face and almost smiled. “You know, befitting the whole ‘Terror of the Western Realms’ aesthetic. Speaking of which, where do you keep the void beasts?”

Kazimir’s laugh was dark and amused. “Void beasts?”

“You’re always threatening to feed people to them.”

“Ah.” He stepped over a puddle that bubbled ominously. “Arabella, my darling wife, the void beasts aren’t real.”

I blinked. “What?”

“They’re a euphemism. A colorful way of saying ‘I’m going to kill you and dispose of your body in a creative manner.’ ”

“You’re joking.” I turned to look at his face.

He still wore that amused smirk. “No.”

“But—” I stared at him. “Everyone’s terrified of them!”

“Exactly. The threat of being fed to mysterious, unknowable horrors is far more effective than simply saying ‘I’ll throw you off the battlements or separate your head from your body.’ ” Kazimir shook his head in mock-disgust. “Though I’m disappointed you didn’t figure it out sooner. I thought you’d appreciate the theatrical misdirection.”

“So what do you do for minor infractions?” I asked, resuming our trudge through the swamp. “Since you’re apparently not feeding servants to mythical creatures?”

“All villains worth their salt know that it would be terribly inefficient to keep replacing servants.” He stepped over a fallen log. “For minor infractions, I usually go with public humiliation, wage garnishment, or making them clean blood off the dungeon walls—that stone doesn’t stay polished on its own.”

We continued deeper into the swamp, with no sign of our escapees. The shadows Kazimir had sent ahead occasionally returned, whispering reports in that strange guttural language of his.

I’d never asked, but since we were sharing more these days…

“Why do you need to talk to your constructs?” I asked after another reported and then left. “I can hear what mine say in my head. And for that matter, what language is that? I’ve heard you speak it a few times now.”

Kazimir didn’t look at me, his gaze still fixed on the treacherous path ahead. “It’s the tongue of the island I grew up on with my mother. It’s what my shadows respond to.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “And I don’t need to speak it aloud. But conversing with them in my head doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to you.”

I exhaled in relief. At least it wasn’t related to the Shadow King—just a piece of Kazimir’s past he could name and understand.

Then I stopped dead. “Are you telling me there’s a type of shadow magic that I’m better at than you?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Don’t look so smug.”