She folded her arms. “Please—you wouldn’t have . . . if he hadn’t been standing there, you would have just left.”
“He’s not here now,” Lorcan noted, easing toward her. “It would be a simple theory to test.”
Farideh didn’t move. She felt tired and worn through as an old sleeve— threadbare and ready to tear right through. If he asked, if he pressed, she wasn’t sure she could put him off, or that she wanted to. All she could think of was how he’d kissed her, how much she wanted him to kiss her again. How easy it would be to just put everything else out of mind, if he pulled her close against him again—
How much she would hate herself if she let him make her forget that easily. You cannot save him, she thought, as his hands found her hips. You cannot make him safe. You are losing all the ground you gained in Proskur, in the fortress. It was as if she was in the frozen lake once more, at the edge of her air. I know I have to let go of him, she thought, and I can’t.
“This is all a game to you,” she said. “You’re trying to trick me.”
“A little,” he admitted. “But you enjoy it. And who says I don’t?”
“And when I say no again?” Farideh looked into his dark eyes. “How quickly will you start railing and threatening and pouting? How long will you make me pay for that?”
Lorcan hesitated. “What if I promise not to?”
“If you can manage it?” Farideh said. “Then I might think about forgiving you.” He leaned close, one hand sliding up her back to pull her nearer. “But you won’t,” she added, hardly able to think of the words. “I know you.”
His lips brushed her cheek, her jaw, her mouth. This time it wasn’t sudden, it didn’t surprise her. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, enough to make her forget the reasons this was a very bad idea.
Almost.
She pushed him away, shaking. “Gods. You’re dangerous,” she said to him, to herself.
He hesitated. “Not so dangerous as you.”
Someone knocked at the door, and Farideh let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Neither of them moved. The knocking came again.
“Tell them to leave,” he said.
Yes, she thought, tell them to leave so you can make another impulsive, stupid decision.
“Hold on a breath,” she called. Farideh shut her eyes. “Go home, Lorcan.”
Lorcan let her go, and when she opened her eyes again, he was several paces away, sorting through his magic rings. “Fine. That’s what you want, that’s what I’ll do.” He held the silver ring up and looked over at her with a wicked smile. “That’s what you say you want. And let’s be clear, I do get credit for this.”
Farideh found herself wishing someone would give her a little credit for putting him off. “All the praise due to someone for having basic morals.”
Lorcan clucked his tongue. “Good night, darling.” He blew through the ring and the whirlwind drew him back to the Nine Hells.
Farideh pressed her hands to her face and cursed a few times before opening the door to find her sister waiting there, looking as if someone had told her they’d lost seven and a half more years, and thrown her glaive into the bonfire besides.
“Oh gods,” Farideh said, “what’s happened?”
Havilar heaved a gusty sigh, her eyes shining. “Brin’s engaged. To a princess.”
“Oh, Havi.” Farideh pulled her into the room and into an embrace. “Oh. Oh gods.”
“He says it’s just political. But he can’t just chuck her to the cleric since it’s political.” She buried her face against Farideh’s shoulder. “He says he loves me.”
Of course he says that, Farideh thought savagely. “What are you going to do?”
Havilar pulled away and wiped her eyes. “Wait, I guess. For a little. I mean, we have to go to Cormyr anyway.” She hugged her arms to her chest. “And I do love him, and I believe him that he loves me. I just wish he’d said something before . . .” She trailed off and looked away, into the room.
“Before what?”
Havilar’s golden gaze held Farideh’s for a moment. “You said you don’t want to know,” she said delicately. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
“Of course,” Farideh said, shutting the door behind her sister. Havilar sat down in the chair beside the table and unlaced her boots. Farideh hesitated a moment.
“You can tell me,” she offered, “if you need to.”
“And then you’ll say you told me so.” Havilar pulled off her boot and chucked it against the door. “In the woods,” she said, once it had landed. “I . . . Things happened. I was still worried about you, only . . .” She sighed again. “I do love him.”
“So you wait,” Farideh said. “And see if he’s as good as his word. Does Mehen know?”
Havilar made a face and started on her other boot. “Oh, he must. I don’t think you have secret political marriages. What would be the point?”
“I mean about you and Brin.”
“Oh. Right.” Havilar sighed. “I think he knows about the first time, and he suspects about this one. A better reason to sleep in here.” She looked down at her toes. “I’m still angry at you, you know.”
“I know,” Farideh said. “I’m just glad you don’t hate me.”
“I never really hated you. And . . . I get it. You were stuck between a wyvern and the Abyss. It was still a pothac thing to do, but it was a pothac situation.” She met her sister’s eyes again. “No more secrets, though.”
“None,” Farideh promised. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and sat down on the foot of the bed. “Starting with this one.” But the words felt as if they wouldn’t pass her lips. She blew out a breath.
“I can handle it,” Havilar said. “I could have handled that stuff about devils and warlocks.” She shucked off her brigandine and hung it on the back of the chair, over Farideh’s. “And you could have handled it better if you’d just let me help.”
“I know.”
“Now you know,” Havilar corrected, changing her filthy shirt for a linen nightdress. “So what is it now? More devils? More Shadovar?”
She was so sure of herself, Farideh thought. So light, so hopeful. Farideh was going to crush that again, with two little sentences.
But it wouldn’t change the truth. It wouldn’t help Havilar to be left in the dark any longer. Or so she hoped. Farideh sighed.
“I’m a Chosen of Asmodeus,” Farideh said. “And I think you are too.”
Epilogue
The ghost hung unnoticed over the guest room in the Harper hall, waiting, watching. Trying to focus her tattered, scattered mind on the task at hand.
For so long, she had wandered—it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The spells had gone awry, the vessel had been broken, and her own soul shattered. A lesser creature—a less determined creature—would have relented then, and let herself fall away into oblivion. Or perhaps crawled back to Asmodeus, admit that he’d won, and give up the game, beg for a meager place in the Hells, far beneath what she was promised.
But even dead, she was nothing if not determined. Those fragments of soul, those pieces of self found each other, stole bits and scraps of desperate magic to stitch herself back together. Every day she was closer to being whole, closer to becoming someone to fear once more.
Except for the vessel. Except for the fragments still lodged therein. The unfinished ghost of Bryseis Kakistos looked over her sleeping great-greatgranddaughters, the broken vessel that was meant to hold her. The protection spell still swaddled them both, still kept her at arm’s reach from what was rightfully hers.
Twenty-five years on, and she still wasn’t sure who the traitor had been—had Adrasteia softened at motherhood, unwilling to do what must be done and amend the problem her disloyal body had wrought? Had Chiridion found some fondness for the little errors—or more likely, had he been jealous that his purpose was not theirs? Was it Nasmos who always held a dagger to her back? Threnody? Lachs?
And which of he
r followers had crept in, a sheep in wolf’s clothing, to channel the sort of miracle from the sort of god that could be guilted into protecting two weakling babes from rightful death?
There was no knowing. The few who remained loyal and present were quick to blame the rest. They had scattered since, died some of them, and so she set that aside.
There would be time for retribution.
Ironically, it was Asmodeus who led her back to the girls—not intentionally, of course. He might pretend that this was all a mistake, all an unfortunate result of Bryseis’s impatience, but she knew him as well as any mortal could, and this was nothing but a clever play to get around their deal in one swift move.
When Asmodeus had imbued his Chosen with divine power, Bryseis Kakistos was ashamed to admit she had felt it and come running, like a dog seeking scraps. Some measure of that strength still hid within her, incomplete and untappable. The rest, the parts that mattered and made the magic work, rested in the vessels that still trapped the last pieces of her soul.
She stared at the young women, sleeping peacefully side by side. Not the powers she’d been promised for aiding Asmodeus in the first place, but something—a step toward her rightful place—and they were unreachable, locked in a vessel that Beshaba’s meddling touch had split in the womb.
The Brimstone Angel willed herself nearer and reached out to touch the edge of the protection—it sizzled as she brushed against it, again, and she curled her essence tighter. The dead shouldn’t feel such pain.
What officious god had laid that magic, barging in where they didn’t belong? She still didn’t know, no one seemed to know, and not for the first time, she wondered if it were Asmodeus’s doing, if the god of sin had simply changed his tactics more than she’d thought possible. What other deity would waste a miracle on tieflings?
One who knew to ward against Bryseis Kakistos, she thought, still smarting from the protection’s effects, and that suggested Asmodeus too. Who else knew what she was capable of now? But the Brimstone Angel had felt that sting before: this was divine magic from a much more beneficent source.
She drifted close enough to Farideh to feel the protection’s crackling, close enough to see the young woman’s eyes twitch and shiver beneath her lids as the ghost’s presence drew nightmares up out of the well of her mind. How much had that divine source steered the tiefling as she grew? How much was it reining her in? She had been born—both of them had been, damn it all—to resurrect Bryseis Kakistos. Yet the ghost had watched as Farideh had nearly killed herself a dozen times over trying to right a wrong that was none of her doing and gained her little for the effort.
Such stupidity must fall along the sire’s line, she thought. But stupid or wise, there was no escaping the fact she needed to get past that protection in order to gather the rest of her soul.
And if she wanted to defeat Asmodeus, she needed a body.
There was time still. If Asmodeus could be patient, then so could Bryseis Kakistos.
THE COMPANIONS
R.A. Salvatore
THE GODBORN
Paul S. Kemp
THE ADVERSARY
Erin M. Evans
THE REAVER
Richard Lee Byers
February 2014
THE SENTINEL
Troy Denning
April 2014
THE HERALD
Ed Greenwood
April 2014
About the Author
Erin M. Evans grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. After graduating from Washington University with a degree in Anthropology — which she promptly stuck in a box — she and her now-husband drove around the country in a 1983 Winnebago. They settled in Seattle, WA where she works as a writer and editor. Nowadays she uses that knowledge of bones, mythology, and social constructions to flesh out fantasy worlds.
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Also by Erin M. Evans
The God Catcher
Brimstone Angels
Lesser Evils
The Adversary
The Adversary Page 51