City of Thorns (The Demon Queen Trials Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  No response.

  “I guess you wouldn’t be here if you did. Have you ever heard of someone named Mortana?”

  Water dripped into the puddle next to me.

  I dropped my head into my hands, my body still buzzing with panic. “I’m not her. I’m not a demon, and I’m not two centuries old.”

  Somehow, my new prison friend’s silence only made me want to tell him more. Because the Lord of Chaos was right. I did want to unburden myself, but not because of guilt. My secrets were weighing me down, stealing my breath, and I wanted to be free of them.

  “Let me tell you something, prison mate,” I started. “I’m twenty-two. And I can’t die tomorrow. In fact, I refuse to die tomorrow. Do you want to know why? I’ve never even been in love. I had one boyfriend my freshman year of college. He was into comics and played the piano, and he was tall and cute. But he always told me I needed to exercise more, and I started to resent him, and when we finally had sex, it was…so boring. I remember reading the spines of the books on his shelves, waiting for it to end. I remember a mosquito biting my butt cheek. Then he broke up with me for a girl from his town, and that was at. That was my only relationship.”

  My mind was racing. I’d never actually told anyone this before, and it felt good to get it out. And I didn’t actually give a fuck what this stranger thought, so he was the perfect person to unburden myself with.

  This was freeing.

  “I think we need to talk about Jack,” I went on. “You’re a good listener, you know that?”

  I launched into a diatribe about Jack in high school, the “Home Run Rowan” nickname, how Jared Halverson had posted my confused texts on social media the night he stood me up. Then I rambled about every indiscretion, every embarrassing thing or terrible thing I’d ever done. The time I’d written a friend a bitchy email about my math teacher’s sweat stains and accidentally sent it to him. My weird snack of microwaved tortillas with sugar and butter. The time I’d thrown up repeatedly in a trash can in Harvard Square Station after too much tequila. The cab driver with mutton chops I tried to hit on in Cambridge. How I’d peed outside a Dunkin’ Donuts because they wouldn’t let me use the bathroom. How I’d never actually had an orgasm, and I wasn’t convinced they were real—the idea seemed like an elaborate hoax. I explained how I’d given up on men and started wearing granny panties from Rite Aid because what difference did it make?

  For at least an hour, I unleashed every embarrassing or selfish thing I’d ever thought or done.

  “…and can you explain to me why the one guy who seemed like he would actually be able to sexually satisfy me is also a demon, and also he kidnapped me and threw me in a prison? That’s how I know there’s no God. It’s too cruel. The sexiest person I’ve ever seen, the guy who’d make me want to wear lace underwear instead of the pharmacy stuff—he’s the Hannibal fucking Lecter of the supernatural world. Are you kidding me?”

  Silence filled the cells, and I realized my eyes were growing heavy.

  A man’s voice came from the next cell, hardly a whisper: “Are you done?”

  I sighed, only now realizing that I’d pretty much run out of material. “Yeah, I think that covers my life pretty much,” I said, and dropped my head into my hands, exhausted.

  But there was only one thing I didn’t cover—my mom’s death at the hands of a demon with the mark of a star. Because I was still determined to find my way out of this. And I wasn’t ruling anyone out. Not the Lord of Chaos, and not my quiet prison friend.

  Any demon could be guilty.

  As I sat on the cold floor, I was sure of three things.

  One, I was going to find a way out of here.

  Two, I’d find a way to stay in the City of Thorns.

  And three, I would get revenge on the demon who killed my mom.

  Chapter 7

  I usually couldn’t sleep when I was anxious about something. And lying in a demon prison the night before I was supposed to be executed should have made me anxious.

  But strangely enough, I closed my eyes with a sense of peace.

  Maybe it was the certainty that I could fix this. Or maybe it was the freedom I felt after finally unleashing my secrets on the demon next door. Whatever the case, I woke up with my head resting on my arms. I stank of sweat and mildew, and I desperately had to pee. But I’d slept.

  A few flecks of light streamed in through cracks near the ceiling.

  I sat up straight, hugging myself. “Are you still there?” I asked.

  Silence greeted me.

  Apart from the little sunlight, it was still dark as night in there. I hugged my knees close to my chest, teeth chattering. As I surveyed the dark cell around me, my eye fell on a point on one of the walls, just between the vines. A thin stream of light illuminated a carving in the stone, tucked behind the leaves.

  I scooted over and started tugging at the ropes of plants, but it was still hard to read with the darkness. Instead, I traced the letters with my fingers, feeling their contours.

  L…U…C…I…F…E…R…

  Shuddering, I kept going. It took me a minute because the carvings seemed old and faded, but eventually, I had a phrase mapped out in my head.

  Lucifer urbem spinarum libarab…

  The rest of it had faded. But if my high school Latin translation was correct, it said something like Lucifer will set the City of Thorns free.

  Interesting. But not helpful for my release, was it?

  I shifted away from the wall and hugged my knees again.

  In the silence, I could concentrate on my game plan for getting out of this situation. It hinged on being able to convince the Lord of Chaos that I was not who he thought I was. All I had to do was sow doubt in his mind. Once I bought myself some time, if I could stall this execution, I’d work on making him realize I wasn’t Mortana. Whatever his deal was, I was sure that he didn’t want to start a war by killing a mortal. Our two species had managed to keep the peace for hundreds of years.

  When I heard the footfalls echoing through the prison cells, my body became alert, and my pulse raced. I shot to my feet, ready to convince him. As the visitor moved closer, the torches sprang to life again, and warm light danced over the stone wall across from me.

  The Lord of Chaos crossed slowly before my cell, eyes ice blue. He was wearing a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing a disturbing tattoo of a snake formed into a noose.

  The warm power radiating off him made my breath quicken. I’d never before been this close to a demon, and everything about him was unnerving. He looked similar to a human, but too tall, too perfect, and too eerily still.

  And now it was time for me to present my case.

  “I don’t suppose I get a trial?” I asked.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “You mentioned she hadn’t aged in two hundred years,” I began. “How long has it been since you’ve actually seen Mortana?”

  Curiosity sparked in his eyes, “Is this your defense?”

  Lead him to the conclusion. The problem was that this was hard to do when he was hardly saying anything. I needed to use his own words. “You’re certain that you want revenge by killing Mortana? And that your memory couldn’t be wrong after all that time?”

  He just stared at me for a moment with that unnerving stillness. I wasn’t sure this was going well.

  Then he replied, “When I say you look like her, I mean you look exactly like her. My memory isn’t faulty. I haven’t forgotten a single contour of her face. I do not forget things,” he said in a clipped tone.

  My heart started pounding, but with hope. He was now referring to her as a separate person. “You haven’t forgotten a contour of her face. Did you notice how you spoke about her in the third person?”

  Without another word, he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked my cell. Looming over me, with magic that brushed over my skin, he stepped inside.

  I found myself moving away, cold dread skittering up my sp
ine. In the days before mortals had weapons to fight back, we were simply the demons’ prey. When they weren’t seducing mortals, they’d drink our blood. Tens of thousands of years of evolution were telling me to get the fuck away from him.

  A million terrible thoughts flitted through my mind, and I stood with my back pressed against the wall. “The Osborne police are very good,” I lied. “If you killed me, they’d find out.”

  He cocked his head and spoke in a velvety murmur. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”

  Chapter 8

  My breath caught in my throat. “Do you still think I’m Mortana?”

  He studied me so intensely that I felt he was seeing right into my very soul. “I listened to everything you said last night.”

  I stared at him. God, what had I said to him? “That was you in the next cell?”

  “You’ve managed to plant a seed of doubt in my mind. Mortana had far too much dignity to engage in a charade like that. The prom situation. Crying alone in your basement apartment at night. The fear of ladybugs. Having a lucky pen that you hold to feel a sense of security.”

  “I’d like my pen back, please,” I whispered.

  “Practicing karaoke songs alone in your room even though no one has ever invited you out. I don’t think I ever understood the desire some mortals have to end their lives until I listened to the details of yours last night.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Look, I might be a bit of a weirdo, but I’ve never wanted to end my life.”

  “Not you. I mean me. I have seen darkness that you couldn’t imagine, horrors that would twist your soul. And yet, never before in my several hundred years of existence have I been so ready to shuffle off this mortal coil as I was listening to your sad monologue.” He pressed a finger to his lips. “I think it was the bit about the yogurt pouches you keep in your purse because you have no one to eat lunch with. Even though they’re meant to be consumed by infants.”

  This was just insulting. “At least I don’t kidnap people like some kind of Buffalo Bill psychopath. Call me crazy, but I’d say that’s a worse flaw than purse yogurt. And by the way, they have probiotics, so my microbiome is fucking pristine.”

  He stared at me, shadows thickening around him.

  “My point is, you’re not perfect, either,” I added. “And you’re weirdly obsessed with Mortana.”

  A ruthless look slid through his eyes. “I never said I was perfect. Frankly, I’m an absolute arsehole with an unhealthy revenge obsession. I’m not depressing, though, and I have never made my shirt into a bowl for dry cereal to eat alone on a Saturday night.”

  Revenge. I’d managed to keep him talking, and he’d brought me back again to what he wanted. This was what I could use. And as it would happen, an unhealthy obsession with revenge was something I understood very well. It seemed this demon arsehole and I had something in common.

  Dr. Omer’s teaching played in my mind. Build rapport by reflecting back your client’s words to him.

  “Okay, so you have a seed of doubt,” I started. What would Dr. Omer say? “Let’s explore that.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I admit you might not be a demon. You do look exactly like her, though, which is perplexing.”

  “Maybe she’s a distant ancestor.”

  He shook his head. “Demons rarely procreate. And when we do, we only sire other demons. You can’t be a mortal and a descendant of Mortana.”

  I bit my lip. “Coincidence?”

  He considered the notion. “Every now and then, a demon has a mortal doppelgänger. It’s rare but possible.”

  I sighed, relief unclenching my chest. “Good. Yes. That must be it.”

  “But to prove it, I require two pieces of evidence.”

  A little spark of hope. “Whatever you need.”

  His gaze swept down my body. “To start, Mortana had a small scar on her upper thigh. I will need to see your legs.”

  “You want me to lift up my dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.”

  But at that point, I remembered exactly what I’d told him last night—about how he was the only man I’d ever seen who’d make me want to wear lace underwear. How he was the only one I thought could ever give me an orgasm. Mortified, I felt heat creeping over my cheeks.

  “Go on,” he said softly.

  My nostrils flared, and I glared at him as I lifted up the hem of my dress to a point just below my underwear.

  The Lord of Chaos cocked his head, staring at my thighs as the cold dungeon air raised goosebumps on my skin. He looked riveted, his eyes growing brighter. Then he moved closer, and he reached down to lift my right leg from under the knee, pulling it up outside his thigh like we were engaged in some kind of dungeon tango. He was just inches from my hips now, examining my skin. With his free hand, he traced his fingertip over the very top of my thigh, and shivers of heat rippled through me.

  Holy hell, that was distracting. The magical pulse coming off him was seductive, intoxicating. Warmth radiated over my skin from the point of contact. I’d never seen anyone so fascinated with a little bit of skin, nor had I ever realized that a single touch could be so powerful.

  “See?” My voice came out in a whisper. “No scar.”

  He dropped my thigh. When he stepped back, I felt cold again.

  He frowned. “Interesting.”

  I exhaled. “And what’s the other thing?”

  He curled his lips and bared two sharp, white fangs, then licked one.

  I shivered. “What?”

  “Mortal blood tastes different than demon blood.”

  Primal fear slid through my bones. “You want to drink my blood? Like the old days?”

  “All I need is a little taste.”

  My heart pounded hard. “You realize this seems terrifying. Is there not a more clinical way to do this? A syringe, maybe?”

  “I don’t have a syringe. But you might find it’s not as terrible as you imagine. Mortal women once flocked to offer their necks to demon males,” he murmured. “They loved it.”

  “Sure, they did.”

  He gave a slow, infuriating shrug. “I have told you that I’m an arsehole, right? So I don’t really care if I imprison an innocent person, and frankly, I don’t think your life here would be much worse than your life in the Osborne basement. I’ll feel no guilt about leaving you locked up here. So you can let me bite your neck, or you can stay here in the dungeon forever. Those are your options.”

  Maybe it was time to start bargaining. “Okay. I’ll let you taste my blood. But when you’re done, I’m not going back to Osborne. I want to stay in the City of Thorns.”

  He frowned. “You can’t. If you are mortal, then you don’t belong here. The only mortals who can stay are students and servants who inherited the role.”

  I folded my arms. “I’m sure someone called the Lord of Chaos can find a way to bend the rules.”

  He flashed me a crooked smile. “What is it, exactly, that makes you think you have leverage to make any sort of demands?”

  I knew his weakness now—a lust for revenge. Something I understood implicitly. And the thing about a sense of vengeance as burning as his was that it could spread like wildfire. You didn’t just want to end the life of one person—you wanted to kill anyone who helped them, anyone who let it happen. You wanted scorched earth.

  “You want revenge, yes?” I asked. “You said Mortana haunts your nightmares. That’s a pretty intense loathing. So is she the only one, or is there someone else you want dead?”

  His eyes were glowing brighter, and I had the sense he understood where I was going with this. “She didn’t work alone.”

  I took a step closer, tilting my head back to look up at him. “So I could pretend to be her. Get information from these other people you hate. I could be your spy.”

  His body had gone as still as the stones around us, sending a chill dancing up my nape. At last, he said, “Assuming this isn’t all an act, I don’t think you’d make a convincing s
uccubus. You’re not seductive.”

  I winced. Ouch. “Anything can be learned. Even how to be seductive like a succubus.” Whatever that was.

  He looked transfixed with me. “I will consider it once I’ve tasted your blood. I need to know for sure that you’re mortal before we continue any further.”

  I opened up my arms. “Okay. Go ahead. Bite me.”

  Instantly, his warm magic slid around me like a forbidden caress, heating my blood. He had me completely pinned with his piercing gaze, and I felt my nipples going hard under my dress. To my shock, I found that he was right. I wanted him to bite me. I wanted him to grab me, shove me against the wall, and clamp his teeth into my throat. In fact—bizarrely—I wanted him to do all kinds of filthy things to me.

  He stared into my eyes, and dominance emanated from him. His seductive scent wrapped around me, earthy like burning cedar. There was something more powerful than fear snaking around my ribs: the instinct to submit. This instinct, forged by thousands of years of evolution, was telling me to give in to him if I wanted to live.

  He reached for my waist and pulled me closer. The next thing I knew, I was pressed against his body, his muscles as unyielding as the stone walls around us. Then awe slid over me as I watched his pale eyes go dark. He moved so smoothly that I’d nearly missed that he was pressing me against the wall. I felt the cold stone against my spine, chilling my skin through my dress. His knee slid between my legs.

  It was hard to ignore how dangerous he was, how otherworldly. How he could end my life in a single heartbeat and move on to his next victim.

  “Arch your neck,” he said in velvety voice.

  I couldn't resist the urge to submit to his command. My eyes closed, and I tilted my head to give him access, making myself vulnerable to him. I felt his breath warming my throat, and a pounding heat swept through my body. My breath sped up, and my nipples felt exquisitely sensitive under my dress. I didn’t want to feel turned on by my supremely arrogant demonic abductor, and yet, here we were. The heart wants what it wants.