Brimstone Angels (4 page)

The lines that laced her shoulder were red and oozing. They ached. They itched. Worse, they
pulled
, as if the burn were a tether and something was holding the other end.

Mehen settled a blanket over her shoulders. “You should go to sleep,” he said gently. Havilar was already fast asleep, sprawled facedown with her horns curling back from the ground.

“I’m not tired,” she said, hardly above a whisper. Her throat ached from the effort of not crying. She couldn’t—not after all she’d done.

He was silent for a moment. “We’ll be all right.”

Farideh nodded, though she couldn’t see how.

“Farideh,” Mehen said. She looked up. “Trust me. I’ve done this before.”

“And so we can’t go to Tymanther,” she said dully.

Mehen snorted. “There’s a lot more world than Arush Vayem and Tymanther. We’ll make our way, take bounties or serve as guards. We’ll find someone to help you get rid of that pact, and we can come back.”

Farideh pulled the blanket close. “You know we can’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut. The cambion had been right. One mistake, and she was as good as dead.

Fine—if that was how the world was going to treat her, perhaps she’d just keep whatever the cambion offered, and to the Hells with them all. If they all thought her damned, better to damn herself right.

The thought frightened her, but there it was.

Mehen was watching her. “If you’re not going to sleep, keep watch. Wake me when you’re tired. Or if you hear anything.”

Farideh doubted she would ever be tired again. Once Mehen had gone to his own bedroll and dropped off to sleep, she let herself weep quietly into her hands.

“What on all the planes are you crying for?” a voice said. “You’re much better off now than you were.”

She froze like a rabbit before a wolf, looking up at Lorcan silhouetted in the firelight. He was still ferociously handsome, still unspeakably fiendish, and this time there was no circle—not even a broken, haphazard one—to separate them. Havilar and Mehen slept on.

“Are you here to take my soul then?” she said quietly.

Lorcan burst into laughter. “Oh, Glasya skin me, that’s adorable. No, I’m not here to harvest you. We have an agreement, and I’m here to see to that.”

“Oh.” She wondered what exactly it was she had bargained away in the heat of the moment and the tangle of his pretty words. “But you will? Is that what this is?”

“Dear girl,” he said, “the king of the Hells’ own blood runs in your veins. A soul was never a certainty for you. I’d suggest you stop worrying about it.”

“So I
am
doomed,” she said. “And you
are
here to take me.”

“There you are again,” he said, with a shake of his head, “being melodramatic. I’m merely giving you some perspective. That isn’t the sort of deal we’ve made at all.”

“You’re talking in circles again,” she said.

“My darling, I already told you: If all I wanted was a petty little soul, there were dozens I could have snapped up quicker and neater than yours.”

She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. “Then what
do
you want?”

“A warlock.” He stepped closer. “You, in particular, as my warlock.”

She shook her head. “I don’t … I don’t know what you mean.”

He gave her a dark look, as if she were being deliberately obtuse, but she could only shake her head again. Lorcan sighed. “It means you’re bound to me. For the pleasure, I grant you powers. Powers you seemed to dearly want, before.”

“Spells?” she asked. “What … what do I have to do?”

“Nothing. You’ll find it’s much simpler than other sorts of spell-casting. Now,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the firelight, “do you want a taste of what you’ve purchased?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know that I do.” And he wasn’t telling her what she’d purchased those powers with, she couldn’t help but notice. “Why me?”

He shrugged. “Call it a whimsy of my character. I have certain preferences for my warlocks.”

“Warlocks?” she said, emphasizing the plural.

“You aren’t exactly my first,” he said with a chuckle.

Farideh started to ask him who the others were—whether they, too, were caught in the net of their own fears and wants, whether they were afraid of him, whether they were pretty—and stopped herself. She didn’t want to know.

He set his hands on his hips. “Come now,” he said after a moment, “what are you thinking?”

“That you don’t seem dangerous,” she admitted. “Which makes me suspect you are very dangerous.”

“I hope that is not a logic you apply to your everyday life.”

“No,” Farideh said. “Just devils … and the like.”

“I’m only half a devil.”

“That’s enough like a devil.” Her voice hitched, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, willing herself not to cry again. But it was too much and the tears overcame her.

“Oh Hells,” he said, holding out a hand, “come here.”

She didn’t know how he snatched her wrist away from the layers of the blanket, how he pulled her free of it and to her feet, but as soon as she realized he was moving and she should stop him, Lorcan had her tucked against him, her back pressed to his chest, his arms wrapped around her.

“You’re freezing,” he commented. Fortunately he was warmer than the fire.

She stiffened, and kept her eyes resolutely on Mehen’s sleeping form. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Proving you haven’t doomed yourself. Really, I’m a pleasant enough fellow if you give me a chance.”

She was sure in her heart of hearts that Lorcan would say anything if it meant she’d stay bound to him. But that night, far from home and far from any future, she was still seventeen, still a girl, and still desperately lonesome. She stayed where she was.

“Why me?” she said. “You said … ‘the king of the Hells’ own blood.’ Is that why?”

“
All
tieflings have the blood of Asmodeus,” he said. “Regardless of who first dirtied the well. An effect of the ascension—it’s terribly boring. Don’t worry about it.”

Farideh pursed her lips. “I don’t like people telling me what to think.”

“Fascinating. How do you feel about people telling you what to
do
?”

He snatched up her hands in his own. Her breath caught—her double concerns twining over each other. She’d heard stories enough of people who lost their souls by not paying close enough attention to canny devils.

But at the same time no one had ever grabbed her hands like that. Lorcan’s hands were strong, and she found herself considering how much larger than hers they were.

If he held tight, she didn’t think she could break away.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

She gave a little shake of her head. She didn’t want to, and yet she did. She wanted to see what he was going to try—it wasn’t as if anyone had tried anything on her—but she wasn’t a fool and she knew he was up to no good.

“Close your eyes. Think about your burn,” he said. “And think about the world.”

“The whole world?”

“Yes. Think about Toril.”

Tempted, Farideh tried, but it was like trying to think about how to walk or how the color yellow looked—Toril was Toril. She opened her eyes.

“I don’t know how—”

“Stop talking,” he said, “and concentrate.”

Farideh closed her eyes again, and instead, thought of the ground. The way it felt to stand solid and to spread her weight between both feet in one of Mehen’s fighting stances. She thought of the cold, dry air and the wind that stirred the snow over the solidness of the mountains. She thought of the sun and Selûne looking down at her, and the color of the moon goddess’s light on the rocks and the snow. The
stillness of the cold winter night and the sound of the breath through her nostrils and the heat and pop of the fire.

And the burn—no, she thought, not burn. Brand. Lorcan could call it whatever pleased him, the lines that laced her shoulder were more than a burn. Tieflings didn’t burn easily—she and Havilar had scared Mehen enough times, snatching dropped bits of bread or meat right out of the flames, quick enough that they didn’t feel a thing. Only setting fire to their sleeves now and again.

But this burn, this brand, was no more a part of Toril than Lorcan was. Farideh knew that all the way to her marrow. The way it pulled at her, the way it still ached after hours and hours and Mehen’s ministrations. The brand was something magical, and it tied her to Lorcan.

And something tied
him
to someplace … 
else
. If she let her thoughts drift along the bindings, she could sense another world beyond Toril.

The Nine Hells.

Farideh swallowed hard and opened her eyes.

“You’ve noticed,” Lorcan said.

She nodded, not wanting him to be a devil, not wanting him to be a monster. Not wanting to have said anything to him in the first place, if she could just wish for things to be true, so that she wouldn’t be standing there, as unsafe as she could be.

Lorcan let go of her hand and traced the lines of the brand peeking through her hastily mended dress. “This mark is what connects you to the powers of the Hells. Well,” he amended, “rather it’s what lets you channel them. Through me. Easier than spellbooks.”

“Does it hurt?”

“You’ll be fine.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “I meant you. Does it hurt you?”

He smiled—such a wicked, wicked smile. “I’ll be fine too. Here’s your first lesson.” Lorcan took her hands up again. “Think about that connection. You were close. You felt the power.”

She still could—it was like a primed pump, waiting for someone to grab hold of the handle and start it flowing. And it seemed to want her to grab hold of it, as if it were aware, as if it wanted to flow through her.

“What will it do?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Lorcan said, “unless you take hold of it.”

She opened her eyes. “Is this how you’re going to take my soul?”

He sighed. “Lords. If I promise to leave your soul alone for the time being will you just do what I say?”

Farideh laughed bitterly. “What’s your promise worth?”

“Plenty,” he said, sounding affronted. “I’m not some
demon
or something. I keep my word.”

“You lied about the circle.”

“I didn’t lie. I wasn’t
forthcoming
. There’s a difference. And I give you my most solemn word that you can keep whatever semblance of a soul you’ve managed, devil-child—unless you
want
to give it up—if you just do what I say.”

“For now,” Farideh added. “If I do what you say for now.”

He chuckled again. “You are terribly melodramatic. For
now
.”

Farideh hesitated again, sensing the power lying just out of reach. It seemed, she thought, to be only a part of something larger, a fraction of the Nine Hells, and still it was vast and roiling. She wondered if she managed to open that channel wider, like the breaking of a dam, if it would surge through her and Lorcan and kill them both.

“You know,” Lorcan said, “you are bound to come up against bandits. Or monsters. Or just people who don’t like the look of you. Maybe those neighbors of yours will decide you need more punishment than just banishment. This will help. For all I’m sure your dragonborn has trained you with a sword, you’re not practiced enough with it.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

He rubbed his thumb over her palm in a slow circle. “Calluses. Your hands are far too smooth.”

She blushed to the roots of her hair.

Later, Farideh would think if anyone ever asked her about that night, she would need to invent a story—something where she acted because she was prideful and thought she could handle what she should have known she could not; or because Lorcan was clever and she was grief-stricken and foolish; or because she was forced against her will to grasp the powers of a warlock.

Anything, she would think, is better than the truth—that I reached for the powers of the Hells so I wouldn’t have to think of something to say to the half-devil stirring up my blood in ways I didn’t want to think about anymore.

The power poured into her, like slick, dark water filling a basin, and churned through her, stirring through every vessel, every part of her.

“Say
adaestuo,
” Lorcan said.

She opened her eyes. “
Adaestuo
.”

The power seemed to burst into being in the air before her mouth and, channeled by her outstretched hands, streamed across the clearing and exploded against a fir tree with a sickly violet light.

Farideh stared, agape, at the force of it. The wood had splintered and charred where the blast had struck it, and embers of purple light still scintillated at its edges. A single word and she’d blown off a piece of the tree nearly as large as her head.

She might never please Mehen with her sword work, she might never rival Havilar’s skill with her glaive, but this … this was breathtaking.

It was also loud. At the explosion, Havilar sat bolt upright. Mehen did not wake so much as materialize on his feet, falchion in hand. His eyes went straight to the tree, with its ring of strange, purplish embers … and then followed the path of the blast back to Farideh, her hands in Lorcan’s.

She tried to leap away, to put as much space between her and the cambion as she could, but she couldn’t move. Lorcan had folded his arms around her, as if this were nothing, as if no one were watching, as if Mehen weren’t advancing on him with his bare blade.

“You were made for this,” he whispered, and kissed her, just under her cheekbone. He vanished, and Farideh lost her balance and fell to the ground under the astonished stares of her sister and guardian.