The wound still wept blood and Farideh’s breath came shallow and rapid. “Tell me which ring,” Lorcan said grimly. “And you get it.”
“Emeralds in a serpent band. Left-hand stack,” Sairché said, holding out her hand. Lorcan tossed it to Sairché, who slipped it over her finger. A spidery line of darkness cut through the air, widening when Sairché thrust her ringed hand past it. She rummaged in the unseen compartment, pulled out a glass vial the size of Lorcan’s thumb, and threw it to him.
Sairché admired the ring. “Well met, pretty,” she purred.
Lorcan ignored her, leaning over Farideh with the potion. He opened her jaw with one thumb and poured the syrupy liquid in. Her eyes opened wide. She choked and sat up.
“Swallow,” Lorcan ordered. She did, flinching before she looked up into the room, and spied Sairché, spied Lorcan.
“What . . . ,” she started, then all her breath went out of her. She inhaled in a horrible, throat-tearing scream and every muscle seemed to contract at once, as if trying to hold her struggling bones inside her flesh. Hells magic surged up her arms, tinting her veins black and ugly, creeping into the corners of her eyes. Lorcan pinned her to the bed, before she could cast accidentally or hurt herself.
Just as swiftly, the dark taint of Malbolge ebbed from her golden skin. Farideh looked up at him. A line of tears welled up in her eyes.
“How could you?” she said hoarsely. Her breath smelled of the healing draught, of char and cockroaches.
Lorcan didn’t move. “Which time?”
She shoved him off of her with surprising strength and sat up, eyeing first Sairché, then Lorcan, as if she wasn’t sure who to attack first. She would kill you, given the chance, Lorcan thought.
“Getout,” she snarled. Lorcan held up his hands, a gesture of appeasement.
“Farideh, we’re on your side. We’re here to fix things.”
Nothing softened in Farideh’s expression, and she held her hands up as well, bruised light collecting between her fingers. She caught sight of her previously wounded hand, now whole. The ring finger was ghost white to the line where its predecessor had been severed. Everything below was stained with blood.
“Oh gods,” she whispered. The bruised light sputtered out as she stared at it. Lorcan crept a little nearer. If she kept her focus on the injury . . .
But then Sairché sighed. “If the color bothers you, I suggest taking that problem to someone else. Any cure I can get is about as pleasant as the last one.”
Farideh’s gaze snapped to the cambion and in a moment, she had crossed the room, forcing Sairché to retreat behind Lorcan. Farideh stopped, just out of his reach, her long frame gripped with rage so forceful, Lorcan was afraid what it might unleash . . .
“The color?” she cried. “The color? You threw me in here with no sense at all of what I was meant to do,” she said, still hoarse from the potion. “You left me to flounder and guess and worry. You never bothered to tell me . . . to tell me . . .” Tears thickened her voice. She lowered her hands and gave Lorcan a look that cut right through his hope that any of this could work like in the old days.
“And we’re going to fix it,” Lorcan said gently. But that only made Farideh’s expression grow harder.
“You can’t fix this.”
“Oh come now,” Sairché said. “You couldn’t have fumbled that badly.” She edged out from behind Lorcan. “Although it does incite the question: why did he take your finger?”
Farideh gave a bitter laugh and all but collapsed onto the bench beside the dressing table. “Because your assurances mean nothing. Your deal is aithyas on a dead dragon’s belly. I said I couldn’t see any Chosen and so he murdered them.”
“Well what did you expect?” Sairché demanded. “That he’d be pleased? He’s a nuisance, not an idiot. That has nothing to do with our very respectable deal.”
“You said I wouldn’t kill anyone,” Farideh said. “You said—”
“Who did you kill?” Sairché interrupted. “He killed them—or more precisely I suspect, his guards killed them—and you merely watched. I don’t recall,” she added coolly, “you negotiating anything about not watching someone being killed.”
“Shut up, Sairché,” Lorcan said. He had only the barest sketches of a plan, but one thing was certain: he needed Farideh to calm down. “You’re going to declare her favor complete.”
Sairché looked at him as if he were mad. “No, I’m not.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said, “or a lot of resources, and we have quite a lot of things to right if this is going to end with everyone important keeping hold of their heads. So to begin: her favor is complete. She owes you nothing else. Say it.”
“If I do that,” Sairché said, “then I’ve reneged on my deal with Rhand. I don’t exactly keep my head in that case.” She dropped her voice. “This isn’t about making your pet happy.”
“Find a loophole,” Lorcan said, ignoring her. “The favor is done. Our plans hinge now on making sure of Magros. And since he’s made it clear his intent is to kill Farideh, she needs to be removed from the situation. Is anyone going to argue with that?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Farideh said.
“Don’t be silly—” Lorcan bit off his reply as he turned. In Proskur, Lorcan had begun to think Farideh was learning to mask her true feelings, to keep her anger quiet, her heart off her sleeve. Not well enough to hide from him— never that well. But enough that she thought she was hiding. Enough that she could be useful against Temerity, against some other mortal.
Whatever mask she’d crafted herself was torn away, and every bit of hurt and rage was writ as plain on Farideh as if it had been rendered in fresh blood. Lorcan recalculated.
“I take that back,” he said. “You sound very much like a woman with a plan. Perhaps you ought to be in charge here.” Her expression didn’t flicker, and another thread in Lorcan’s cold heart snapped. Careful, he told himself, even though another part of him wanted nothing more than to be very incautious indeed. Careful. Ease your way back. “Why are you staying?” he asked her.
“I won’t let them die,” she said. “I won’t help and I won’t walk away. I may be damned, but I won’t go to my grave earning it.”
“Who’s sending you to your grave?” Lorcan said. “Who said you were damned?”
She laughed again. “Tell me the name of the god that’s willing to claim a Chosen of Asmodeus. One—just one.”
Dread coiled up Lorcan’s core. “So you know,” he said lightly. “Sairché apparently felt it was better you didn’t.”
“She was probably right,” Farideh said. She rested her head in her hands.
Lorcan took a chance and moved nearer to her. “Darling, you’re not damned. This is nothing. Favored status. A few silly powers to show off His Majesty’s reach.”
“Name the god, Lorcan.”
“Stranger things by far have happened.” The god of evil singling out his distressingly moral warlock for one . . .
“Why me?” Farideh whispered, as if she’d had the same thought. She shook her head, her face still buried in her hands. “I’m not . . .”
“You are,” Sairché said. “And it doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t or never would have done any sort of thing. It’s Asmodeus’s decision, not yours. It’s why they call them Chosen, not Choosers.”
Lorcan spun on his sister. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Or I do not care what deal we have, I will send you right back to that shitting cage. Every word out of your mouth is moving the axe closer to your neck, do you understand that?”
Sairché’s golden eyes flicked over his face. “I don’t take well to my pieces being impudent.”
“And how well has that suited you? Shut up and let me do what I do best.” He turned back to Farideh, who had lifted her head to glare at the both of them.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m still not helping him massacre these people.”
“No one’s massacri
ng anyone,” Lorcan said. He frowned and glanced back at Sairché, realizing he wasn’t sure what her plans had been for the prisoners. Sairché shrugged.
“If you don’t help,” Sairché said sweetly, “then you’re the one who reneged. You’re the one who bears the weight of the forfeit. Do you still want your soul?”
Lorcan started to silence her again, but then Farideh spoke, and she had never looked so terrible to Lorcan—so likely to be the Chosen of Asmodeus— as the moment when she turned to Sairché and said, “Would you steal a soul from your king’s hand?”
Sairché froze, watching Farideh as if she’d like nothing better than to tear the woman’s eyes out with her bare hands. “Not as such.”
For a moment, Farideh held Sairché’s gaze as if daring her to lunge. Then grief folded over Farideh again, dampening her fury. “All this time . . . you have nothing over me, do you? My soul’s his as much as it can be. I’ve just gone along doing horrible things because I trusted you.”
Lorcan kneeled beside her. “So we’re not massacring prisoners,” he said carefully. “Agreed. What are we doing?” Farideh shook her head.
“I could get you something to get you through the wall,” Lorcan went on. “Sairché was kind enough to plan for—”
“Let me guess,” Farideh said. “It will only let me out. Or it will snatch up anyone who passes through and drop them in Shar’s hands. Or—”
“Hold on,” Lorcan said. “We’re as interested as you are in bringing Rhand down. Only we’re interested in doing it the right way.”
“Shar is not supposed to win here,” Sairché added, for once following Lorcan’s lead. “She never has been. That’s your ‘common enemy’ after all. But if we break the deal with Rhand—” She cleared her throat. “We can’t just take the wall down.”
“But that doesn’t mean,” Lorcan went on, “that you can’t win a little too. Forget the passwall spell. How do you plan to rescue more than yourself?”
Farideh shook her head again, as if she couldn’t believe she was listening to them. “I think someone’s escaped before,” she said.
Sairché sighed. “No one’s escaped from here. I’m sure of that.”
“Not from here,” Farideh agreed. “From one of the other camps.” Lorcan frowned and looked back at his sister.
“What other camps?” Sairché said, each word shot like a bullet from a sling.
“He has six camps,” Farideh said. “He’s moving Chosen from here to there. And in one of them . . . I think someone managed.”
Lorcan smiled. “Well, I think you’ve found your loophole.”
“Indeed,” Sairché said, curling her hands into fists. “We are well into disputation.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lorcan said. “You dispute the terms and you bring Asmodeus’s attention to us and pull her back to the Hells. Make Rhand think you’re invoking the disputation clause. But don’t.”
Sairché narrowed her eyes at him, and for a brief moment he was very glad she was on his side. “A fair point. But I’m still offering him a proxy. A nice, antsy erinyes, I think. That gives you three days before the ruse is up.” She looked at Farideh as if she’d like to give a few orders of her own.“Your favor’s complete,” she said instead. To Lorcan she added, “Remember what I said.”
She opened the dimensional pocket once more and plucked another ring from it. A flash, a smell like burnt meat, and Sairché was gone.
And Lorcan was alone with Farideh again.
She turned from him, her eyes locked resolutely on her reflection in the mirror. She and Havilar might have the same features, the same face, but to Lorcan’s eyes she looked ages older. And she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Farideh said.
“Good,” Lorcan said lightly. “I have a great deal to say to you, and I don’t like being interrupted.” Lords, he thought. He’d still set Asmodeus above anything else he feared, but this moment made the list.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “There’s nothing you can say to me to change my mind. I know who you are now.”
No, you don’t, Lorcan thought. Even I don’t know that anymore. There was a time when he would have said he did not have allies, and if he did by some twisting of the layers, he certainly did not try to win them back if they turned from him. He certainly wouldn’t do it by admitting weaknesses. He certainly did not care.
But if he said that now, he knew he would be a liar, and if Lorcan was sure that he was anything, he was not a liar.
“I have never said this to another soul, another person on this or any other plane, and if I did, I am absolutely sure I didn’t mean it,” Lorcan said. “I mean this: I am sorry. I misjudged you. Terribly. I should have known, I should have realized from the very start you wouldn’t have thrown me over. You were the only person in all the planes who wouldn’t have thrown me over.” He had never in his life felt so ridiculous, but he continued. “You were—you are the only one I trust. And for a time I was a fool, and I forgot that. And I’m sorry.”
Farideh said nothing, still simmering with fear and hurt and anger. But there—a moment of softness where she looked his reflection in the eye, before she spoke. “You trust Sairché.”
“I don’t trust Sairché, I have a deal with Sairché. There are a multiverse of differences.”
Farideh shook her head. “How can you stand at her side, when—were you ever even captured? Were you even in danger?”
“Yes,” Lorcan said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Farideh watched him a moment more, then sighed. “I’ll never understand you.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Lorcan said, acutely aware she had not forgiven him.
“I suppose I’ll have to learn the ways of the Hells,” she said bitterly. She started to say something else, but the words crumbled into a sob. She drew a slow, shuddering breath, trying to compose herself. She wouldn’t, Lorcan felt sure. She couldn’t. Everything he’d known would break her down—the fear of the dark sides of the pact, the fear that she couldn’t escape, couldn’t hold back the tide of the Hells herself—had come true in one terrible fact: she was a Chosen of Asmodeus.
Farideh stood—hardly able to straighten—and held her hand up as if she were going to push him away. “Please . . .” she managed. “Please . . .”
But Lorcan found he didn’t care what she was going to ask him for. He seized her in a tight embrace. “Don’t say a word,” he said, trying himself to ignore the thickness in his voice. “Just don’t say a godsbedamned word, all right?”
And she didn’t. The stiffness in her frame fled and she buried her face against his shoulder and wept. He held her close, half folding his wings around them, and kept his own silence.
Because she’d said “please,” he told himself. Because if she were still against you, she wouldn’t have asked. This is the next step—you’re her ally. Act it.
But that wasn’t right. It was because he couldn’t listen to her try and hold him off like an adversary, when she was too despairing to form words—that was the truth. Because he owed her better. Because she needed a moment to not be on guard.
“Take it back,” she sobbed. “Please take it back. I’m not his Chosen. I can’t be.”
This is none of your doing, Lorcan reminded himself. This is nothing you could have stopped.
“If I could I would,” he said. “You know that.”
That triggered fresh sobs. “Why? Why?”
Lorcan shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. “It seems he’s invested all the Brimstone Angels,” he said. “Just an accident of your birth.”
She went rigid again and pulled away. “All of them? Oh gods. Oh gods! Havi?”
Shit and ashes, Lorcan thought. “No. Your sister’s fine. Nothing’s shown up in her, I promise. I was at her side before I came here—several days now. I saw her only hours ago. Nothing.”
“But it will?” Farideh said, panic edging h
er voice. “It will, and then what?”
“One thing at a time,” Lorcan said. “Your sister has a protection laid on her too—and darling, it’s heavier than yours. It may be Asmodeus passed her by. It may be that protection stops the blessing from awakening. The important part is that she’s fine. She’s not a day and a half from here, her and Brin. They’ll arrive soon. And you and I had best be ready for them.”
Farideh pulled away from him farther, shaking her head. “What’s the trick?” she said. “Your god clearly doesn’t go to all this trouble just to be perfectly happy when you go ahead and undo it all.” She was back to looking at him like a demon, crawled out of the Abyss. “So what’s the trick? You ‘help them escape’ by killing them all? You don’t kill them, you just . . . pull them into the Hells? Is it me?—will I have to . . . Is it really my soul . . . ?”
“Gods damn it!” Lorcan cried. “The ‘trick’ as you put it, is not on you. It’s on Asmodeus.”
That stopped her. “On Asmodeus?”
“Or,” Lorcan said more carefully, “perhaps a better way to say things is that Sairché’s plan is flawed. As is her collaborator’s, a devil called Magros. Both have made”—he gave her a significant look—“mistakes. Sairché was tasked with collecting Chosen. Magros was tasked with gathering their powers. We shouldn’t be surprised if it falls apart. The concern, of course, is that any failure would reflect poorly on the person who caused it”—he nodded to Farideh—“the devils who made the plans . . . and the archdevil who oversaw it. We must make sure that isn’t us.”
“So I have to help you so your lady isn’t punished.”
“I’m more concerned about the fact that I’ll be dead,” Lorcan said. “And listen to what I’m telling you: there is another devil. Another Lord of the Nine with their fingers in the pie. And none of them care even a little what becomes of you or the people you’re worried about. I do care.”
She watched him warily. “So if Sairché fails, she’ll be punished and so will you. And your lady. But if the failure is the other devil’s it’s him and his lady in trouble?”
“Lord,” Lorcan corrected. “And yes.”
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