Mortals and ruthless demons had murdered Orion’s family in front of him when he was just a boy. They’d locked him in a room alone with his haunting memories. Most people would be broken by that. And now they’d dragged him here to a tunnel to torture him some more.
Fury ignited in my blood, and I could feel the ropes straining at my wrists. A light was beaming from my forehead, my chest growing hotter. Brighter. Deep down, the buried truth—the one I’d hidden from myself—was that I was stronger than all these fuckers.
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.