Lord of Embers(The Demon Queen Trials #2)(40)

I looked back, my heart stuttering at the sight of a body blazing in the distance. I wasn’t sure who I was angrier at right now—Orion for refusing to run, or me for leaving him there.

I started sprinting toward him, a bony hand of fear gripping my heart. I had a terrible feeling I’d find him there, half-alive and burning.

I could smell it now—the searing flesh, the ashes floating on the wind.

, not Orion…

P lease



Despite our twisted relationship and everything he’d said to me, some part of me cared about the dickhead.

Flames bloomed from the forest floor, and as I drew closer, I saw three people illuminated in the light of a burning body. I exhaled when I spied Orion standing with his hands raised, facing me. Blood poured down his forehead.

I lingered in the shadows for a moment, trying to assess the scene.

One of the men had a gun pressed against Orion’s head. Another pulled out a rope and pulled Orion’s hands behind his back. The third hunter had his back to me.

“Thou wicked, fornicating devil with thy black book!” the man shouted. “Thou shalt be stripped to the waist and whipped through town at the back of a cart.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Orion must have used the torch to burn one of them, but he’d been outnumbered. I needed to act now before they bound Orion’s hands behind him. For a moment, Orion caught my eyes. He raised an eyebrow nearly imperceptibly.

“We will have thy confession!” shouted the other, trying to bind his arms behind him.

I needed to take down the gunman first.

I looked down and picked up a large rock, jagged and frozen in my fingertips. With the crude weapon in my hands, I darted out of the shadows and brought the rock down hard on the back of the gunman’s head. He staggered and whirled, slamming me in the temple with his flintlock. Pain flared through my skull.

But I was still holding my weapon. As panic ignited in my veins, I hit him again with the rock, harder this time.

I heard the crack of bone, and he wavered where he stood, dazed and bleeding. Something caught my eye that made my heart skip a beat.

There, on his chest, was the same silver pin that the Corwins wore: a hammer. The hammer of the demons—Malleus Daemoniorum.

The man crumpled to the ground, blood pouring from his head onto the ice. I staggered back, staring at him.

When I looked up again, Orion had freed himself. Wrapping his hands around the throat of one of the mortals, he slammed the man’s head into a tree trunk repeatedly, cratering the back of the man’s skull.

I gaped at the horror around me: the man engulfed in flames, still twitching, the injured man crawling at my feet, the person Orion was battering to death. The last hunter standing scrambled for the fallen gun.

Orion whirled and punched him in the skull with an animal ferocity.

He hit him again and again.

Without the magical powers of a demon, killing wasn’t quite as clean and tidy as it could be. All this could have been avoided if Orion had run with me, but these messy deaths were his goal.

In a daze, I walked away from the carnage, bile rising in my throat.

Vaguely, I wondered if the Dying God would return now and break the oath so that we could get out of here and never come back.

I looked down at myself. Blood streaked my bare skin where my coat had opened, but I wasn’t sure if it was mine or the man’s I’d just killed.

Since I’d entered the world of demons, I was starting to realize there were only two options in some situations: you could kill or die. And with that in mind, I turned back to the men who lay dying on the forest floor and scanned their bodies for weapons.

The flintlock was large and unwieldy, so I’d leave that behind. The man I’d hit with a rock was still crawling over the ice, although he was half dead. He had another weapon strapped around his waist, a knife, and I pulled it from its sheath. As I did, I felt as if my soul was freezing over.

Goody Putnam had been right. These woods turned people into animals, naked, covered in blood. Stealing weapons from people as they died. Orion was drawing out the death of the man in his hands. I dropped my new weapon into my bag and started walking, not wanting to see any more violence.

A moment later, I heard footfalls behind me and turned to see Orion’s silhouette.

His eyes shone brightly in the darkness. “Why did you come back for me?”

My head throbbed, and I wasn’t sure I could feel the cold anymore.

“I didn’t want to leave someone else behind,” I said, swallowing hard.

“Wait. Rowan—wait.” He stood in front of me, peering down at me.

He touched my temple, and his forehead furrowed. “You have a head injury.”

“You should see the other guy.” My head was pounding, and I wanted to throw up. “He hit me with that flintlock.”

“This isn’t good. You might be even less fun than you were before.”

He pulled his hand away. “I can’t heal you here.”

“Did you forget your lack of magical powers when you decided to take on those armed men?”

He stroked the side of my face again, just below where I’d been struck. Even if he didn’t have magic at his fingertips, there was something soothing about his touch. “There is some method to my madness. If they reported back to town and gathered a larger group to hunt us down, we might not leave here alive. We’d be hanged in the town square before we could get back to the turnpike.”