Lorcan dropped from nowhere, as if stumbling into the world. Farideh sprang to her feet. “You’re alive.” Such a stupid thing to say, but gods, she hadn’t been sure-even when the spells had worked, she hadn’t believed. For once, Lorcan had no witty barb, no charm and cajolery for her. He stared at the cavern, at the circle, at Farideh as if he didn’t believe a one of them was real.
“How?” he finally gasped. He started laughing. “How, you perfect little … ashes, but I could kiss you!” He pulled himself to his feet, staring at the cavern beyond.
Gladly, since she was blushing furiously-he’d spoken and what had gone through her thoughts but, Yes, you could. An old thought, she told herself. She twisted her hands into each other. “It took some work,” she said. “But-”
“But Sairche can eat that shitting room,” he said. He laughed again, triumphant, and found her eyes. “Darling, you are worth twenty of any other warlock. I can’t believe I doubted you.” He started toward her.
And hit the barrier of the circle.
The magic rebuffed him solidly as a brick wall, and he stepped back, startled. He pressed a hand against the empty air. A crackle of gold energy spidered off his palm where it pressed the plane of the line of runes, and he pulled it back with a hiss.
“What is this?” he said, low and deadly. “Let me out.”
Farideh swallowed. “It’s for your own good.”
Lorcan closed his hand into a fist. “Is it? Or is it just a way to get what you want?” He paced the edge. “I see you’ve improved on your sister’s design. What’s the requirement? Hmm? Do you want me to release you from the pact? Or stand against another unbeatable force out of the Hells before you send me back into Sairche’s tender mercies?”
“No, I-”
“Did you just learn the spell to punish me?” he raged. “First that godsbedamned amulet, now a binding circle? What comes next? Will you leash me like a disobedient dog?”
“No!” she cried. Karshoj, she thought, you idiot. He is the same. He is exactly the same. “Here! Here.”
Farideh crossed carefully over the line of runes, into the binding circle. The magical barrier created a narrow wall of chilly air that sent goosebumps over her skin. She shivered. Wary, Lorcan stepped back. She spread her hands in a gesture of appeasement.
“You can’t escape them here,” Farideh said. “I haven’t figured that part out yet. But whoever has you can’t find you-I don’t think they can find you-if you’re trapped in the circle. Isn’t that right?”
Lorcan scowled. “Yes,” he spat.
“So it’s just temporary. Just for safety. The only binding is that you ask me to send you back.” She swallowed-gods, but she was out of practice talking to him. “Do you have a way? Something to keep … whoever from finding you?”
“No,” he said glumly. He dropped to sit on the floor. “It’s a clever notion,” he allowed. “Although, such a waste-what’s the point of giving me a few moments respite if you’re just going to send me back?”
It’s a thousand times more terrifying to kiss Lorcan, and that’s never stopped you. Farideh looked away.
“I thought you might know a way to block them,” she admitted. “Sairche,” Lorcan supplied.
“Oh,” Farideh said. “That’s … well she’s not the worst, is she?”
“She’s kept me captive since you left Neverwinter,” he snapped.
“But you’re alive,” Farideh said, smiling despite herself. “And … I mean, Sairche hasn’t bothered us again. If nothing else, she’s been distracted.”
“Something like that,” Lorcan muttered. “Is that dragonborn going to come storming over to pin me with his falchion?”
“Mehen’s not here,” Farideh said. She looked down at him again. “He’s in Cormyr.”
Lorcan’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” he said, and she knew that tone. That tone was dangerous, far more dangerous than his ire. “And where is here?”
“The Silver Marches,” she said. “It’s a buried library, a Netherese wizard’s collection.”
“What have you gotten up to, darling?”
“It’s too long a story,” she said.
“What do I have but borrowed time?”
Farideh started to protest that she was the one short of time. She hadn’t expected the spell to work, to be honest, and now she was all too aware of how long she’d been away from Dahl. Her eyes drifted up, away from Lorcan, and she saw he held his wings at an awkward angle, pinned together. She moved to better see the iron pin that had been stabbed through the thin membrane and bound around the bone. Black blood oozed from the wound.
“Oh gods,” she gasped and reached for the powers of the Hells, the powers to shatter the awful thing to dust.
Lorcan grabbed her hand out of the air. “No,” he said. “Don’t touch it.”
He didn’t let go of her hand. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Of course it hurts,” he said. “But it will hurt ten thousand times as much if I go back and Sairche sees it missing. She’s not so self-absorbed as to miss that.” He glared at her hand, as if he were holding something he couldn’t decide what to do with. She drew it back.
“What do you plan to do now?” he asked.
She sat down beside him, as aware of the barrier of the circle as if it had been a solid wall. It might have been no impediment to her passage, but it was the last layer of protection she’d had from him. From what stupid things she might do.
“Do you know of some spell I should be looking for?” she asked. “Something that would keep you safe? There’s … so many books here, it’s possible I’ve just missed it.”
Lorcan looked at her, as if he weren’t sure whether to laugh or not. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Lords of the Nine, you mean that.”
Farideh held herself a little straighter. “Of course I do. You saved us. I owe you this much. I can’t just leave you there.” She looked down at her lap. “Tell me what I need to do?”
“Buy me passage to another layer?” he said bitterly. “Kill Sairche?”
“Something I can do.”
“If I knew, darling, I would tell you,” he said. “But you’d better think of something. She’s only interested in me to get ahold of you, and I am fast running out of options. If you don’t figure something out, I can’t promise I’ll be able to hold onto that little secret Sairche doesn’t know about.”
Havilar. Farideh’s heart stopped. “You wouldn’t.”
“Darling, you’re clearly not aware of the myriad tortures my sister has at her fingertips.” He looked away, scowling up at the statue of the dead wizard. “I wouldn’t, but I might not have the choice.”
“No,” she said. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Why is she doing this?”
“It’s complicated.”
No doubt, she thought. Everything in the Hells seemed complicated, but when it came out across the planes and threatened her, Havilar, and everything she held dear, it was not too complicated to explain.
“It has to do with Bryseis Kakistos, doesn’t it?”
Lorcan stiffened, but he kept watching the wizard. “Sairche told you that, didn’t she? Not someone you’d normally listen to, darling.”
“I don’t see another answer.” He didn’t react. “Tell me what it is.”
Silence.
“I know,” she said. “About Bryseis Kakistos. About the pact with Asmodeus.”
Lorcan froze, turned, and for a moment, eyed her with such breathless horror that he might as well have been expecting her to smash his teeth in and tear out his tongue.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.
“If you know,” he said, still watching her cautiously, “I think you can appreciate that wasn’t the obvious course of action. I had thought … Well, I expected you to be upset, darling, and why would I want that?”
“Upset?” She frowned at him. The story the Book had told her was so much better than what she’d feared. Better than anything she dared imagine. She couldn’t guess what Lorcan thought she’d be upset about.
“Because,” she ventured, “I owe her better? Because she took the pact with Asmodeus to protect tieflings from being bound like this?” She rubbed her arm where the brand that marked her as Lorcan’s warlock lay. “I don’t think of our pact that way. Not anymore.” She looked up at him. “It’s a tool, not a punishment.” Lorcan was staring at her as if she had suddenly started speaking in abyssal tongues.