Lord of Embers(The Demon Queen Trials #2)(36)

From the corners of my eyes, lights flickered. I turned my head and caught glimpses of letters—not an alphabet I recognized. Cuneiform, maybe. Around me, writing formed, bright, vicious lines of light that looked like a knife had hacked through the darkness, revealing starlight behind it.

I touched Orion’s arm. “What’s all this?”

“Sumerian,” he whispered. “Once, demons were worshipped as gods in the ancient world. Tammuz is one of the oldest among us. He lived as a god.”

Whispers fluttered around me, but I couldn’t make out the words at first. Then, I heard it—Chaos. Chaos. Chaos.

Goosebumps rose on my arms. Lord of Chaos—I thought that was Orion’s thing…

“Do you hear that?” I whispered.

He lifted his finger to his lips. The light around us silvered his face.

He’d gone completely still, and after another minute, he finally spoke.

“I’m going to summon him now.”

Orion began speaking quietly in a rhythmic, percussive language. The dark and beautiful phonemes seemed to send me into a trance.

The glowing cuneiform symbols flickered away, and shadows stole the light in the forest. A low rumbling sound trembled over the forest floor, as if the earth were pregnant with thunder. Fear slid through my bones.

Stars glittered between naked boughs, illuminating the demon god.

Ice and snow encrusted the trees in the grove, gleaming with cold light like wintry chandeliers.

The words bloomed in my mind.

Ch aos. Ch aos. Ch aos.

I saw him and caught my breath. He was the size of Orion, but he didn’t look nearly as tangible. He seemed to be made of smoke, and shadows swept around him. Dark tendrils cloaked him in a wispy toga.

Through the smoky strands, I made out two silver horns gleaming from the top of his head. They curved like a crescent moon, and thorny tattoos curled over his bronze skin. I looked closer. White flowers were threaded in his hair.

“Dying God,” said Orion.

“You come into my forest once more.” Shadows slid over him, and his voice rang inside my head.

He turned to look at me, his eyes bottomless darkness. I stared into them and felt madness, terror. Uncertainty filled me, and I was no longer sure where I stood. Was there earth beneath my feet? Was this a dream or a nightmare?

“Do you know who you really are yet?” His voice seemed to come from behind me this time, though his lips never moved.

“I’m my mom’s daughter.” The words came out of my mouth on their own, and I heard them from a distance. My breath puffed around me. “I don’t need to know anything else.”

Glittering shadows swirled around him. He glided closer now, the movements too smooth to be natural. I stared at his sharp, high cheekbones as he solidified before us, no longer transparent. A dark serpent slid from the darkness behind him and curled around his arm.

He reminded me a little of Orion—terrifying, beautiful.

This solved one mystery. I knew now why these Puritan women risked their necks to sneak into the woods.

Orion stepped forward, looking a lot more relaxed than I felt. “Will you sever a blood oath I made?” he asked.

“In the old days, people knew how to ask a question of the gods.”

Tammuz’s voice boomed across the forest, a deep growl that shook snowflakes from the boughs. “When people made requests of the gods, they sacrificed something valuable. A lamb, a goat, a cow. A first-born child, delivered into the fiery jaws of Moloch.”

A sliver of dread ran through my veins. His dark eyes made me feel unmoored.

Orion raised an eyebrow. “You want me to sacrifice a goat?”

The Dying God seemed to grow larger before us. “No. A goat has no value to you.” He looked between the two of us. “I need what you hold most dear. Secrets.” He held his arms out to either side. “Confessions.

That is what you can give to me.”

I hugged myself, shivering. “Confess what?”

Tammuz’s eyes locked on me, and he took a step closer, moving with a catlike grace that reminded me of Orion. Behind him, bone-white mushrooms sprouted from the snow where he’d trod.

“You need to admit what you’ve been running from,” his voice boomed. “Confess. Tell me what happened the night your mother died.”

I shrank from him like I’d been burned. “I can’t confess that because I don’t remember.”

“Perhaps you didn’t see everything.” His gaze had turned predatory.

“Let me show you what

happened.”

really

I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to turn and run into the N o.

shadows instead of facing that night.

Tammuz reached out and touched my collarbone. As his finger grazed my skin, coldness spilled through me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Orion step forward and felt the heat rippling off him. “Don’t touch her. What are you doing?”

The god’s eyes sparkled. “Taking what’s mine.”

I glimpsed Orion moving for him, but a vault of star-flecked night swept over me, and they disappeared.





C H A P T E R 2 0 — R O W A N

L ightning cracked the sky, and for a moment, I glimpsed another figure standing behind him—a horned man with a five-pointed star. My heart skipped a beat.