“I’d never hurt you like they will.” She turned, and there was Lorcan, standing by the window. She remembered this-she’d been furious with him, and all over again a cacophony of emotion slammed into her, so heady and tangled she fought to rise above it.
But here he wasn’t wearing that petulant scowl. He wasn’t trying to confuse her. He kept his distance, tense and watching, his wings’ tips flicking with agitation. She shouldn’t be angry, she thought. And she shouldn’t want to run to him.
She slipped a hand under her collar and pulled the amulet out. She’d bound him with it, hadn’t she? Yes-he’d threatened her and she’d bound him, but he didn’t flinch to see it. “You hurt me enough,” she said.
His wings flicked again and again, as if she were blinking and missing the motion. “I would have died anyway,” he said, and the voice was his but angry, far angrier than his expression. “You could run. Run, darling. Fast and far.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not leaving you.” Not again, she thought, remembering the hellwasps. But that had come after, well after. And he hadn’t been so angry at her until they’d left the tilting building. She pressed the heel of her hand to one eye. Gods, what was this?
When she looked up-for the barest of moments-it wasn’t Lorcan standing there, but a bearded man, thickset and sad-eyed. And then it was Lorcan, no one but Lorcan. She took a step back.
“What is this?” she said.
“You will be dead, and there is nothing I can do to fix that.” He shivered again, like there was too much heat between them, and his wings flickered. “There’s nothing here worth dying for,” he said.
It wasn’t Lorcan’s voice. It was Tam’s. “What?”
He was staring at her now, imploring, willing her to hear the words he wasn’t saying. “Trust me here. Run, darling. Fast and far.”
Farideh took another step back, flame and shadow pouring down her arms and into her hands. “Who are you?”
His red skin darkened, mottling with bruises. His wings collapsed, broken, and blood poured from his mouth when he spoke in a patchwork voice, “Run, darling. Run fast and far. There is nothing here worth dying for.”
“Don’t listen to him.” She spun toward the voice. Tam was suddenly standing there, in the shadows of the broken room in Neverwinter. “They’re all lies. Every word.”
“It’s not what you think,” Farideh started.
“Run, darling,” Lorcan, or something like him, said again.
The moonlight through the window cast the priest’s sharp features in a ghoulish light as he moved toward Lorcan. The half-devil flickered, then the room. Farideh stepped between them, but Tam kept coming, his dark eyes hateful. She threw an arm behind her to push Lorcan back, out of the way, but she couldn’t find him. Tam lunged forward, shoving her aside.
Farideh screamed.
And everything-Lorcan, the room, the moon shining down-vanished.
She blinked, trying to reorient herself-the shelves, the little cookfire, Maspero’s bedroll under her feet. She stepped off of it quickly. Her pulse was racing, her arms aching with unspent magic. The vision of Lorcan, battered and bleeding, wouldn’t leave her thoughts, and she felt as if she might break down and weep; it had seemed so real, so certain. She swallowed the urge and tried to shake the flames from her hands.
“What was that?” she demanded of Tam, who was still staring at the empty air with such a look of fury and disgust as she’d never seen on him.
“Nothing,” he all but snarled. He turned to her and smiled, but the rage was still there behind his eyes. “An illusion. Never you mind.”
She stepped back. “How did you know?”
“Paltry magic like that shows,” he said. “How are your studies coming? You’ve been doing a lot of reading, I noticed.”
She searched his face but it betrayed nothing. “Well enough,” she said. He said nothing but moved nearer, still wearing that peculiar, distant expression. The miasma of shadows seeped up from the churning powers flowing into her. “Are you going to take me to task for learning something new?” she asked. “It’s not as if the others aren’t doing the same thing. Dahl and Mira-she’s piled a whole cart’s worth of books here.”
“But you’ve gotten a lot of help from Tarchamus’s book of knowledge, haven’t you?” Tam said. “You’ve taken plenty.” He grabbed her forearm, and his hand was colder than the waters of the cavern lake-so cold her skin ached. “Why don’t you come give something back?”
Something is wrong, a little part of her thoughts shrieked. Something is very wrong.
But the greater part of her lit with an animal fury. “Don’t touch me.” She twisted her arm and brought her elbow down hard on his forearm, to break his grip. But he didn’t so much as flinch at the strike, only twisted with her, his icy grip tightening. She pulled back to strike the center of his chest, to knock him back and off balance the way Mehen had taught her.
But as her palm connected, the powers of Malbolge showed dark in the veins that writhed over the bones of her hand. As she struck the priest in the sternum, she spoke the word that triggered a great lash of flames, and engulfed him in fire.
She leaped backward. The blaze raced over the priest as he stumbled and unleashed an unearthly howl. She snatched up the nearest bedroll to smother the flames-oh gods, oh gods.
“Shar pass us over,” Tam said from behind her. Farideh froze and looked back to see the priest, his expression stunned. He unhooked the chain from his waist and the pin from his collar, as Farideh’s spell extinguished itself. “Move,” he said, his eyes locked on the double of himself, now riddled with empty patches of angrily shifting light.
Light, bright as a full moon on a clear night, seared Farideh’s eyes, the echoes of Tam’s voice reverberating in her ears alongside his screams. Both faded and, through the floating spatters of her vision, she saw Tam-the Tam who she’d cast her spells at-thrash against the light, throwing off the priest’s skin. For a moment, it seemed as if another man stood there-a gaunt, clean-shaven man with a nose like a knife. The creature roared and shifted to become only a dancing distortion in the air.
But Tam-the Tam who had cast the Moonmaiden’s magic-slung the length of his spiked chain at the ghost, another crackling blessing skipping along the links.
Farideh leaped out of the way as the blessing burst free, enveloping the ghostly creature. The air pulsed with a frantic sound, so low it made Farideh’s ears throb. The promise of flames and poison throbbed in her hands, and the memory of her brand’s ache.
She cast again-the burst of energy that came so easily, it might as well have been an exhalation. The Hellish magic caught the ghost just as Selune’s magic subsided, and the pulse became a sharp, high screech. Something popped like a drum skin breaking. Then there were only the sounds of Tam and Farideh, trying to catch their breath.
“What was that?” she demanded, her eyes on the empty space where the creature had been. Her arm kept aching, and she realized it was not the brand at all, but the place where the ghost had seized her. “Karshoj-what was that?”
“Nothing good,” Tam said. But even with her nerves so shaken, she could tell he was just as unsettled. “Did you try to set fire to me-to it?”
“I didn’t try.” Still trembling with adrenaline, Farideh shoved her sleeve back up past her elbow. The dark marks of the ghost’s fingers stood out luridly against the frost-pale skin. “And if you ever grab hold of me like that,” she said sharply, “I’ll do it again.”
“Hrast.” Tam took her by the wrist. She flinched, and he waited until it passed and she let him examine the bruises. “Not an illusion then.” Tam set his fingertips against the wound and murmured something. A silvery light bloomed from his fingers and spread over her skin with a prickling sensation she had an urge to rub away. But when it faded her skin was smooth and only ached when she pressed against it. She hugged her arm to her chest all the same.