Garden of Serpents (The Demon Queen Trials #3)(35)

Glowing, I felt a primal connection to the world around me—to the generations of mortals and demons who’d come before me, who’d grown from the forest soil, then fed it with their bodies. The night spread its shadowy mantle, and I breathed in the humid, ancient air of the woods. This was where the Lilu belonged—in the wild.

Magic slid around me as I neared the end of the spell. But unwelcome memory started to intrude along with it: Orion’s fingers tightening around me as he hoisted me up against the bedpost to kiss me hard. That deep, sensual kiss was too powerful for me to think of—

I tried to push the lust to the back of my skull.

“Chemosh,” I said, completing the spell once again.

Light poured from me, and I tried to dampen the ardor of my emotions by thinking of the worst day of my life. But I felt like I could smell him now, the scent of burnt cedar wrapping around me. His skin tinged with gold.

Orion’s eyes were on me as I leaned back on the bed, darkening because he liked what he saw. He was about to lose control of himself…

What are you so afraid of?

You.

Distantly, I heard Shai calling my name. But I wasn’t in her world anymore. My body grew hotter, brighter. Shaking with the power of the stars, until my mind no longer formed words. I lived in a world of light now.

But I no longer knew where my feet met the earth, or if I had a body at all.





*



I woke in Orion’s arms, to the sound of him swearing. When I opened my mouth to say something to him, I couldn’t remember how to speak, or how I got here. I only knew that I needed to heal, and that I craved his body on mine.

Delirious, I kept my eyes on his square jaw until I could no longer remember his name.





19





ORION





I held Rowan in my arms, carrying her into my room. As soon as I’d seen the searing burst of light from the wilderness, panic had begun to claw at my mind. I’d raced through the skies, only to find her in a clearing of dust and ashes. The air still shimmered with gold around her.

Her magic had consumed a large circle of trees, and she lay in the center of it all, her clothing destroyed by the force of chaos. For a moment, I’d been so stunned by the sight of her lying naked on the earth that I could hardly think straight. But once I’d realized how badly she needed me, my thoughts became crystal clear.

I couldn’t sense her soul.

She was clearly here—I could see her, feel her weight in my arms, smell her scent of ripe cherries with the mossy scent of the forest still clinging to her skin. Her chest rose and fell with each breath. But I couldn’t sense her life. Normally, I could feel her energy, but like the music of the spheres—or an air conditioner that suddenly switched off—it was hard to notice a constant presence until it went silent.

Rowan’s energy had been like that, I think since even before I’d met her. Maybe since she’d been born—my twin star, a vibrating, humming power just at the outer edges of my consciousness.

When the mob had hanged her in the underworld, I’d felt the same dreadful quiet. Fear had stilled my heart.

Now, I laid her gently on my bed, and her arms flopped over her head. Her hair fanned out above her, billowing like a mermaid’s. Or like Ophelia in the paintings after she drowned herself with a kingdom at stake. With the mad, murderous prince Hamlet driving her insane…

Regret tightened my throat.

Fuck. I was the mad, murderous prince. And this is what I’d wrought. I should have been there for her always instead of throwing her out of the city walls.

Rowan had been so ferocious when she’d tossed down the gauntlet, and now she looked so delicate—alabaster skin, narrow wrists. Her calves and back were smeared with dirt.

Rowan had used all her Lightbringer power at once, holding nothing back.

Kasyade and Legion weren’t proper teachers. They were reckless arseholes so convinced of their own righteousness.

But it wasn’t their fault Rowan didn’t believe me. The sad truth was I was the one who’d convinced her not to trust me. I was the one who’d pushed her away because I was so afraid of losing someone again.

She knew that someone like me would cheat and steal to get the vengeance I’d promised to Ashur.

What she didn’t know was that I prized something else above the throne right now. It wasn’t revenge, either.

I just wanted her to open her fucking eyes and look at me.

She consumed me, and right now, nothing else meant anything anymore.

Raw fear replaced my anger, and fear was the one thing I couldn’t really deal with. This was exactly what I’d hoped to avoid with Rowan, why I’d pushed her away—the dizzying terror of losing someone you cared about. I wanted to avoid that particular horror again, the one that had devoured me so completely, the one that had broken me until I no longer really knew who I was.

I touched her chest, just between her breasts. Whatever light remained inside her was now just a guttering lick of flame. Darkness and chaos swirled around it. That light would be gone for good unless I could heal her soon.

If I fucked this up, she’d be lost to me for eternity to the chaos inside.

A wave of my hand brought the candles in my room blazing to life—I still preferred them to electric lights. And I needed to stoke those flames inside her now, just like that. The Lilu healed by feeding off lust, but it had to be done properly.