City of Thorns (The Demon Queen Trials #1)(66)

And I’d kill to protect those I loved. I’d make them regret that they’d been born.

Nama aimed the gun at Orion’s face. “It’s so pretty, Orion. You know, I think that’s your problem. Your face is too pretty, and I need to make you feel—”

I would bathe my enemies in flames. I’d stop when they lay as piles of ash.

The rope shredded behind me, and hot wrath erupted.

I didn’t know the fire was streaming from my body until I smelled the burning flesh. Only then did I see the flames that filled the vault, a pure inferno of death. A vortex of molten heat.

They wanted to put me on trial?

I was Hell itself. I would burn the wicked from this earth. I was born to rule.

The flames snapped back into my body, and I gasped, looking down at myself. Pure power imbued my body, and my legs started to shake.

Magic. Powerful, terrifying magic.

The locking spell had been unlocked. I felt unsteady on my feet, in shock from what had just happened.

I was in a nightmare.

My clothes were singed, partly burned off, and my legs bare from the thighs down. Enormous piles of ash lay on the floor where three of the demons had been standing. To my right, soot covered Lydia and her seared clothes. Ashes filled the air.

Lydia gaped at where the other demons had been standing. “I guess Nama was wrong,” she said in a daze.

With a slamming heart, I stared as she ran out of the tunnel. I looked down at my hands, at my glowing fingers. Flames flickered from them like candles. I felt a jolt of magic sizzle through my arms, electrifying me down to my fingertips.

When I turned to look at Orion, a new horror coursed through my bones. The chains had melted off him, and he rose to his feet, his eyes black as night. Seems he had strength in him, after all. His clothes had been burned off in places, exposing arms and thighs thickly corded with muscle.

The pure hatred in his features made my heart stop. Time seemed to slow down, and a phantom breeze toyed with his silver hair.

But it was the mark on his forehead that made me want to murder him.

A five-pointed star.

There he was—the fucking Lightbringer. The ruler of demons.

Battle fury rippled through my body, and I could feel the air heating up around us, but I had no idea if the source was Orion or me. I only knew the stones were starting to glow beneath us, red hot. The silence pressed on us, heavy as soil in a grave.

My shoulder blades tingled with some ancient instinct to unleash my wings.

Orion’s lip curled, and shadows coiled around him like smoke. “Mortana,” he snarled, his voice a frigid blade that cut me to the core. “There you are.”

“There’s the Lightbringer,” I hissed. “You’ve made a remarkable recovery.”

“I wasn’t that hurt. I wanted to learn the truth about you as much as they did. And now I know. You managed to disguise yourself as a mortal.”

I pointed at him, feeling like the betrayal was eating me alive. “I know what happened now. You killed my mom. You made a blood oath to murder everyone in Mortana’s family, and that included my mother. This whole time, you were pretending to help me find her killer, and you knew it was you.”

He shook his head slowly, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. I only knew he looked like he was going to rip my head from my body.

I wasn’t sure which of us moved first, but in the next moment, he was pinning me up against the wall, and my feet were off the ground. His hand clamped around my throat, and he pressed me hard against the stone. Endless darkness burned in his eyes. “Mortana,” he snarled. “It is deeply unfortunate that the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen is also my worst enemy.”

But I wasn’t a weak mortal anymore, and I could fight back. My self-defense classes came roaring into my mind, except now with the strength of a god. I raised my arms, slamming my hands against his wrists. At the same time, I brought my knee up hard into his groin.

He dropped his grip on me, and I lunged forward, aiming for his face with my fist. But he grabbed my hand and twisted it behind my back, and when he shoved me against the wall with bone-breaking force, the air left my lungs.

“Did you know?” His quiet voice was like an ancient curse. “Did you know how I would feel when I learned the truth? Is that why you did it?”

“I don’t know anything.” I kicked back into his shin, hard enough that I heard a crack. “I have no fucking idea what’s happening, Orion.”

I whirled to try to punch him, but he was lifting me in the air. He threw me hard across the room, and I slammed onto the floor. The blow winded me. As a mortal, I’d be dead. As a demon, it was just a setback.

No wonder demons thought mortals were weak. I felt invincible.

From above, Orion looked down at me like a conquering god waiting for a sacrifice. “I know exactly who you are. You’re my worst enemy, and you always have been.”

I thrust my hips up and slammed the back of my heel into his knee where Nama had shot him—once, twice. With a growl, he stumbled back. From the ground, I kicked at his calves, sweeping his legs out from under him. When he fell backward, I leapt atop him. I clamped my hands around his neck, my thighs around his waist. I wasn’t squeezing yet, but I was threatening it. I felt my claws emerge, ready to rip his heart out, and I pressed them against his chest.

“I don’t know if I’m Mortana!” I shouted at him. “If I was once Mortana, she’s as foreign to me as a stranger. I’m not what you think I am. You said Mortana only cares for herself, that she’s driven by self-preservation. And you said emotions make a demon reveal her true self. But it wasn’t self-preservation that unveiled my demon side. Every time I started to feel it rising, it was from wanting to protect you. It was thinking of you as a little boy in that prison.” My chest ached from the hurt of all this. “My demon side came out because I wanted to protect you. I burned through the locking spell because I wanted to keep you safe. So I don’t know who I am, but I do know that I’m not the monster you’re looking for. But you? You’re the one who betrayed me, Orion. You were pretending to help me find my mom’s killer, when all this time, it was you,” I snarled.