Lord of Embers(The Demon Queen Trials #2)(15)

She was taking over every one of my thoughts. She was a wildfire burning through my skull until I could hardly think with my own words anymore.

Now, I could only hear the things she’d said. Why don’t you start by ad mittin g th e tru th to you rself? Some part of you actu ally likes me…

Letting her live was a betrayal to all the Lilu she had killed. One by one, they’d been led to their deaths in silence under the ground because of her.

Isn ’t th ere an y tin y spark in sid e you r sou l th at tells you I migh t n ot be h er?

Fuck.

All I had to do was end her life. Instead, I was letting her sleep in the same apartment as me. Despite my oath to the dead, I was going along with her plan. She’d incinerated my own thoughts the first time I’d kissed her—back when we were supposed to be pretending, in the Temple of Ishtar. And now my mind wasn’t my own anymore. She’d become my obsession.

Since I could not bring myself to kill her, the next best thing was to destroy whatever we’d had between us.

With several brutal insults, I’d burned it all. There you have it—a sacrifice on the altar of the dead. Maybe that offering would appease them for what I was doing now, failing in the mission they’d given me.

I’d promised them I would kill her. I’d promised Ashur.

I fin d you ted iou s an d path etic.

I stretched my arms above my head and listened to the sound of Mortana rolling over in the bed upstairs. Was she having a hard time sleeping, too?

I kept thinking about the perfect curve of her ass in that sheer white dress, the way her hips swayed when she walked.

As a demon, she moved differently than she had before, smoother and more elegantly now.

Gods, I wanted her naked in my bed, but these thoughts were a betrayal to the dead, and I would no longer allow myself to indulge.

I clenched my fist, letting my claws pierce my palm to distract myself with the pain. I would think of the throne, the crown, nothing but the vengeance that had been my lifeblood. I absolutely would not think of her, or how it would feel to have her full red lips wrapped around my cock.

I closed my eyes.

Remember th e past. Remember w h y you are alive.

Every morning, when I’d woken in the dungeon, I’d looked around at the four small walls of my cell. Before the mortals had come to arrest all of us, my father had given me a knife, and he’d taught me to whittle. I was little, but he’d trusted me with a tiny pocketknife. I’d been careful, so careful with it, my prized possession, and I’d used it to make sharpened sticks, which was about all I could do.

I’d had my pocketknife with me when we were arrested, and I’d thought I was getting away with something. I thought the guards had missed my little whittling knife when they’d searched me. It had taken me a while to realize the truth—they simply did not see me or my mother as a threat, not without our magic.

Before my mother was murdered, I’d made a birthday gift for her, whittled from a twig, a likeness of a queen with a lump for a head and ridges for a crown. I’d been thrilled with the idea that she would have a birthday celebration, even if it were in a cell. Each day, I’d ask her if her birthday was coming up, and she would say no. I suspect she’d seen me making the gift and knew I was excited about it. By delaying her birthday, she gave me something to look forward to.

“Soon, little one,” she’d say. “Soon.”

They’d killed her before I’d gotten the chance to give it to her. When I was twelve, they took the knife away.

After centuries down there, I could hardly remember my real name anymore. No matter. I only needed to remember vengeance, and so I focused on that one moment, the soul-shattering nightmare that had destroyed what I used to be and made me into a creature of revenge.

I became a new person—Orion, born in the dungeons. I’d named myself after the stars I could see through a crack in the stone—a constellation my mother had once pointed out to me. The old me had died.

And this, all of this, was the legacy of Mortana.

In the early days, there had been more of us. I was only a boy then, and I’d listen to them talk. Balthazar, Malphas, Saleos, Azazel, Marduk…

each one of their names etched into my heart like a tattoo. Ashur lived in the cell next to me, and he would sing the old Lilu songs. I couldn’t see him from my cell, but I remembered him from the City of Thorns, a towering, muscular figure with golden horns and long black hair. He’d worn golden cloaks, and his fingers glittered with jewels.

He’d always say we would avenge the Lilu, that one day, we would learn to fight back. We kept our families’ memories alive by talking about each one of them. And some day, we would make our enemies pay, memorializing the dead in their blood. We would rip Mortana’s heart out and stick her head on the gates. We would build statues to the dead.

We spoke of flames that would burn the city to the ground.

We didn’t worship the gods down there, but rather at the altar of delusion.

And one by one, we’d hear the others led away, never to return.

One by one, they left, their voices going silent, until it was Ashur and me, the last two.

Over time, Ashur’s bravado grew quieter. His defiance started to bleed out of him.

For decades, we were completely forgotten. No one brought us food.

At night, dreams of banquets tormented us. Food we could never eat, not even in our dreams. Then we’d wake, still starving, and remember where we were. I thought the hunger would last forever.