Chapter 33 Dine with Villains
(and Try Not to Get Murdered over Dessert)
Kazimir
It’s called a restaurant. Fancier than inn or pub food.”
Griffin’s voice carried the particular brand of condescension reserved for explaining basic concepts to barbarians. The lift descended through the God Spire’s innards with a grinding mechanical whir that set my already frayed nerves on edge.
“I know what a restaurant is,” I said, leaning against the lift’s railing. My runes still throbbed from the ritual, a dull ache that matched the pounding in my skull. “I’ve conquered several kingdoms that had them.”
“Yes, but have you actually eaten in one?” Griffin adjusted his spectacles—a nervous habit that intensified whenever he thought he might be pushing his luck. “Without, um… executing the chef afterward?”
“That was one time.” I caught Arabella’s lips twitching in my peripheral vision. She looked equally exhausted, though she hid it better. Only I could see the slight tremor in her hands, feel the bone-deep weariness through our bond. “And there was a hair in my soufflé.”
Weak. Pathetic. In my time we would have razed the entire establishment and salted the—
I gritted my teeth, forcing the voice back down.
It had been screaming at me since we’d left the god’s skull a couple of hours ago, a relentless torrent of rage and hunger that made my own thoughts feel like whispers.
Every moment was a battle to keep it contained, to maintain the facade that everything was fine.
Everything was decidedly not fine.
Reality had reasserted itself, but the revelations kept coming. Not visions now—understanding. Like puzzle pieces clicking into place, showing me a picture I’d been too blind to see.
Skyspire had never been mine. Not really.
I’d thought I’d claimed it through conquest, through sheer force of will when I was barely more than a boy playing at being a warlord.
But now I could feel the truth thrumming through the ley lines beneath my feet: The citadel had been waiting for me.
The fragment inside me had recognized its ancient seat of power and pulled me there like a lodestone.
Every strategic decision I’d made, every seemingly brilliant tactical move—how much of that had actually been me? How much had been the Shadow King’s consciousness, dormant but not dead, guiding me toward reclaiming what it had lost?
The thought made my stomach churn.
I’d always prided myself on my cunning, my ability to see three moves ahead of my enemies.
But what if I’d never been the mastermind I thought I was?
What if I’d been a puppet dancing on strings I couldn’t see, congratulating myself on my own cleverness while something ancient pulled me exactly where it wanted me to go?
Skyspire. The obsession with Solandris that went beyond mere ambition.
The way I’d pursued the Heirloom with single-minded determination that bordered on madness.
Even my mother—gods, had she known? Is that why she’d carved those runes into my bones, trying to wake something she sensed sleeping inside me?
The Shadow King had tried before. I could feel echoes of other attempts, other lives.
Warlords and sorcerers throughout history, all touched by his essence, all drawn to Skyspire.
All failing to fully manifest his power because they lacked what I had—the Heirloom, activated by a marriage bond to Soriven’s own bloodline.
I was the closest it had come in centuries to breaking free completely.
And the worst part? I couldn’t even be certain which ambitions were mine and which were his. Did I want to conquer the Western Realms because of my own drive for power, or because the Shadow King wanted to reclaim his former dominion?
My hands clenched into fists. No. I refused to accept that everything I was could be reduced to some ancient evil’s machinations.
I was Kazimir Blackrose. I had built my empire with these hands, carved my legend with my own will.
I’d made my own choices. Killed my own father.
The fragment might have influenced me, might have amplified certain tendencies, but the core of who I was—that was mine.
The fact that some primordial essence lurked in my soul didn’t negate thirty-three years of being me.
The lift shuddered to a halt, and we spilled out into the Spire’s lower levels.
The corridors here were narrower, lit by enchanted sconces that cast dancing shadows on the walls.
That wasn’t a metaphor—the shadows were in the middle of performing a complicated and lively jig with daggers.
The place was perfect for ambushes, my mind noted automatically.
Also perfect for hiding if you were, say, a traitorous former servant with a talent for disappearing.
I’d wanted to be alone after the ritual.
Needed time to process the catastrophic revelation that something ancient and murderous had apparently been living inside me this whole time.
But being alone meant being trapped with my thoughts, and my thoughts were currently a war zone between what I knew to be true and what that thing kept insisting was real.
So instead, I’d agreed to Griffin’s suggestion of dinner near the Academia of Malice. Anything to avoid another confrontation with Arabella in the confines of our apartment. We’d managed civility during the ritual, even worked together seamlessly, but that was business. Personal was complicated.
Personal was dangerous when I couldn’t trust my own mind.
I focused on keeping my expression neutral, my breathing even. No one could know. Not about the voice, not about what I’d felt when we touched those ley lines, not about the memories that kept trying to surface.
I caught Arabella glancing at me, probably wondering why I’d insisted on dinner out when we were both dead on our feet.
I looked away before she could read too much in my expression.
She suspects. She knows. Destroy her before she—
No. Absolutely fucking not.
But gods, I was tired. Every second was a battle to shove that voice down, to keep it from bleeding through into my actions. The fragment—or shard of consciousness or whatever—wanted control. Wanted to use my power for purposes I could only glimpse in flashes of ancient memory.
“The Writhing Tentacle,” Griffin announced as we rounded a corner. “Best experimental cuisine near the Academia. They do things with transmutation magic that would make your average hedge wizard weep.”
“Experimental cuisine,” Sebastian repeated, his violet eyes widening slightly. “That sounds…”
“Potentially lethal?” Thorne suggested. My security chief had been in a foul mood all day, his search for Pip yielding nothing but dead ends and increasingly creative profanity.
“Exciting,” Sebastian finished firmly. Then, more quietly: “Though I did offer to cook.”
“Your cooking is fine,” I said, pushing through the door. My shoulders ached with tension I couldn’t release, muscles locked tight from hours of fighting my own mind. “But I needed—”
To get out. To move. To not be trapped in close quarters with her where the voice keeps screaming to either destroy her or claim her or both and I can’t tell which impulse is mine anymore—
“—a change of scenery.”
The interior was exactly what one would expect from a restaurant catering to villains with experimental tastes.
The walls were lined with preserved specimens in jars—some recognizable, most decidedly not, each labeled with helpful descriptions like “Last Thought of a Dying God” and “Weekend’s Regrets, Pickled.
” Tables floated at various heights, requiring patrons to either levitate or use the provided rope ladders.
The ceiling showed a view of a deep-sea trench, complete with tentacles occasionally pressing against the magical barrier.
A hostess with scales instead of skin and too many teeth smiled at us. “Table for five? Might I recommend the mezzanine level? Excellent view of the transmutation kitchen.”
We were seated at a table that hovered ten feet off the ground, accessible by a rope ladder that Sebastian climbed with surprising grace.
I simply levitated, as did Arabella—though I noticed she gripped the table’s edge tightly once seated.
The exhaustion from the ritual was hitting us both harder than we’d admitted.
At least focusing on mundane concerns gave me something to concentrate on besides the increasingly creative threats the fragment kept whispering about what it wanted to do to everyone in this room.
“So,” Griffin said, spreading his napkin with a flourish, “shall I order for everyone? I’ve studied the menu extensively.”
“No,” four voices said in unison.
The menu itself was a work of art. The text shifted and rearranged itself as you read, descriptions morphing from appetizing to alarming and back again. All I wanted was some godsdamned food, but I had no one to blame for this little excursion but myself.
“The appetizer sampler includes pickled demon eyes and something called ‘void-touched calamari,’ ” Griffin read excitedly.
I sighed, forcing my hands to remain steady on the table instead of clenching into fists. “Just order something that won’t actively try to escape the plate.”
“Oh, they have roasted phoenix! I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“It resurrects in your stomach,” Sebastian said quietly, reading over his shoulder. “Says so right there in the fine print.”
Griffin’s face fell. “Oh.”
I found myself watching Arabella as she studied her own menu, noting the tiny furrow between her brows. She’d pulled her hair back into a simple side braid after the ritual, baring one side of her neck.
Mine. She’s mine. Take her. Make her understand she belongs to—
I dug my nails into my palm hard enough to draw blood, using the pain to anchor myself. The voice was finding new and creative ways to twist every thought about Arabella into something possessive and dangerous.