When my gaze flicked up at the clothes, I felt my breath leave my lungs. How could he have been so tiny? So delicate?
I pulled out one of his old suits, one with black velvety fabric trimmed with gold. I remembered this one…Molor had been so proud of it. He’d planned to wear it at his fourteenth birthday. Fourteen was a big deal for demons, and my parents had been planning the party a year in advance.
I laid it on the bed, staring at it. He hadn’t quite grown into it by the time he was killed, and he never would.
With a lump in my throat, I crossed to the window and stared out at the Asmodean clocktower. At some point, it had stopped working, the hands frozen at six p.m. I couldn’t help but wonder if time had frozen there when the mortals had arrived at dusk, because that was when the world had stopped. Or maybe it stopped with Molor’s death—
When the Puritans cut out Molor’s heart on the living room floor, it had really felt like they were taking mine with it. The pain had been blinding.
Clouds crept across the sun, casting the abandoned town square in shadow.
I stared through the old glass at the clock tower, a beautiful work of art for its time—a stone structure with gold-painted discs that had once moved. It had not only told the time, but also the position of the sun and moon and the astrological signs. A stunning feat of technology, learned from the mortals. A faint memory flickered at the recesses of my mind—mechanical statues that had once appeared from doors on either side of those gleaming discs: a figure of the king, and one of the god Lucifer, appearing to hand him a crown.
Long ago, everyone in the town had set their pocket watches by those gold hands. I remembered staring at it, waiting for the king to slide out from the door. Captivated by the magic.
I couldn’t breathe in here anymore.
When the mortals came, my world had stopped, the sky had gone dark, and the air had turned to ash.
I could never let myself feel loss like that again. And what if I caused her to feel that pain because I let her love me? Because there really was nothing worse.
I turned, desperate to be out of this tomb.
I’d tried to create prison walls around me to keep myself safe, but Rowan was breaking them down. This was a problem.
I pulled her pen from my pocket, staring at the absurd chipped rainbow symbol on the side. A ridiculous thing. It shocked me how much it had hurt when she’d returned this to me. What the hell, Orion?
Furious at myself, I threw the front door open and stepped into the stone square.
One of my soldiers stood by the door, always protecting me—as if I needed protecting. With his pale skin and long, black hair, he looked like a spirit from the underworld. “Jasper,” I said, “I have a very important task I need you to undertake.”
Because I would do whatever I could to avoid feeling that agony of loss again.
10
ROWAN
Kas lived in a home on a crowded street, a house with a white Tudor-style front and crisscrossing wooden beams that overlooked the busy lane. Unlike Orion’s pristine apartment, this place was littered with trinkets and oddities: a desk strewn with books before a mullioned window, a telescope, an old globe.
Kas stood at an iron stove before the kitchen window, making us pancakes, and the scent of butter filled the air. It all seemed almost…human. Normal.
Shai and Legion sat across from me, sipping coffee at a table littered with handwritten notes, plates, and a little pile of cutlery. A window to my right overlooked a narrow city street and shops covered with climbing ivy.
Shai picked up one of the papers, frowning at it. “What’s this?”
“Oh, gods.” Standing above the frying pan, Kas glanced over his shoulder. “That’s my art. Don’t look.”
Of course we looked. I saw beautiful pencil drawings of the natural world—birds, trees, butterflies. A self-portrait lay among them, perfectly rendered. His skill was truly remarkable, almost photorealistic.
Legion sipped his coffee and picked up a sketch of two toadstools. “Are you ever going to do anything with your art?”
“More tattoos, maybe,” Kas grumbled. He carried a heaping platter of pancakes in one hand, and he forked two onto my plate. “But we’re not here to discuss my hobbies, are we?”
The corner of Shai’s mouth quirked. “Legion’s hobbies, then? Because he looks like a giant, tattooed badass, but he’s been painting little pewter figurines of soldiers.”
Legion pinned her with his gaze. “I wouldn’t expect someone from the mortal realm to understand the fine art of miniature battle recreation.”