“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 massacring 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.