City of Thorns (The Demon Queen Trials Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  “Rowan?” he said quietly. “I don’t think you should stay in the City of Thorns any longer.”

  Disappointment coiled through me. “You’re kicking me out now? I thought you were going to help me.”

  He brushed my hair off my face. “I’m not kicking you out, but I don’t want you to die in the king’s fire pit. And I can’t keep you safe until I know how to kill him.”

  I took a deep breath. “So you do plan to kill him. Even though he’s the king and you’re not his heir.”

  “Well, yes. I’m also considering killing Lydia and Nama, who are the two people most likely to report you for being a mortal. And I could kill anyone who—”

  “Can we save the trail of death discussion for later?” I sighed. “I was enjoying the afterglow.”

  He pulled up a second silky blanket around me, and I curled into it.

  “How often do you sleep in here?” I asked quietly.

  “Often. It’s where I feel the most comfortable.”

  My eyelids were growing heavy now, and the candles burning in the chandelier were starting to flicker and gutter out. I let my eyes close. “Orion? How did you escape the prison?”

  He brushed my hair off my face, then kissed my forehead. “I dug an escape route. It took a very, very long time.”

  With his arm wrapped around me, I traced my fingers over his strange tattoo—the snake, formed into a noose. “And no one remembered you were down there?”

  “One person did.” His voice sounded distant. “But he’s dead now.”

  The candles were growing dimmer, and Orion’s chest moved slowly in and out behind me, lulling me to sleep.

  “The king?” I asked. “Was he the only one?”

  “You should go to sleep, Rowan.”

  Already, I felt myself drifting off to the gentle sound of the lapping waves. Man, it would be painful to leave. This place was magic.

  But sleep started to claim my mind, and I dreamt of sweeping over a sparkling ocean, and lemon trees by a shoreline. Until the dreams started to grow darker—a dark mountain that spewed hellfire. A pit of writhing snakes.

  Snakes that coiled themselves into nooses.

  I woke with a gasp and blinked in the dim light. Now, only a single candle flickered over the grotto. I turned to see Orion sleeping next to me, his chest rising and falling softly. Dark sweeps of eyelashes contrasted with his pale hair.

  As he slumbered, the Lord of Chaos looked strangely vulnerable. My throat went tight with emotion when I thought of him in the prison. All that time by himself after his mother was killed. He’d only been a little boy, hadn’t he, when they were arrested?

  Unable to sleep again, my mind started to turn over the enigma of Mortana.

  From what Orion told me, she sacrificed other people to save herself. That was how she operated. I no longer thought Orion was a psychopath. He pretended to be one, but I suspected that underneath it all, his revenge mission was driven by love for his mom.

  But Mortana? She sounded like a real psychopath. Someone with one guiding principle—making sure she got what she wanted. Maybe even a sadist? He’d said she tortured him in the prisons.

  Why was I suddenly getting so angry about this?

  I found my fists tightening so hard that my nails were piercing my palms. Red-hot anger flowed through me at the thought of Mortana, this evil woman who’d stolen my face.

  My body felt electrified with rage. Oddly powerful, even. I wanted to rip Mortana’s head off her doppelgänger body, but the weirdest part was that I felt like I could actually do it.

  Wait…what was happening to me?

  A flash of searing heat burned my wrist, and I looked down to see something like a tattoo flickering on my skin, black and red—burning like embers in a fire. I stared in fascination as something started to take shape before my eyes. A skeleton key smoldered on my wrist.

  What in the world…

  A golden light beamed over it. With a pounding heart, I started to realize where the light was coming from.

  I touched my forehead, casting my wrist in shadow again.

  Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

  Powerful emotions could reveal a demon’s true nature…

  But I couldn’t possibly be a demon. He’d tasted my blood, hadn’t he? He’d been sure I was mortal. This had to be a nightmare.

  At last, the smoldering skeleton key faded away on my wrist. Only then was I able to breathe, and I gasped, staring at the pale skin on my arm where the key had been. “Holy shit.”

  Orion’s eyes opened, and he frowned at me. “What’s wrong?”

  I touched my forehead again, but the light seemed to be gone now. Only Orion’s eyes glowed pale blue in the dark.

  “I, um…I think I was just imagining things,” I said.

  He reached for me again, pulling me close to him, surrounding me with his arms. “You’ve had a lot to adjust to in the City of Thorns.”

  My muscles started to relax again in his arms, and I stared out into the dark grotto.

  Diagnostic theories: temporary psychotic break with visual hallucinations, or night terrors from sleep paralysis.

  At least, I hoped one of those theories was right.

  I lay down again, nestling into his strong arms. I tried to force myself to relax, to let go of that horrible vision. A nightmare. That was all it was.

  I turned back to Orion once more, and I caught him looking at me, his eyes half-closed.

  “Orion,” I whispered, “tomorrow, will you help me find out information about my mom?"

  He nodded and murmured, half-asleep, “Yes. Then we need to get you out of here.”

  “What about the king’s weakness?” I asked.

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  A nightmare. That was literally what Orion was, wasn’t he?

  Nightmare: from the Old English maere—an incubus. A creature that robbed you of breath in the night, that fed off you. The monsters that crawled from the shadows to drag you into the afterworld. But despite what he kept telling me, I didn't think he was really a monster. As much as it annoyed and inconvenienced him, he was putting my safety above his own goals. He cared about what happened to me.

  When I closed my eyes again, my mind flashed with the image of the burning skeleton key. Why had it been so easy for me to summon my shadow-self here in the City of Thorns?

  Dread slid through my blood.

  Why did it feel like I knew Mortana?

  A horrible thought struck me like a lightning bolt—the secret I’d been keeping myself from turning over in my mind. The thing I’d been running from.

  What if it was me?

  What if I was the one who’d killed Mom? What if I had a dark side I wouldn’t admit to myself? That night was so chaotic, and I remembered being angry at her for making me run, for not explaining what was going on. I remembered thinking she was crazy.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I could feel myself shaking.

  What if I was the real nightmare?

  “Rowan,” Orion whispered, “I can feel that you’re panicking over something. What’s happening?”

  My stomach tightened. “Just what you mentioned. The danger in the City of Thorns.”

  “I can help you sleep, if you want,” he said quietly. “It’s an incubus thing.”

  I wanted to get away from my own terrible thoughts more than anything. “Yes, please.”

  And with that, a soothing magic rippled over me, coaxing my muscles to relax. My breathing and my heartbeat started to slow. Confused thoughts whirled in my mind—an image of glowing star, the skeleton key tattooed on my arm, the writhing snakes. But none of it seemed as horrifying now.

  In a world of demons and magic, it was starting to become difficult to know what was real and what wasn’t.

  Chapter 33

  The demon city was an inverted world, one where I seemed to sleep all day and rose as the sun was setting.

  Maybe it was having an orgasm for the first time in my life, or maybe it was Or
ion’s incubus sleep magic, but I slept long and hard. By the time I woke in his grotto, the late afternoon sun was slanting over the ocean, streaming into the cave in horizontal rays of coral.

  It was the sunlight that reminded me of a painful reality: sexy as Orion was, he was still technically one of my suspects.

  I rubbed my eyes, and the smell of coffee greeted me. When I felt the breeze rippling over me, I remembered I was still naked, and I pulled up the sheets around myself.

  I smiled when I saw Orion sitting at a table by the side of the pool, coffee in one hand. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to wake. I even returned to your apartment and picked up some clothes for you.”

  “Thank you. I don’t suppose the grotto has a shower?”

  He nodded at the pool. “I have a natural bath. It’s warmer than you’d think.”

  Of course. This was magic demon water, which frankly, was much nicer than Massachusetts water. It was a damn shame the demons had spent so long trying to eat us or fuck us to death, or we could have worked together.

  Orion had already seen all of me, but for some reason, I still kept a sheet wrapped around me as I crossed to the pool. I dropped it only before I jumped in.

  As I sank beneath the surface, the heated pool enveloped me. When I came up again for air, I folded my arms over the side and looked up at Orion.

  He gave me an amused smile. “Still shy in front of me?”

  “Maybe a little.” I sighed. “I love it here. Is the grotto a secret from everyone else?”

  “You’re the only person in existence who knows it’s here, besides me.”

  The warm water was lapping at my back and my breasts. What I was thinking was that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stay here secretly for a while, assuming I cleared Orion off my list of suspects. But maybe hiding in a demon’s sea cave wasn’t a realistic life plan. And maybe trying to move in with someone after a single night was a bit much. “So should we investigate a murder?”

  Orion reached for something on the table, then lifted an envelope. “While I was picking up your clothes, I ran into Shai. She gave me this to pass on to you. And as luck would have it, it’s got the skeleton key you were looking for.”

  I rested my chin on my arms as I looked at him. “She just gave you that?” She didn’t know he was going to help me. Why would she hand it over to him?

  “Well, not willingly. She was standing outside your flat looking for you.” He gave a lazy shrug. “So I forced her to tell me what she was doing there.”

  My fingers tightened into fists. “What do you mean, you forced her? Like, you threatened her?”

  His eyebrows rose. “No, of course not. I can’t threaten her when she knows I can’t hurt her.” He dropped the envelope on the table. “So I just controlled her mind with magic.”

  I stared at him. “You can’t just mind-control people, Orion.”

  A line formed between his brows. “Yes, I can. That’s how I got the key. I just told you.”

  I shook my head, starting to lose patience. “I know you’re physically able to. I mean, it’s…immoral.”

  “I am a demon,” he said slowly, like I was an idiot.

  I dropped my head into my hands. “Okay. But you feel guilt for something in the past.” I looked up at him again. How did I explain this? “Guilt is about the realization that you’ve done something wrong. Like, you’ve done something to another person that you wouldn’t want done to yourself, right? And it makes you feel bad. That’s guilt.”

  He was staring at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “But I don't feel guilty for using mind control on Shai. You asked me to help you find your mother’s killer. This key seemed to be one of your only clues, and I got it for you.” He opened the envelope and pulled out the skeleton key on a long, black ribbon. “See?”

  Maybe it was too much to ask a demon to understand the moral issues with mind control. One step at a time.

  But more importantly, they key had my attention right now, because for whatever reason, my mom had a key to a room in the City of Thorns. And it reminded me a lot of the one I’d seen on my arm. “Do you think it could go to a room in the Asmodean Ward?”

  “It looks like the keys in the Asmodean buildings. The locks haven’t been updated in hundreds of years.” He brushed his fingertip over it. “And this one has a faint carving of a skull. It’s one of the few things I remember from before I was imprisoned. The keys like this…” He stared at it, lost in his memories. “I think I was scared of them, if you can imagine such a thing.”

  My mind shimmered with the memory of the key I’d seen flickering in and out on my arm. Had there been a skull there, too?

  I hoisted myself out of the pool, my heart slamming hard. As my mind churned, I wrapped his sheet around me like a towel.

  His gaze flicked down to the sheet. “You know how you were talking about guilt? Do you feel guilt for soaking my sheet in seawater?”

  I looked down. “Sorry, I was distracted. Orion, what the fuck was my mortal mom doing with a key to a building in the abandoned Asmodean Ward?”

  He turned it over in his hands. “If we locate the right building, I think we’ll find out.”

  Chapter 34

  We didn’t start looking around until night had fallen and moonlight bathed the Asmodean Ward in haunting silver. For once, I wasn’t wearing some sexy gown—just black leather leggings and a dark sweater. We weren’t planning to be around anyone else, and it was the best way to blend into the night.

  Tonight, the air in the City of Thorns was a little cooler than it had been, a nip along with the ocean breeze. The wind rushed through my red curls as we walked the empty streets.

  Side by side, we followed the dark canals. Silent buildings loomed around us, the paint faded and chipped. Inside the once-grand houses and halls, we found portraits with their eyes crossed out, statues defaced. We tried the key in every lock we could find—the front doors, the bedrooms, the closets and drawers.

  A sense of tragedy pressed down on every house, the sadness heavy in the air. And when we crossed into the building we’d been in before—the one with smashed busts and abandoned crystal decanters—Orion went very still. He stopped to look up at the ceiling, at the image of the nude woman with the snake wrapped around her. Only a thin sliver of moonlight cast a ghostly light over the place. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the curtains and furniture looked scorched in many places, and the glass of a mirror had been blackened.

  Lost in thought, Orion was as still as the broken statues. The air seemed to grow darker around him, the room hotter. The weight of an oppressive sadness thickened the atmosphere.

  “Do you remember this place?” I asked quietly.

  He let out a long sigh. “I used to stare at her. I remember lying on the sofa and thinking I would marry her someday, and that I would save her from the serpent wrapped around her body. I can see now she doesn’t actually mind the serpent. I didn’t know she was the mother of our gods. I thought she belonged to us and that she needed me.” He turned, looking around the abandoned hall. “I remember the day the soldiers arrived.”

  “The king’s soldiers?”

  “I wasn’t scared of our king’s soldiers. I was scared of the mortals. They brought guns with them. But the part that scared me was the looks on their faces. I’d never seen such pure loathing like that before.”

  I stared at him. “There were mortals here?”

  “The king surrendered to them and agreed to let them round up the Lilu like they wanted. It was the last time he allowed mortal soldiers into the city.” He breathed in deeply. “I can’t say they had any signs of the morality you keep talking about. I think they thought we were like animals.”

  “I'm sorry.” My heart broke for him.

  “It’s not your fault,” he muttered.

  “But this must be so painful for you.”

  “I’ve thought about that day every day for hundreds of years.” He crossed the living room to
a patch of wooden floor that had been stained darker than the rest. “This was where they cut out my brother’s heart. He fought back because he was trying to save our mother.” He traced his fingers over the stained floor. “He was the one…” His sentence trailed off, and he stood again and turned, pointing to the hall. “And that was where they cut out my father’s heart.”

  I could hardly breathe. “I guess this answers my questions about why you have such disdain for mortals.”

  His eyes gleamed. “It’s confusing to me that I have such a high regard for you, but you’re not what I expected.”

  The floor creaked as I crossed the room to the mirror, and I stared into its blackened surface. “What’s with all the scorch marks? Did they start to burn this place?”

  “That was from me. I couldn’t control my fire then, but if I could have, I’d have burned the entire army down. And most of the demons with it for turning on us.”

  “How old were you?” I asked.

  “Five.”

  The breath left my lungs. “They put you in prison when you were five?” I asked, a little louder than I’d intended.

  I crossed the room and looked into another of the scorched mirrors, half my face obscured by the smoke. But I could see my eyes, my cheekbones. Moonlight streamed in through the old, warped windows, tinging my face in ghostly light as I looked at myself. “What happened to the other Lilu? Were they killed right away, or were there others in prison with you?”

  “That would be a good question for Mortana.”

  I felt it again—that rising anger. He’d only been a little boy, and he’d watched mortals cut out his brother’s heart right on his living room floor. I felt like my chest was splitting in two when I thought of it.

  My anger was rising again, like magma buried in a volcano.

  When I thought of little Orion screaming for his father, I wanted to find those very mortals and rip their hearts from their chests. Power flooded me, and I felt like I could pull those Puritan fucks from their graves and kill them a second time.