Lord of Embers(The Demon Queen Trials #2)(65)

Mr. Esposito was gone. The hotel sat on the peak of the hill.

Streetlights gleamed off puddles, and rivulets of rain streamed down the deserted cobbled streets. Everyone had scrambled inside to get away from the storm.

The old man had vanished. I wasn’t sure how he’d been able to move that quickly, but maybe he’d taken cover indoors, too.

His little brown paper bag still lay on the sidewalk in the rain. I jogged over and snatched it off the ground, planning to drop it by his house later. Tucking it under my arm, I pushed the buzzer to get back into the hotel.

What was in the bag—a book, maybe? While I waited for the receptionist, I turned the sack over and found the letter written on it.

R

R for Rowan?

Curiosity sparked, and I opened the bag and peered inside. It a

w as

book, one that looked far too old and precious to be left in a puddle. But someone had carefully wrapped it in plastic to protect it. A velvety midnight blue cover was embossed with gold text, filigrees, and little symbols of stars. The title jumped out at me.

.

T rial by Combat in th e Demon W orld I stared at the book, my mind ticking back to something Mr. Esposito had said the night I’d killed the congressman: “Get to the City of Thorns.”

He knew, didn’t he?

W h at if th ere w ere more…

Cambriel had feared that if he let my parents in the city, he’d have to allow more Lilu entry. Maybe he’d known something.

I was so stunned that I nearly missed the buzz of the door. Pushing inside, I ran up the stairs and back into Shai’s room. I hurried to the desk, then sat down and carefully pulled the book from the plastic.

As I cracked it open, my pulse raced. This felt like a message to me.

Long ago, King Nergal had taken the crown from my grandfather Azriel in trial by combat.

I sipped the wine Shai had left for me and started to read. As the rain pattered against the window, I learned more about the demonic

beliefs concerning monarchy. Demons believe that when a crown is contested, the gods will choose the winner. A series of trials determines who is suited to rule. When a demon with a legitimate claim wants to challenge a ruler, they make a public declaration.

I looked up from the book, gazing but unseeing, into the darkness outside the window.

was what Tammuz had prepared me for.

T h is

I was going back to the City of Thorns.

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C O U R T O F S H A D O W S — S A M P L E C H A P T E R

The vampire bared his fangs, and I knew we’d both be dead by the end of the night if I didn’t get him out of here. I leapt over the bar with the speed of a hurricane wind, hurtling toward him. I slammed my fist into his skull—once, twice, three times. He staggered back, then collapsed.

He’d fallen so easily I almost didn’t feel a sense of victory, but I grinned down at him anyway. The colored lights of the bar stained his porcelain skin red.

I

to get him out of here.

h ad

I tried to project a calm I didn’t feel. “Like I said,” I purred, “a guy like you would be more comfortable in a hipster joint with arcade games and herbal cocktails. You can talk about synthwave or whatever there.

Move along.

” I may have screamed the last word. A sense of N ow .

urgency was taking over.

It was at that point, I realized that everyone in the bar had stopped talking and were all staring at me over their pints. A pop song crackled through the speakers, and the neon sign in the window flickered on and off. Otherwise, silence shrouded us.

I stood over the fallen vampire, holding up my Easy, A rian n a. Easy.

hands. “Nothing to see here, folks! Just an ordinary Friday night kerfuffle.”

I loosed a long sigh. Two thin hawthorn stakes jutted from my messy bun, ready for the vampire’s heart, but I restrained myself. My boss would flip his shit if he saw me beating up customers—again. And I definitely wasn’t supposed to kill people—even if they were undead—in front of a crowd. Rufus frowned upon things like that in his establishment.

You can take th e girl ou t of th e glad iator aren a….

It was just unfortunate that the vampire had made the serious error of trying to bite me.

As soon as this guy had stumbled into our bar, I’d known he was trouble. In fact, I’d immediately assessed three important things about him.

One, his luxurious Viking beard had told me he was a hipster—not to mention his neon clothing, reminiscent of children’s wear in the early 1980s. Whenever guys dressed like him decided to slum it in the Spread Eagle, it usually went down badly with the regulars.

Two, his staggering gait and furrowed brow had told me that he was a mean, sloppy drunk. Given the exceptional alcohol tolerance levels of vampires, he must have drunk his weight in craft beers tonight.