City of Thorns (The Demon Queen Trials #1)(21)

Chapter 12





I couldn’t tell if he was hitting on me or trying to get a rise out of me. But if he was flirting, it was with the utmost condescension, so I wasn’t going to reciprocate. The man’s sense of superiority burned hot enough to suck the oxygen out of the room.

“Do you know the mortal expression ‘beer goggles’? I had that when I first saw you, except with mojitos.” I wondered if he could tell when I was lying. “You do nothing for me. Now that I’m sober, I view you as a kind of grotesque alien species. Freakish, really.”

He leaned back, then went very still again, staring at me, and I felt like he was using one of Dr. Omer’s tricks—waiting for me to admit that I’d said something stupid. His face was a mask of indifference.

Well, he could wait all day, because I could live with my obvious lies. I raised my eyebrows. “Were you going to teach me about something beyond the staggering dimensions of your ego?”

He spread out his arms over the back of the sofa, ignoring my jab. “Let’s begin with the Lilu, the incubi and succubi. They are the lust demons, the seducers of our world. They feed off desire. Before demons were locked here in the City of Thorns, the Lilu would roam freely among the Puritan cities, seducing uptight mortals. They seduced demons, too. But for a mortal, sex with a Lilu means death. It was one of the major reasons for the war in the 1680s, the lusty Puritans dying of pleasure in their beds.”

What a way to go. “So Mortana—wherever she is—would be trying to seduce mortals at any chance she got?”

He shook his head. “Mostly demons these days. We’re no longer allowed to kill mortals without repercussions. She can draw power from demons just as easily without starting a war.”

I still gripped my bathrobe like a chastity belt. “So I need to seem seductive.”

“Flirtatious. Sensual. Seductive. Comfortable in your own body.” He pinned me with his gaze. “Clearly, we will have to work on those things.”

“When were the Lilu executed? After the war?”

He shook his head. “Not right away. For about ten years, they lived in the Asmodean Ward. Each ward worships a demonic god, and for the Lilu, it was Asmodeus, god of lust.”

“Which ward are we in now?”

“Luciferian. He is the god of pride.”

So Orion lived in the ward for the most arrogant demons. “Yeah, that checks out.”

“In a densely populated city, it was harder for the other demons to tolerate the Lilu. They ruined marriages, manipulated people. Other demon females loathed the succubi, and demon males hated the incubi. Their mind control powers were forbidden, but they used them anyway. And that was a threat to King Nergal’s rule over the populace. What if they controlled his mind? So in the 1690s, when Cotton Mather asked for sacrifices from the City of Thorns, King Nergal was happy to oblige. The other demons were happy to rid the city of the Lilu, and Nergal sacrificed them in the dungeons. They were hanged and their hearts cut out.”

A shudder rippled over me. I’d just been in that dungeon, not realizing it was a place of unimaginable horror. “And Mortana was able to survive because of her blood oath.”

“Exactly. She’s always been impressively cunning. But she disappeared a few hundred years ago, and no one has seen her since.”

I bit my lip. “Is it going to be a problem that I don’t actually have any magic? I can’t control anyone’s mind.”

He shook his head. “No, you’ll just tell people you had a change of heart over the centuries. You won’t do anything forbidden by King Cambriel. But the sexual magic…you’ll need to make people think that you’ve been feeding off desire.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Sorry, exactly how do I do that?”

“That’s simple, Rowan.” His low, husky voice dripped with a seductive promise. “You and I will use our body language to make people think we’re fucking.” He quirked a smile. “Assuming you can feign attraction to a grotesque alien species.”

I folded my arms in front of my chest. “I’ll do my best to fake it, but if I’m supposed to be getting close to the king, won’t it be a problem if he thinks I’m with you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Cambriel always wants what someone else has.”

“I suppose that’s why he killed his own father.”

“He’s from the Beelzebean Line. Envy. He already envies the attention I’ve received for killing so many in the Infernal Trial. And if you seem to want me, he’ll use his position as king to take you. We’ll just have to make it look real.”

A hot electrical tension buzzed in the air. “So you’ll be playing along with this charade, too. Pretending to want me.”

He shrugged. “I’ll do my best to fake it.”

“Is there anyone here who knows Mortana well?”

A sly smile. “Everyone hated Mortana. They called her the king’s whore. Her only ally was Nergal himself. I suspect she left here when he finally grew bored and refused to marry her, and she realized she no longer had a protector.”

“Do you feel any empathy for her at all? Maybe she was just trying to survive while her kind was being slaughtered.”

His brows knitted like I’d just said something insane. “No. I don’t have empathy. And if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be for Mortana.”