FARIDEH MOVED AS IF IN A DREAM, SOME DISTANT PART OF HERSELF NOTING how out of place she must have looked, striding up to a cowherd’s cottage on a hill, wrapped in leather armor and holding tight to her sword. A sixth Brimstone Angel. A nephew. Havi’s son.
There had to be a mistake.
“Would I possibly waste this much effort on a mistake?” Sairché had said in her withering way. “Believe me, at the time I was as surprised as you are now. It was such a trial, making sure the babe thrived enough to be born, and then midwifing the whole thing, and carrying it off, without anyone noticing. There were plenty of times,” she went on, “I considered calling off the whole business.”
Whatever clemency Farideh had been inclined to offer, with worse villains to face, it vanished in the face of Sairché’s flippant remarks. Lorcan had to pull her bodily from the room.
“What’s done is done,” he told her, holding her tight. “What matters now is finding him.”
That, at least, Sairché had given up, and by the next afternoon, they stepped through the portal into a pastureland at the edge of Aglarond’s forest, Lorcan in his human disguise. The light was low, the hour later here than in Djerad Thymar.
“You can put that sword up,” Lorcan said. “We’re not walking into an ambush.”
“The sort of people who would take a baby from Sairché, no questions asked, and you’ll pardon me if I don’t trust them.”
“How many questions did you ask?” Lorcan said. “People forget to ask plenty of things when faced with their heart’s desires.”
Farideh stopped and turned on him. “Something changed again.”
Lorcan’s face became as still and implacable as a statue, and it only made her more certain. “Darling, if you’re going to be cryptic—”
“You know what I mean.” She studied him, not budging. “You’re back to normal, aren’t you?” Farideh said. “Whatever happened, you fixed it. You made it stop.”
“I am who I’ve always been,” Lorcan said. He hesitated. “I meant to offer before, but I can give you another spell. I think it will work this time. Put your sword away.”
She did, and he pulled her hands toward him, turning her palms up. “What is it?” she asked.
He laid his hands over hers, flexing his fingers. “Something useful.”
Farideh closed her hands into fists. “What is it?” she said again. Lorcan’s dark eyes met hers, and the memory of a time that might have cowed her shivered through the back of her thoughts. She said nothing.
“It will make a wall of fire around you,” Lorcan said, “burning anyone on the outside. Or inside if you mean it that way.”
“She’s still a tiefling,” Farideh said. “It won’t burn her.”
“It’s quite potent.” He nodded at her balled fists. She opened her hands again with only a little reluctance. She wouldn’t have to use it. It wouldn’t matter how potent it was.
Lorcan laid his hands across hers, the connection to the Nine Hells surging with a jolt of power that seemed to shoot up through the bones of her arms, into her spine, stretching her nerves beyond what they could contain. Lorcan’s hands slid forward suddenly, closing over her wrists and squeezing them tight enough to send a shock of pain through her. His black, black eyes threatened to sweep away whatever distance lay between them now, turning memories into present. The magic drove the breath out of her.
And then it was finished. She stood a moment, her hands still in Lorcan’s, reeling from the spell.
“Draw a semicircle with the rod’s tip,” he said. “Say fiornix.”
Farideh pulled her hands back. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” He hesitated another moment, then nodded toward the cottage. “They’re no one,” he said. “Barren couple. One tiefling, one human. Perfectly ordinary, but willing to deal. Sairché is a lot of things, but she isn’t a fool. She wouldn’t stash a Brimstone Angel just anywhere.”
“Not cultists?” Farideh asked. “Not warlocks?”
“As I said, she’s not a fool,” Lorcan said. “He’d have been found out immediately, and if he hadn’t, well, at a certain age, mortals tend to challenge what their parents taught them to hold dear. And if he didn’t, then all the worse—you get a warlock who knows entirely too much for your own good, growing up neck-deep in devils and spells. You get much better results putting a foundling somewhere ordinary.”
Arush Vayem, Farideh thought, wasn’t ordinary. Mehen wasn’t ordinary. Or was she wrong? After all, she’d taken the pact, she’d ended up lost in the middle of the Nine Hells machinations. Who was to say this wasn’t Caisys’s plan all along? She pushed those thoughts aside as they reached the stone cottage, and knocked. A chorus of cattle moaned from the pen on the cottage’s side.
The door opened to reveal a human woman with dark, curly hair pulled up in a knot at the back of her head. “Yes? Well met?”
“Well met,” Farideh said. “We’re looking for a tiefling boy.”
The woman looked Farideh up and down, eyes widening, then pressed a fist to her chest. “You can’t have him,” she said in the smallest of voices.
Yes, Farideh thought, no. “He’s in danger,” she said. “Can we come in?”
The woman shook her head. “She said … She said never to give …” Her voice broke. “What kind of danger?”
“Merida?” Behind her, a tiefling man maybe ten years older than Farideh, with a short beard and his hair tied back in a club at the nape of his neck. “Merida, what’s wrong?” As he caught sight of Farideh and Lorcan behind her, terror showed plain on his face. “Where’s Remzi?”
Merida turned and raced back through the house. Farideh’s heart cracked—whatever monsters she wanted these people to be, they weren’t Sairché’s minions. They weren’t child thieves. “Wait.”
“We’re friends of Sairché’s,” Lorcan said smoothly. “Might we come in?”
“No,” Farideh assured the man. “We’re not her friends. But we’re … Remzi’s. Someone is looking for him. Someone is planning to kidnap him and possibly kill him. We don’t want that to happen any more than you do. So, please, may we come in and discuss how to stop anyone from hurting Remzi?”
The man searched her face, looking as afraid of her as if she were Bryseis Kakistos herself come to steal his son. “You’re his real mother, aren’t you?”
“No.” Then: “I’m … I’m his aunt.”
The man looked her over again, as if debating what he might do to stop them. “Sairché sent you? Why didn’t she come herself?”
“She can’t,” Farideh said. “She’s trapped. Please, I don’t how much time we have. My name’s Farideh,” she added. “This is Lorcan.”
“Emmer,” the man said, nodding at them. He blew out a breath. “Come inside.”
Emmer led them into the front room of the cottage, where a cookfire burned under a little cauldron. He gestured at the wooden chairs around a table, but didn’t sit himself. “Your sister,” he said. “Is she dead?”
“No. But she’s in danger too.” Farideh swallowed hard against the growing lump in her throat. “She doesn’t know about him. I don’t think she even knows she was carrying. Don’t deal with devils,” she added, when Emmer gave her a curious look. “You don’t know what you’ll lose.”
Outside, the sun was setting, painting the walls of the little stone cottage in a golden light. Emmer lit a lantern on the table and closed the shutters one by one, plunging the room into secretive gloom. Merida came back into the room, carrying a child almost as long as she was, cradling the back of his head as though he were a babe. His arms were locked around her neck, his face buried against her shoulder, his skinny tail slashing anxiously. She spotted Farideh and stopped dead in her tracks. “You can’t have him,” she said, as if it were a simple fact.
“She’s his aunt,” Emmer said. The boy lifted his head and glanced back at Farideh from the corner of his eyes, angry and skeptical around the redness of tears. A fist of grief closed on her heart. His profile was so similar to Havilar’s—to her own—at that age. The eyes were Brin’s, the dark blond hair around his horns, just starting to curl back over his head.
“I don’t have an aunt,” Remzi said, not quite able to shake the quaver of tears.
“It’s all right,” Farideh said, dropping down into a chair. “I, um, I bet I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m going to tell you that you have to come away with me. That these aren’t your real parents and you have to come back to the ones you share blood with. But that’s not it. I wouldn’t say that. I know it’s not true.” She met Merida’s eye. “I was raised by someone who had nothing to do with my being born. I was raised by a man who’s not even the same race. But he’s my father. And nobody can change that, Remzi. I wouldn’t dare try to change it for you.”
Emmer cleared his throat. “She says they didn’t know.”
“How do you not know?” Merida demanded. “How do you not look if someone stole your child?”
“If we stole their child?” Emmer said. “You know they can’t search through the spells Sairché gave us.”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Farideh said. “We can talk about what you want to do, what … my sister and her lover want to do, what Remzi wants, another time. What matters now is that Remzi is in danger.”
She told them the story of the Toril Thirteen, of Bryseis Kakistos and her attempt to reincarnate herself and bring down Asmodeus, how the ghost had returned and taken Havilar and was now hunting down the most powerful heirs of her coven, to finish what she’d begun. Fahideh didn’t watch Remzi as she told the story—she knew it was more than a child could understand, but she didn’t dare try to soften it, for fear his parents wouldn’t take her seriously.
Still, she felt his blue eyes boring into her.
“He has to come back to Djerad Thymar,” she said. “You can come with him. I think you should come with him.”
“He’s only a boy,” Merida said. “You said she wants the powerful ones—he’s not even … he doesn’t have a pact or what have you.”
The child of a Brimstone Angel and the royal line of Cormyr. It wouldn’t be Lachs or Adastreia Bryseis Kakistos went after. It would be Remzi, she felt sure of it. “It’s not what he is now,” Farideh said. “It’s what he could become. It’s what’s in his blood.”
“Thought you said blood didn’t matter,” Emmer said.
It doesn’t, Farideh thought, until it does. “Please,” Farideh said. “Bring him. We can stop her, but we can’t let her gather the heirs. Remzi is the last one.”
A window overlooking the cow pen blew open, a hot, bitter wind gusting through the little cottage. The cows started lowing, a chorus of frantic bleats. Lorcan shot to his feet. “Portal,” he hissed to Farideh.
Emmer started for the door, pulling on a quiver and grabbing a longbow. “Stay inside,” Farideh warned. “If the house is warded, you stand a chance. Hide Remzi.” She drew the rod from her sleeve, her sword from its sheath and headed out into the gloaming, calculating how fast she could drop one or the other and get Ilstan’s scroll out. This might be their only chance to catch Bryseis Kakistos.
The wind had faded to a snapping breeze by the time she stepped out of the house. The cows were still panicking, jostling themselves against the fence. The air tasted of ice and angry magic, brimstone and wintergreen. Lorcan came up beside her. “Maybe it was just the wind,” Farideh murmured.
“Doubtful,” Lorcan said. “I’ll go around the other side. You keep those haynoses in the house.”
Farideh glanced back at the cottage, to where Emmer was leaning out the door. She waved him back, out of sight.
Something yanked at her attention, the feeling of someone shouting her name. She looked up, expecting to see Havilar standing beside the cow pen, forgetting for a heartbeat it was Bryseis Kakistos, looking like something out of Farideh’s oldest nightmares: She wore Havilar’s leathers, but a blood-red cloak fluttered around her shoulders in the faint breeze, and every part of her that could hold a bit of jewelry did, all of them humming with magic. Worse, instead of Havilar’s glaive, she carried a staff with a scarlet gem at the tip, a mockery of Havilar’s precious polearm.
“I dearly hope,” she said with Havilar’s voice, “that you’ve come to give me some good news. Because if you’ve come to thwart me, Farideh, I doubt you’re going to like the outcome. Where’s the boy?”
“I don’t know,” Farideh said, stalling. “We only just arrived. Did you know about him?”
It was hard not to see Havilar despite the wicked smile that wasn’t at all her own. “Didn’t you?”
“Sairché only just confessed to hiding him. My father wants him safe,” she added, a plausible reason that had nothing at all to do with Bryseis Kakistos.
“Sairché survived?” Bryseis Kakistos laughed. “Resourceful little cockroach. Tell the dragonborn that my blood is none of his concern. Without the boy, Asmodeus wins.” Her eyes flicked to the weapons Farideh held, and she clucked her tongue. “You aren’t thinking clearly, my dear. What do you intend to do with those?”
Farideh didn’t dare glance at the far corner of the cow pen where Lorcan would surely be coming around any moment. She sheathed the sword. “Do you think I’d stroll into the home of someone Sairché trusted without arming myself?” She glanced back at the house, checking to make certain Emmer had stayed out of sight. “I think she must have warned them. What do you need the boy for?”
For a moment, Farideh dared to hope she might bluff the Brimstone Angel. Havilar’s golden eyes studied her face, as if looking for a hint of subterfuge. Ilstan’s scroll felt like a burning beacon at her waist—but the aftermath of it yawned wide in Farideh’s thoughts. Once she’d captured the Brimstone Angel, they wouldn’t have much time to decide what came next.
Then her gaze flicked up to the cottage, to where Emmer was leaning out the door, arrow nocked and aimed at Bryseis Kakistos. She gave a short laugh, and pointed the staff at him. A burst of light exploded from the crystal at the tip, expanding into a net that wrapped around the shepherd, yanking him bodily from the cottage and dragging him toward the Brimstone Angel.
“You nearly had me,” she said. “Maybe this one has a better answer.”
All instinct, Farideh pointed the rod. “Adaestuo!” she cried, sending a bolt of bruised-looking energy streaking across the field toward her twin. It crashed into Bryseis Kakistos, splashing over an invisible shield without doing much more than startling her. The net fizzled. Farideh took two steps forward and carved an arc through the air with the rod. “Fiornix!”
A wall of flames erupted out of the ground, surrounding her and Emmer. It rose too high to see Bryseis Kakistos on the other side, nearly twice Farideh’s height. The spell seemed to burn at Farideh’s thoughts, as if it were trying to break away. Emmer scrambled backward, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the fire.
“Get up!” she shouted at Emmer. “Get back in the house!”
A burst of fear exploded in her chest, enough to knock the wind from her and break her hold on the spell. The wall collapsed, flames extinguished, but there on the other side of the wall stood the Brimstone Angel, wreathed in the flames of Asmodeus’s power. Wings of fire unfolded from her back, and she smiled at Farideh.
“You don’t know when to quit, do you?”
Farideh pressed the fear down—it was only the magic, the blessing she’d fought against so hard for months—but a seething envy remained, and shocked her to her core. “I know killing that man doesn’t benefit you at all,” Farideh managed. “Just a convenience.”
The Brimstone Angel smiled. “If you’re going to be trouble, you ought to know that I’ve all but settled things with Lord Crownsilver, assuming we can figure out the actual transfer. If you can’t behave and play your part, then you are not a need or a convenience. Understood?”
Twin blasts of energy slammed into her armored chest, driving a cry from Bryseis Kakistos and extinguishing the flames. Lorcan came around the edge of the cow pen, wand and sword out.
“If you think things are settled with Lord Crownsilver,” he drawled, “then I doubt you know the little Tormite well at all. Step away from my warlock.”
Bryseis Kakistos looked back at him, as though he were only an old acquaintance come through the door. “Oh there you are,” she said. “I have something of yours.” She murmured a word that seemed to crawl through Farideh’s ears and a glittering rent appeared in the air before her. She reached into it like a pocket and pulled out a scroll as long as her forearm, tightly wrapped and capped with copper end pieces. Lorcan stopped dead in his tracks and she grinned. “Have you seen this?” she asked Farideh, waggling the scroll.
“I think you’ll find it interesting,” Bryseis Kakistos said in her singsong way. “Full of answers.” She held out the scroll. “Perhaps a trade. For the boy.”
“I don’t have the boy,” Farideh said.
Bryseis Kakistos gave Farideh a disapproving look. “Enough of this—you of all people should know my cause is just. How else can we loose the bonds Asmodeus has put us in? How else can we end this?” She held the scroll out again. “Honey for the pot. If you ask nicely, I’ll even tell you what it is first.”
“Farideh,” Lorcan said in warning.
Farideh! someone screamed, as if in echo, pulling all her thoughts away from the strange scroll, back toward the house.
• • •
HAVILAR BLINKED AND found herself standing not in the fortress as she expected, but in a field somewhere, in the middle of a cow pen next to a stone cottage. Her body stood not far off, holding tight to a charm pinned to her cloak and watching as Farideh and Lorcan crept out of the door.
Karshoj, she thought. Her hands itched for her glaive—let Farideh distract Bryseis Kakistos, come around behind, hit her quick and let Farideh break a spell out when she turns to stop it. Lorcan slipped around the back of the cottage and Farideh waved at someone in the cottage to stay back.
Farideh! Havilar shouted. Her sister looked up. In the same moment, Bryseis Kakistos let go of the invisibility charm.
“I dearly hope,” she said, and the sound of her own voice twisted to someone else’s words made Havilar’s skin crawl, “that you’ve come to give me some good news. Because if you’ve come to thwart me, Farideh, I doubt you’re going to like the outcome. Where’s the boy?”
“I don’t know,” Farideh said, and Havilar cringed—she was such a bad liar. “We only just arrived. Did you know about him?”
Him—the boy was in the cottage. Her son was in the cottage.
No, she said. It’s a mistake. Havilar curled her hands around the air as if she could will a weapon into them. Stop talking, she thought, and do something!
But Farideh wouldn’t, she realized. She might be talking to the Brimstone Angel, but she was also looking at Havilar. Anything she did to Bryseis Kakistos might hurt Havi. Havilar cursed. Maybe she could do something else? Maybe she could—
Havilar pulled herself away from Bryseis Kakistos, floating into the house. The electric jangle of a protective spell shook her being to its very edges, but it didn’t stop her from coming in. Just a house, just a room, just afire—she drifted farther, feeling the tether to her body grow more taut. A stirring in the back rooms, a woman struggling with the latch on a cellar door … and a child beside her, a boy with horns. Havilar stopped, hanging just behind the woman, where she could see the boy’s face.
“Gods be damned, Emmer,” the woman cursed, frantic and frustrated. “Of all the times to put off fixing this damned door.”
The boy seemed to look directly at her. His eyes widened, full of terror. Havilar suspected her face looked the same—it did look the same, or terribly close. Brin’s dream was true. She was looking at their son.
Karshoji Hells, she said.
The boy bolted, heading for the door.
“Remzi!” the woman shouted, trying to catch hold of him. She fell onto one knee as she lunged. “Remzi, stop!”
Havilar sped after the boy, following the thread that led back to her body, reaching as if she could catch hold of him—he couldn’t be allowed to cross the threshold.
It came to her, a moment too late, that if he could see her, then so far as Remzi could tell, a ghost was chasing him, and that might be far scarier than anything on the other side of the door.
Farideh! Havilar screamed, hoping beyond hope that her sister would hear. Whether it was Havilar’s scream or Remzi’s footsteps running out of the cottage, Farideh did look back, away from Bryseis Kakistos, away from the copper-capped scroll she was holding out to Farideh.
“Remzi, get back in the house!” Farideh shouted.
In the same moment, Lorcan pointed his wand at the scroll. Magic, invisible but for the sizzling, searing disturbance it left in the air, streaked across the distance. It devoured the scroll, burning it to a cloud of ashes and flakes of charred copper. Bryseis Kakistos pulled her hand back, surprised. Remzi stopped short of the tiefling man who clutched a painful-looking burn.
“Well met, dear boy,” Bryseis Kakistos said. The tip of her staff glowed and a glowing net shot out, all made of magic. It wrapped around the boy, who screamed. The tiefling man made a grab for him, but missed. Farideh drew her sword, swung it through the spell’s long rope. The blade slid past as if it had cut through nothing more than a sunbeam.
For Remzi, on the other hand, the bands of light were like solid rope. He fought and kicked and grabbed at the grass as Bryseis Kakistos dragged him nearer. Havilar surged forward, grabbing hold of the net herself. The magic burned her palms, and though the net slowed, she had no way to stop it.
Again, Lorcan flung missiles of magic at the Brimstone Angel. Farideh grabbed hold of Bryseis Kakistos by one wrist and yanked her out of the path. Havilar nearly shouted at her—what kind of pothach move had that been?—only to realize she’d forgotten she was looking at her own body. The missiles streaked by harmlessly, but the moment of distraction made the net evaporate. Remzi, suddenly unencumbered, sprawled belly-first in the dust.
Bryseis Kakistos’s staff began to glow again. Farideh slammed into the other tiefling as the spell erupted from the staff, searing a line of violet energy across the sky, away from Lorcan. Bryseis Kakistos shifted her weight, twisting so that Farideh fell instead of her, landing flat on her back on the ground. She planted the crystal of the staff in the middle of Farideh’s chest.
“The trouble is,” Bryseis Kakistos said, “she’s your sister. You won’t hurt her. But I will hurt you.” She spat a word of jagged Infernal, a short blast of magic exploding from the tip, sending hot magic over Farideh’s chest and arms. She cried out, spasmed.
Fari! Havilar screamed, and pressed toward her.
As Farideh lay on the grass, trying to regain her breath, Bryseis Kakistos grabbed hold of the boy by one arm. With a swirl of her staff, she reopened the portal, pulling Havilar with her into the smell of ice and wood smoke. The pull of the portal dragged her back across the plane, swiftly as a watercourse, and she found herself flung back into that place of fog and emptiness with the memory of her body being slammed against the ground.
Alyona looked down at her. Are you all right? What happened? Where did you go?
Havilar started to answer, but found her voice breaking on a sudden lump in her throat. She wept, even though the tears weren’t real and the breath she gasped was only a memory, and that somehow made it worse. Alyona kneeled down beside her, lifting her from the cloudy ground and cradling her close.
How could you not tell me? Havilar asked. I had a son.
I thought you knew, Alyona told her.
Havilar pushed away from her, started to … say … something. What had she known? She studied Alyona’s face as if it might remind her. Farideh was there, she said. She’s … She’s figuring things out. Havilar shut her eyes and tried to steer her thoughts back on course. I forgot what I was saying.
That happens, Alyona said sadly. The longer you’re not connected to your body this way the harder it is to keep your thoughts together. She smoothed Havilar’s hair back. This is taking longer than I think Bisera expected. Perhaps we should ask her to give you some time in your own body.
Havilar peered at Alyona, sure she’d misheard. You can talk to her?
Of course, Alyona asked. I talk to her all the time. Haven’t you noticed?
This time Havilar did scream—in frustration, in rage, in grief. How cruel were the gods to let her end up here and give her someone who seemed so close to being helpful and yet who was so incapable of helping her manage anything? Alyona might be kind, but she seldom made sense … and now Havilar wasn’t going to make sense. She wasn’t going to make sense and her sister might be dead—but at the very least she wasn’t here—and she had a son no one told her about and she was all alone, except for Alyona, and she didn’t have her glaive. Havilar curled into a ball and sobbed and sobbed, for all the good it did, but in that moment it was all she could manage.
Alyona’s arms wrapped around her. There, there, she said. We’ll both go and talk to her. The moment she’s asleep. This will all be over soon. I promise..
• • •
EMMER’S SHOUT OF anguish rivaled Farideh’s screams, still echoing in Lorcan’s ears as he raced across the farmyard. The tiefling cowherd crawled toward where Farideh still lay writhing in the dirt and grabbed hold of what remained of her shirt sleeve.
“Where did she take him?” he demanded, shaking her. “Where did she take him?”
“Erlkazar,” Farideh gasped. “Maybe … I don’t …” She broke off with a cry of pain, gritting her teeth, and a fresh tide of fear rose in Lorcan. He shoved Emmer away as he reached her.
“Where are your healing potions?” he demanded as he dropped to her side. She shook her head—back to Djerad Thymar, it was the only choice. He plucked the portal ring from the chain around his neck and scooped her from the ground. She cried out again—the remains of the armor still steamed and his hand burned where it brushed a buckle. “I’m sure Mehen will have words for you about rushing into battle without proper equipment,” he said, even while some distant part of his brain began to panic.
“Stop,” she said. “We can’t … leave them.”
“We can and we will.”
“Stop!” she cried.
He stopped walking, but he held her all the more tightly. “Darling,” he said in a low voice, “I cannot take them through the Hells. Whatever you were thinking to promise, they would lose their minds at the sight of the fingerbone tower and you know it. That aside, you are in a great deal of pain and you need healing, now!”
“Put … me down,” she said.
Instead he turned so that she could see Emmer, still on the ground, Merida standing in the door. “You’ll have to excuse us,” he said, letting his disguise spell drop with a shiver of needle-sharp pain. “Your son is as necessary to us as he is to you and I promise we’ll be in touch about his circumstances.” Before Farideh could protest again, Lorcan blew through the portal ring that pulled them both back through the planes and into the Hells. Farideh, for all she gritted her teeth and scowled, kept her eyes shut tight, her face turned toward Lorcan, until he opened the portal again, to the Verthisathurgiesh enclave in Djerad Thymar.
He set her down on the bed. “You need out of that armor,” he said, reaching for the still-hot buckles.
Farideh grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”
“Do you imagine this is a seduction?” he said, trying to keep his voice level. The remnants of Graz’zt’s curse, he told himself. The triple urge to scream at her, to panic, to leave and cut his losses like he ought to. He ought to force a deal, some little part of him noted. She’d make any kind of deal right now.
“Mehen’s … room,” she said. “On the … dresser. Burn salves.”
This is what happens when you stop thinking like a devil, he told himself as he bolted from the room. They start giving orders. They start thinking they’re driving the team. They start figuring out how to push and pull you.
Yell at her later, he thought, as if that would regain anything.
Lachs and Adastreia looked up as he strode through the central room. “What happened?” Adastreia called. “What did you do?”
“We don’t need you anymore!” Lorcan shouted. He plunged into Mehen’s room, everything organized in tidy precision so the box of salves and healing supplies was easily snatched up.
“Is Bryseis dead?” Lachs called as he sprinted past again.
Not dead, Lorcan thought, returning to Farideh. Closer than ever.
Farideh had managed to get her leather brigandine partway off, lying back panting on the bed. The skin beneath was angry red and weeping, though thankfully not charred away. He threw the healing kit on the bed, and ignoring Farideh’s attempted protests, unbuckled the rest of the armor.
“Did you find the Brimstone Angel?” Adastreia stood in the doorway, examining Farideh with a callous sort of curiosity. Lorcan ignored her, pulling pots and bottles from the kit, all of them labeled in Draconic.
“Which of these is for burns?” he shouted.
“Oh for blessed Beshaba’s sake.” Adastreia sat down on the opposite side of the bed. She examined the burns across Farideh’s chest and neck and shoulders. She reached up for the necklace she wore, sorting through the beads by touch. With one careful hand, she laid her fingertips against Farideh’s sternum. She whispered a word that sent the feeling of a moonbeam slicing through the clouds in Lorcan’s brain, and a faint silver glow over Farideh’s reddened skin. Lorcan blinked, his panic all erased. Farideh’s skin was still raw-looking, but the skin was intact, the weeping and blood gone.
“Better?” Adastreia asked.
“Better,” Farideh said, still breathless. “Thank you.”
Adastreia stood, dusting off her hands. Lorcan scowled. “Prayer beads?”
“I don’t like being in pain,” Adastreia said carelessly. “I’m not such a fool as to make myself beholden to Kulaga’s opinion of what I might need.” She folded her arms. “I assume if you don’t need us, that means you lost the sixth heir. I assume that Bryseis Kakistos came to fetch him, if you’re burned like that, so—”
“Give me a moment,” Lorcan said. “I’ll call on Kulaga when she’s settled.”
“I was going to say,” Adastreia went on, “that means you’re on to the staff, and Lachs had a notion about that you might want to hear.”
“What is it?” Farideh said. “No, wait, let me … Let me get dressed again.” She pulled the sheet up over her. “He can tell me.”
“I can tell you,” Adastreia said. “It’s not on this plane. Stands to reason. Asmodeus is a god here, so hiding something here—especially something that’s connected to him on such a fundamental level—would go poorly. In a hundred years, he would have found it and reclaimed it. It’s not here, and if Bryseis Kakistos thinks she can get hold of it, it’s a fair wager that it’s not in the Nine Hells.”
“Excellent,” Lorcan said. “Only ten thousand planes to search.”
Adastreia snorted. “Don’t be dramatic. Lachs and I will help you narrow it down. While we wait for Kulaga and Shetai.” She left the room without waiting for an answer.
Farideh blew out a breath. “I have no idea what to do with her.”
“It could be worse,” Lorcan said. “She could be actively trying to kill you. Which pot is the burn salve?”
“I’m fine. This will heal.”
“Darling, humor me?” he said, hating the brittle sound of his own voice. She considered him, wary and worried.
“The clay one with the red labeling.” Farideh pursed her mouth. “Are we doing the right thing?”
Lorcan rifled through the pouch’s contents. “I told you this isn’t a seduction.”
“I mean, should we be trying to stop her? She has a point—you had the same point—if she doesn’t do this ritual, Asmodeus wins.”
“Asmodeus always wins,” Lorcan said. “Are you planning to sacrifice your sister’s child to realize that?”
“Maybe there’s another way to go about it,” Farideh said. Then, “I just want Havilar back safe.”
Lorcan stopped. “You can’t listen to her,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”
“As dangerous as listening to Asmodeus?” Farideh asked.
“Easily,” Lorcan said. “Do you remember what I told you? In life she was a monster. A madwoman. A killer of her own kind. She coerced the Toril Thirteen into sacrifice—”
“All of them?” Farideh asked. “It seems like some were eager enough.” She shook her head. “Why change her mind now? Why make it all out to be a mistake?”
“Because she feels cheated,” Lorcan said. “Isn’t that obvious? She wants revenge.”
“But she has the powers now,” Farideh pointed out. “She’s Chosen. That’s what he promised.” She pursed her lips, deep in thought as Lorcan found and opened the pot of ointment. “Is that all he promised?”
“It’s a fairly standard agreement,” Lorcan said, scooping amber jelly from the jar and smearing it over the burn across her neck and chest. Farideh gasped in sudden pain, sinking her fingers into his shoulder like claws. It sent a muddled rush of pain and pleasure and anger through him. “Shit and ashes!”
“Sorry!” she cried, but it took a moment longer for her fingers to unlock. “Sorry,” she said again, and she seemed to remember, as he did, how fiercely, how passionately she’d gripped him other times. How similar this seemed, even if it wasn’t a seduction.
Farideh pulled the now greasy sheet up over her. “I … I can do this myself now.”
“Do you want to?” Lorcan asked, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I need to.” She took the pot from him. “Thank you … for helping.”
“What else am I here for?” Lorcan asked. The god’s orders rang in his thoughts: Stay by her side … You know how to make certain … You might even know how to be certain … Lorcan cleared his throat.
“There’s no question now that she can track me,” he said. “The pradixikai too once they realize Sairché’s out of reach.”
Farideh didn’t look up from her awkward self-ministrations. “I thought they didn’t want you.”
“They want Sairché,” he agreed. “But they’ll spread their net soon enough.”
Farideh nodded toward the dressing table. “Can you get my spare shirt?”
Lorcan gritted his teeth. Once, he would have been sure she was only missing his meaning. Now? He handed her the shirt. “Would you share the protection spell again?” he asked bluntly. “Or am I to fend for myself?”
Farideh said nothing for a moment, shrugging into fresh clothing as if it didn’t matter in the least that he was standing there. “I’m not sleeping with you,” she said finally.
“Presumptuous,” Lorcan said. “All I asked about was protection magic.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t pretend I’m too stupid to know what you’re doing.”
Think like a human, he told himself. Talk like a devil. “Making sure you know where I stand?” Lorcan said. “Darling, you make your own decisions—you’ve always made your own decisions, good or ill. You chose Dahl. Now, I have my own opinions about that—we’ve been over them. Moreover, I think you have a great deal more important things to do than worry about which fellow warms your bed. I’m hardly so desperate as to press you when you’ve got your sister to worry about and gods to untangle. When this is all through, and Dahl is still gods’ know where, then I might press my suit. But now? Please.” He regarded her in a way that ought to look concerned, vaguely wounded. “I’m your ally.”
Farideh looked away. “I’m sorry. You’ve been … You’ve been helping in ways no one else can. I know that.” She drew her dagger and handed it over to him. He made sure his fingertips brushed hers the barest possible degree—a reminder, not an overture. “Do it.”
“Do you want to wait for the salve to do its work?”
“Everything already hurts,” she said, extending her arm and rolling the sleeve up past her elbow. “What’s one more scratch?” She cut the thin skin there, swiftly, without hesitating the way she had the last time they’d done this, then handed Lorcan the weapon and heaved herself from the bed.
Lorcan slashed his own arm, black blood smearing into red along the well-worn blade. The powers of the Nine Hells surged around the blade, around the both of them as he stood, as she moved closer to him. He spoke the words of the spell, the magic that would let him borrow a measure of the protection spell some god had bestowed on her. Farideh’s eyes locked on his, flinching slightly as the spell built, no doubt surging through the brand that marked her upper arm.
He released the dagger, the spell buoying it between them. The blood exploded from the blade of the knife, the spray of droplets fine enough to coat them both and leave no trace at all. Lorcan’s hands shot out, grabbed hold of her and pulled her close.
Mine—the only thought that pierced the wall of power that knotted together around them. His thoughts blurred into the spell and his pulse beat a tattoo against his brain. A flicker of fear crossed Farideh’s features. Mine, he thought.
The spell finished, vanished into the air. Farideh gasped as if she hadn’t been breathing and took a step back. The magic that wound around them persisted, a tether that kept him bound to her side. She brushed her hands over her arms, as if trying to dislodge the vague presence of the spell.
“All right?” she asked.
“Seems in order,” Lorcan said calmly.
She ran a distracted hand through her hair. “Good. All right.” She wet her mouth before looking up at him. “I meant to ask, what was that?” she asked. “That scroll she was trying to trade? Was that yours? That’s why you said she can find you?”
Lorcan held perfectly still. Dahl’s agreement—the copper-capped scrolls were copies of deals created for Glasya’s recorders. Bryseis Kakistos could have gotten it while she was impersonating Sairché, and what else could she sow such fast-growing chaos with?
It meant the Brimstone Angel knew about Dahl. She knew about the deal.
Lorcan held her gaze, feeling the half-lie burning on his tongue before he spoke it. “I don’t know.” You don’t know, he told himself. It could be any agreement in Malbolge. You don’t know.
“Why did you destroy it then?”
“I panicked,” he said, again the half-lie. “It might have been cursed or a trap. If she wanted you to have it, it couldn’t have been good.”
Farideh studied him a long moment. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose we’re safe from that at least.”
Lorcan smiled at her, but his thoughts were on the other nine copies of the deal, which were stored around the Hells. A security against reckless mortals thinking to destroy their contracts and a liability when it came to Bryseis Kakistos.