Page 49 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

“I am absolutely going to look smug.” A wide, triumphant grin spread across my face. “The great and terrible Kazimir Blackrose has to mumble sweet nothings to his shadow puppets, while I can hold entire silent conversations with mine. I am a prodigy.”

“They aren’t puppets,” he growled, though there was no real heat behind it. “And you aren’t a prodigy.”

“Admit it. You’re impressed. Maybe even a little turned on.”

His smirk was a slow, crooked smile. “I’m always a little turned on when it comes to you, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Before I could come up with a suitably flippant reply, a guttural snarl ripped through the air. A creature burst from the overgrown reeds to our right. It might have been a boar once, but now it was a lurching horror of knotted muscle and overlapping tusks, with patches of sickly green crystal growing out of its hide.

It charged.

I didn’t even have to think. I threw out a hand, and a wall of thick, tar-like shadow erupted from the ground, slick and impassable. The beast hit it with a wet smack and stumbled, its hooves sliding in the mud. In that split second of confusion, a spear of solidified darkness launched from Kazimir’s side and buried itself in the creature’s thick skull. It dropped without another sound.

Just as the adrenaline began to fade, more rustling came from the trees. Two more of the mutated boars emerged, followed by a pack of skeletal, six-legged wolves with glowing red eyes and a fluttering of overgrown bats above.

“The welcoming party,” Kazimir muttered, shadows coiling around him. “I thought we would have encountered them before now.”

This time, I stepped forward and let my power surge. The shadows at my feet swelled, growing into monstrous parodies of the creatures before us. A towering wolf of living darkness, its teeth impossibly long and sharp, rose beside me. Shadowy serpents bigger than trees uncoiled from the ground, their eyeless heads weaving through the air. I didn’t send them to attack. I just let them exist—a silent, overwhelming promise of annihilation.

The mutated creatures skidded to a halt. They stared at my horrors, then at each other, a primal intelligence warring with their aggression. After a tense moment, the lead boar snorted, backed away, and the entire nightmarish menagerie melted back into the swamp.

My constructs dissolved into ordinary shadows.

“They’ll just come back,” Kazimir noted drily.

I shrugged, wiping a splash of mud from my cheek. “There was no reason to kill them. They’re just defending their territory.”

He shot me an incredulous look. “You have no trouble killing your enemies in battle, but you spare the rabid swamp beasts?”

“I’m complicated,” I shot back, “or hadn’t you noticed?”

Shaking his head once again, he stepped around the dead boar. “I suppose the mutant beasts are good security for the swamp. With any luck, they’ve already devoured Evenfall and Lightbringer.”

My stomach twisted. How would I feel if something had already happened to my father?

“So what’s the plan when we find them?” I asked, sidestepping something smelly and purple. “Assuming they’re even together.”

“Kill them.”

“Kaz—”

“What?”

“My father knows things. About what happened when my mother died, about Auremar’s plans—” The words tumbled out, desperate justification for something I hadn’t even decided yet.

“Your father is a lying sack of shit.”

I ducked under a low-hanging branch. “And Lightbringer could be leverage.”

“I’m not in the mood to entertain Lightbringer any longer.” Kazimir stopped walking and turned to face me, his expression one of barely contained irritation. “You want to keep the man who led an assault on our home as a pet?”

“I want to be smart about this. You’re the one always going on about thinking three moves ahead.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s different.”

“How?”

He took a step closer, shadows darkening the path. “Because I’m not emotionally compromised by familial connections to manipulative bastards.”