Page 76 of The Dark Lord’s Guide to Honeymooning (and Other Acts of Tyranny)

22 Behold Cosmic Horror

(While Accepting Mysterious Delays)

Arabella

The Lawless Expanse stretched beneath us like a festering wound on the world’s surface. Where Solandris had golden fields and Kazimir’s territories boasted dramatic mountain ranges and forests, this place was a patchwork of scorched earth, toxic swamps, and settlements that sprouted like mushrooms after rain—quick to grow, quicker to die. The air itself felt thick with competing magics that made my skin prickle and the Heirloom pulse against my skull.

“I’m dying.” Sebastian moaned from where he’d collapsed against a coil of rope. His normally perfect long hair was frizzy from repeated washings to remove the vomit, and the flowers that had bloomed so cheerfully yesterday now drooped pathetically around him. “This is it. This is how I meet my end. Not in glorious battle, not saving innocents, but because I threw pickled organs while drinking pirate moonshine.”

Griffin sat beside him, his long limbs folded like a grasshopper’s, looking equally miserable. His glasses were askew, and he kept wincing at the morning light. “The theoretical applications of organ aerodynamics seemed so important last night.”

“You tried to write a thesis proposal on the back of a navigation chart after dinner,” Thorne reminded him. He stood at the rail, irritatingly unaffected by last night’s festivities. “The captain had to pry it from your hands.”

“It was groundbreaking work,” Griffin mumbled. “I think my brain is trying to escape through my eye sockets.”

I took pity on them. “Would you like me to fix that?”

Sebastian’s head snapped up so fast he immediately regretted it, groaning and clutching his temples. “You can cure hangovers?”

“Of course.” I moved toward him, flexing my fingers. “It’s a simple enough spell.” I’d healed Kaz and myself last night before bed.

The golden light that poured from my hands made them both flinch, but within seconds, their expressions shifted from misery to wonder. Sebastian’s eyes cleared, the green tinge leaving his complexion. Griffin straightened, adjusting his glasses properly for the first time this morning.

“Oh,” Sebastian breathed. “Oh, that’s magnificent.”

“I could kiss you,” Griffin said, then immediately turned crimson. “I mean—not actually—that would be inappropriate—Lord Blackrose would murder me—”

“Yes, I would,” Kazimir said as he came up behind me, though his tone was more amused than threatening. The incident with Nyx last night had put him in a fantastic mood.

But this morning, he’d returned to his full Dark Lord persona—long black coat billowing dramatically despite the lack of wind, shadows curling at his feet, expression carved from stone and a flash of silver in his stormy irises. Yesterday’s playful husband had been packed away with the pickled organs. But I knew better. I could see the slight quirk at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes softened when they landed on me.

This version of him—dangerous and commanding—was just as attractive as the one who’d gotten semi-drunk and thrown organs at boxes.

“There,” Kazimir said, pointing ahead. “The God Spire.”

It wasn’t a tower in any conventional sense. It was a spine. A massive, glistening black spine that plunged down from the heavens like a stake driven through the mountain’s heart.

As the Sky Serpent approached, I saw more details. The corpse was inverted with its head buried somewhere in the stone below while its grotesque pelvic girdle crowned the summit.

The closer we got, the more wrong it became. Multiple empty hip sockets served as balconies and docking ports. Each vertebra was the size of a small fortress with windows dotting the spine at irregular intervals. Great ribs curved out of the spine, supporting even more platforms and buildings. Bridges of bone and metal connected different sections, and I could see figures moving across them—some humanoid, others decidedly not.

And the whole thing crackled with an eerie, purple-green light that seemed to originate from deep within the bones themselves.

“What in the nine hells?” I whispered.

“The corpse of a forgotten god,” Kazimir said matter-of-factly. “Slain in a primordial war, or so the story goes. The Syndicate built their headquarters inside and around it.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the grotesque, magnificent structure. “It’s…”

“Practical.” He shrugged. “Divine corpses are nearly impenetrable by conventional magic. Perfect for housing secrets.”

A deep, resonant sound rolled across the landscape—something between a groan and a sigh.

Sebastian was gaping. “It’s breathing?”

“Yes,” Kaz confirmed. “About once every hour. The resonating chimes inside the god’s corpse mimic deep, unsettling breaths. Some say it’s just the wind through the hollow chambers. Others believe the god isn’t quite as dead as advertised.”

“Power like that doesn’t just disappear,” Griffin said, though he looked unsettled.