Page 52 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

Lightbringer tried to speak, blood bubbling from his lips, but whatever he wanted to say died with him.

I turned to find my father staring at me like he’d never seen me before. Covered in mud, bleeding from scratches, he looked nothing like the man who’d locked me in a tower. He looked small. Pathetic.

“Well,” Kazimir said, sounding amused. “I guess you changed your mind about keeping our knight-commander alive?”

I swiped mud from my cheek. “He annoyed me.”

“And him?” Kaz jerked his chin toward my father.

I considered it. Really considered it. It would be so easy. One gesture, one thought, and I’d never have to think about him again. Never have to wonder if keeping him alive made me weak or strong or just as cruel as he’d been.

But my hands wouldn’t move. The shadows wouldn’t rise.

I’d thought power would make me feel safe from him. But standing there, covered in mud and blood, I remembered the fourteen-year-old girl isolated from everything and everyone. The girl with stolen memories and a dead mother and a father who’d let it happen.

“No,” I said finally, the word scraping my throat. “He still has information we need.”

It was a lie, and we both knew it. I wasn’t keeping him alive for information. I was keeping him alive because I wasn’t ready.

Kazimir sighed, but there was understanding in it. “Fine. But if he escapes again, I’m feeding him to the void beasts.” He stalked toward my father, and his entire demeanor shifted. Shadows wrapped around the tree, and his voice became steel. “Did you hear that, Evenfall? The void beasts are particularly hungry this time of year. Nothing but bones left when they’re done. Sometimes not even that.”

My father pressed himself harder against the tree. He knew now—had seen what I’d become, what I was capable of. The daughter he’d locked in a tower could have killed him but didn’t.

I hoped he lay awake tonight wondering what I had in store for him instead of death.

17 Play Their Game

(When Refusal Means Death by Creative Cursing)

Kazimir

Evenfall wouldn’t stop blubbering.

The entire journey back to Skyspire, the man alternated between sniveling gratitude for our timely rescue and incoherent ramblings about how Lightbringer had “gone mad” and tried to kill him. As if I gave a single, solitary fuck about his traumatic swamp adventure.

“Please, I can be useful!” he begged as I shoved him back into a cell. “I know things—”

“You’ve been saying that for the past hour.” I slammed the cell door with a satisfying clang. “The only reason you’re still breathing is because my wife finds you marginally more valuable alive than dead.”

“Arabella—she wouldn’t—”

“Your daughter,” I said, letting ice creep into my voice, “just executed a knight-commander without blinking. I’d reconsider your assumptions about what she would or wouldn’t do.”

The memory of it sent a hot rush of desire through me. Watching her crush the life from a man who’d threatened her family, her power flaring bright and ruthless—it was the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen.

Her situation with her father, on the other hand, was going to take more time. She was still processing. And until she dealt with her past, I’d keep putting Evenfall back in his cell.

“You should have let me kill him,” I’d said to Arabella as we prepared to leave the swamp. For emphasis, I’d pushed Evenfall face-first into a foul-smelling puddle.

She’d given me a hard look, but it wasn’t condemnation. “Information first. Then you can have what’s left.”

“Promise?”

The barest twitch at the corner of her mouth was all the answer I needed. That, more than any words, told me we were fine.

The dungeons, however, were not. Griffin’s little reanimation project had been catastrophic. Containment wards were shredded. The binding matrices that kept prisoners from tapping into their magic were completely fried. At least it explained how Lightbringer had gotten as far as he had. I spent the rest of the day and most of the night rebuilding the entire security infrastructure from scratch. By the time dawn bled through the grimy high windows, the runes on my bones ached with a deep, grinding pain, and a spectacular headache was pounding behind my eyes.

Griffin, at least, had the decency to look properly terrified when I finally cornered him.