Maybe magic could suppress memories, but could it really fake a childhood? With that level of specificity? I wasn’t a five-hundred-year-old demon. I was Rowan Morgenstern, and that was all there was to it.
And most of all, I remembered how much I loved my mom because I’d felt safe near her. No matter how mad I’d been at her, there was no way I’d killed her. At least not on purpose.
When I went outside, I was surprised to find that it was night—I’d completely lost track of time. I blinked at the moon over Osborne, feeling oddly at home under its light.
Holy shit.
I was Rowan Morgenstern, but I was also a succubus, wasn’t I?
A creature of the night. I belonged out here.
I glanced at the key tattoo again on my arm—now permanent. I still didn’t know what had happened, but I could only guess that Mom had given me the spell to make sure I was always safe. That my blood tasted mortal, just in case.
I started walking toward the waterfront. It was colder here than in the City of Thorns, and goosebumps rose over my skin. The air tasted of salt and smelled of seaweed. By the cold sea, I let the shadows swallow me. I didn’t actually have to be scared of being outside at night anymore. The mortals couldn’t hurt me. The demons wouldn’t dare.
The thing was, if I was a demon, I didn’t really belong out here in Osborne, did I? If I didn’t get within the city walls again, I only had about another day or two before my magic faded.
I wasn’t mortal. Neither was Mom. She was Lilu—one of the exiled. She’d been living out here in hiding, always looking over her shoulder. Banished just because she was a succubus.
And my dad? If he was, in fact, Duke Moloch, he’d been killed just after I was born. About twenty years ago. Maybe he’d gone back to try to save me.
My mind snagged on the nursery rhyme I’d found, the one in the book. Had that meant anything?
The Maere of Night
Gave girls a fright,
But one queen loved him well.
He lost his throne
But seeds were sown
In the garden of Adele.
A swindler king,
A golden ring
To keep his heart alive.
Take the ring,
Fell the king,
The city yet will thrive.
It sounded like a nursery rhyme, but I was sure something important had been written into that poem. A secret I needed to unlock.
From deep within my brain, an ancient instinct was rising to the surface, and magic tingled down my shoulder blades.
I needed to take to the skies. I needed to be free.
My back arched, then wings burst from my skin. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw them, black and feathered, flecked with gold. Beautiful.
This was a release—the unveiling of my true self. My wings started to pound the air, instinct carrying me higher and higher into the briny wind.
Orion hated me now. He was convinced down to his marrow that I was Mortana.
But I was going to find out the truth. I was going to learn exactly what happened to Mom, and who I was.
What makes a person who they are, their essence? Was it a soul or their memories? I didn’t know. I only knew I wasn’t the monster Orion imagined me to be.
I breathed in deeply and stared at the locked gates of the City of Thorns.
Deep within my bones, I knew that was where I belonged. I’d always known.
I was a Lightbringer—blessed by Lucifer. And whether he liked it or not, I would fight him for my place in the city I was destined to lead.
Thank you for reading City of Thorns. We will be having discussions online through C.N. Crawford’s Coven.
If you would like to read a short deleted chapter from the perspective Orion—giving a glimpse into his last meeting with Mortana in the 1820s—click here.
You can order the sequel here —> Lord of Embers.
On the following pages, I’ve included the opening chapters of another one of our novels, The Fallen.
Our full list of books can be found on Amazon or Goodreads.
Lila
Excerpt from The Fallen
When I was a kid, I dreamt of living in the castle that loomed over our city, a place of magic and intrigue. As I got older, I started to learn that even the slums had their own kind of magic. If you knew where to look, you could feel the power of ancient kings thrumming under the stones beneath your feet.
Tonight, warm lights shone through some of the windows through the fog, and the sound of a distant piano floated on the wind, winding between narrow alleys. No one was out here, just me and the salty breeze, the shadows growing longer as the sun slid lower in the sky. The mist curled around brick tenements that groaned toward each other, crooked with age. Fog skimmed over the dark, cobbled street.