The wizard-Lords of the Nine never take your eyes from him, Lorcan thought-looked up, surprised at Lorcan’s sudden appearance. Farideh had fallen backward into Lorcan, her skin pale and grayish with shock. Blood-her blood-stained the front of her tunic, and Rhand’s. A jagged stump remained of her finger, stark white bone and a fringe of torn flesh.
Don’t kill him, Lorcan told himself, dimly aware of how tightly he was holding onto Farideh. Not yet. Not here.
If Farideh noticed at all as he hauled her into the room and slammed the door shut, she gave no sign. “Which of these opens your dimensional pocket?” Lorcan said to Sairché as she threw the bolt, locking Rhand and his curses on the other side. “She needs a healing.”
Sairché considered the array of rings around his neck. “If I tell you, I get the ring.”
Lorcan laid Farideh on the bed. “Lords damn you. Just tell me!”
Sairché shrugged. “Nothing in our deal about following all orders. She’s not going to die of a missing finger.”
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. .