Lord of Embers(The Demon Queen Trials #2)(51)

Catching my breath, I touched my chest. My heartbeat felt sluggish and dull.

For the first time in ages, the embers in my heart lay dead.

Did I miss her that much?

I’d lived for one reason, and one reason alone: to act as the sword of the dead. To give them the revenge they wanted.

But something felt

, and I desperately wanted to see Rowan w ron g



again.





C H A P T E R 2 7 — O R I O N

I sat on my balcony, sipping Syrah and trying to shake off the horror of my bad dream. Moonlight dappled the ocean with silver, and a warm, salty breeze rolled off the water. It was always magically warm here in the City of Thorns, a perfect temperature for my future kingdom.

Three in the morning was an absurd time to drink wine, but I hadn’t been able to get back to sleep since I’d woken with my heart thundering. Something still felt

in the world. Unbalanced. Dread

off

threaded through my veins.

Maybe the dream meant nothing, and it was just nerves for the impending regicide I had planned in a few hours. By dawn, I should be standing before the Tower of Baal’s gates, holding the severed head of Cambriel, his blood dripping just below Nergal’s head. The whole city would see the mark of Lucifer beaming from my forehead. They would all know their true king had arrived at last.

It wouldn’t be long until my demon subjects would be ripping the mortals to shreds when I unleashed hell on Earth. I’d dreamed of this for centuries, ever since they’d marched me by my family’s severed heads on the way to the prison.

So why the fuck did I feel such an overwhelming sense of dread?

I shifted in my chair, disturbed by the late-night quiet.

I lifted my glass of wine, watching the moonlight reflect off its dark surface. I suppose what bothered me was that I had no idea what Rowan was doing. But why would she delay her return here?

Maybe I needed to understand what she was.

I set the glass of wine on a table and went back into my library. Ka…

a word from the ancient days, something buried deep under centuries of mundane memories.

From my bookshelf, I pulled out an old tome called Book of the , its binding brown leather etched with gold letters. I dropped into Dead

a velvet armchair and flipped through the yellowed handwritten pages.

From a sconce behind me, candlelight wavered over the old book. It was written in an ancient demonic language that I could read, albeit slowly. I found a page with a strange drawing of a horned demon. Not quite horns, I supposed, but rather arms and hands jutting from his head.

My blood pounded harder as I read through the text. According to this book, demons had souls like mortals did. And a soul wasn’t just a spirit but comprised of several different aspects: the life-force (ka), the personality (ba), and the memories (ren).

When someone died, their ka left the body and became a double. The

ka lived on—a sort of demonic doppelg?nger in the world of the dead.



Rowan, then, had somehow come from the doubleworld.

My heart leapt at the implication. If all this was true, then the original Mortana was dead.

And the real question at the heart of this was whether this made Rowan the same person as Montana.

Fucked if I knew. I wasn’t a philosopher.

On the one hand, she was clearly different. She had different memories, different experiences to shape her life, a very different personality… all those aspects of her soul had changed. Rowan had chosen to save my life twice—once in Purgatory, and again in the forest. Letting me die would have solved all her problems, and all she’d have had to do was fail to act. Mortana would have left me to die, without a doubt.

Guilt clenched my chest. If she wasn’t Mortana, I’d been cruel to her for no reason.

Then again, I had to find a way to keep myself away from her, no matter what. This new Rowan would try to pull me off my path. She’d never accept the revenge I craved.

I slammed the book shut and traced my fingers over its surface.

Already, she was distracting me. I had a king to kill, and I needed to clear my head.

I prowled across the room for my collection of knives. This was all I would need to kill the king—daggers to slaughter the guards.

I strapped them to my waist, my thighs, loading myself up with blades.

Fully armed, I crossed out to the balcony. For a moment, I stood there, looking out over the dark sea. If things went according to plan, this would all be over soon. After everything that had happened to us, an incubus would be on the throne.

My wings shot out from my shoulder blades, kissed by the balmy ocean breeze. As they pounded the air, I took off into the dark night sky.

Now, I no longer cared if the whole city knew I was Lilu. Let them stare. They’d be kneeling before me soon.

Every one of them who’d stood by while the Lilu were slaughtered would be on their knees.

AT THE TOP of the Tower of Baal, the air thinned. I landed quietly on the balcony, the wind howling around me. No one bothered to lock a balcony door when it was over five thousand cubits high, piercing the night sky.

No one knew I could fly.

I pulled one of the knives from its sheath and slowly slid the balcony door open.

Silently, I moved over the black and white mosaic floor. With the moonlight streaming in, I could make out the contour of Cambriel sleeping next to someone in a bed with sea-blue blankets.