“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.
He stared up at me, transfixed. “What makes you think it was me?”
“I remember you from that night.”
“No, you don’t.” His lip curled. “I never lied to you about what I am. I don’t hide my faults or what I’ve done. If I’d killed your mother, I would have told you as soon as I met you. Except now I have a new flaw, and it’s my worst one.”
“What?”
“I could have killed you five times over in the last two minutes. I could kill you now. And something fucking idiotic is stopping me.” His jaw tightened. “I have never loathed myself more than I do right now, and believe me, that’s saying something, because I have plumbed some amazing depths of self-loathing.”
“Stop changing the subject.” Tears streamed down my face. “You have the five-pointed star. I remember it from the night my mom was murdered in the woods with fire magic just like yours. It was you.”
“You might want to look in the mirror, Mortana,” he spat. “I’m not the only one with fire, and it seems Lucifer has blessed us both. You and I are both marked as the Lightbringer. But if you think you’ll take the throne from me, you’re mistaken.”
Dread bloomed in my chest. Horrified, I rose and stumbled away from Orion. With tears streaking my face, I reached into my jeans pocket for my phone. It was half-melted, no longer working, but in the black gleam, I could make out a reflection—one shining from my forehead.
A five-pointed star. The image hit me like a fist to my throat.
Without another word to Orion, I started running through the tunnels at full speed.
But I wasn’t running from Orion now. I was sprinting from the memory I’d been running from all this time. The reason I was so obsessed with finding my mom’s killer. This had been my worst fear—the darkest truth buried in the depths of my mind, the thing I so desperately wanted to prove wasn’t true.
What if I killed Mom?
We’d had a fight that night. She’d kept wanting me to move from one apartment to another. She’d seemed paranoid, delusional. She’d thought someone was after us but wouldn’t tell me who, and I only remembered that I hadn’t wanted to go with her.
Orion had said he couldn’t control his fire when he was younger…
I thought she’d lost her mind. I remember yelling at her, and I was so angry—
Sickness rose in my gut, and I hardly knew where I was running. I felt like the walls were collapsing around me.