“I was trying to protect you-”
“From what? From having another person to talk to? From having someone remind me you can’t be trusted?”
“From having him fill your ears with lies!” he said. “From having him convince you to strip away your pact because
“You’re just afraid you’ll lose your set,” she said. “I’m not going with you-not without Havi and the others.”
Her scar was screaming now, and without meaning to she clutched her arm with her opposite hand, as if she could stem the pain. Lorcan’s eyes were burning, the air between them boiling. He twisted his ring.
The portal swirled.
Farideh threw her hands up as he darted forward. Anger and instinct drove from her lips the triggering word for the blast. The crackling purple magic swelled in the few feet that separated them. The spell had struck Lorcan full in the chest before she realized she’d cast it.
He stumbled backward and pressed a hand to his scorched armor, shocked. Farideh stared a moment, appalled, elated. Then her scar caught fire again. Lorcan spread his wings, and in his own hands, a spell of flames danced.
Run, she thought.
She bolted. Deeper into the city, scrambling over lava flows and ruins, Farideh didn’t know where she was heading-only hoping, hoping that she would lose Lorcan in the twisting streets. But as she sprinted across a square she heard a heavy, gusting sound-he was flying, not running. The streets made almost no difference at all.
She turned a corner, skidded in the rubble that made the road, and crashed down on her hip, rucking her robes up to her waist as she slid. The leather leggings kept the gravel from embedding in her leg, but not her unprotected tail. And they did nothing for the bruises that screamed as she rolled back to her feet to start again, Lorcan’s wingbeats growing closer still.
Farideh’s throat ached, her lungs burned, and her heart pounded as if it were trying to pump a well dry, but still she ran.
She turned a corner, and there, as if an angel from above had deposited it especially for her, was a small temple, shining silvery in the moonlight. As brightly as it shone, the temple had to be new. Maybe with a priest. The doors were wide open and she made for them, pressing herself on with everything she had in her.
“Farideh, no!” She heard him land, but she didn’t dare look back. If there was one place he couldn’t chase her down, it would be the hallowed ground of a sanctified temple.
She sprinted up the steps, but as she made to cross the threshold, Lorcan caught hold of the back of her robes. She screamed and wrenched against his grip, the fabric tearing-as she fell into the temple.
Her fall pulled Lorcan’s hand into the doorway, but as his knuckles reached the point where the temple began, they may as well have struck a solid wall. He let go of the fabric, furious and panting. He threw himself shoulder-first against the empty doorway, and yet again, an invisible barrier threw him off.
Farideh scuttled backward into the temple, trying to catch her breath.
“Darling,” Lorcan said, his voice sharp as a knife, “come out of there.”
She shook her head. “Leave.”
“Come out of there, right now!”
She held her hands up, ready to speak the words of the spell. “Get away from me, you bastard, or I’ll do it again!” She would, she thought, tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d hit him with everything she knew. Burn him to ashes if he tried to drag her away again.
Lorcan snarled and punched the invisible barrier. He sprang into the air and a moment later she heard him pounding and cursing at the temple’s other windows. They all held.
Limping, Farideh entered the sanctuary of the temple. Incense scented the air, and the silvery light of the risen moon lit the temple instead of torches. Rows of benches faced a platform where the icon stood. From the altar, a statue of a goddess framed by silver eyes and silver stars regarded Farideh benevolently: Selune.
Farideh sat on one of the benches and covered her face with her hands. She didn’t belong here. She was as good as stealing Selune’s protection while she snatched at the powers of the Hells. And while Lorcan howled and cursed at her for being so fickle.
Gods, she was such a little fool, trapped in an empty temple and crying when she knew exactly what she needed to do. She wondered if Yvon could help her find a safer devil than Sairche could. The thought undid her, and she sobbed into her hands.
The pain of her scar lessened as she sat, and the warm air and the scent of the incense made her eyelids heavy as her pulse slowed and her breath deepened. The temple was empty-surely no one would mind if she just lay down a moment.
Lorcan was scared, she reminded herself. Scared of Rohini? Scared of … what had he said? The cult of Asmodeus? Ashmadai? She could still hear him pounding on the barriers of the skylights, and she curled her arms around her head to block the noise.
Scared or not, he was still dangerous. Mehen was still right.
She had to get out of the temple. She had to get back to Havilar and Mehen and Brin before anything bad happened, before Sairche caught Havilar, before Rohini-whoever she was-struck, before Lorcan did something worse. She shut her aching eyes, just for a moment.
Please, she thought to the statue on the altar, please just make him go away. Please just keep them safe until I can get rid of him. Please …
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At the corner of Market street and Clockmaker’s Way, since long before the ruin of Neverwinter, a stone building full of narrow, private rooms had hidden the Cult of Glasya behind the facade of a brothel. In some decades it was plush and fine, in others rude and dirty, but in all times-even, quietly and secretly, when the rest of Neverwinter was empty-the altar in the basement to the copper-skinned princess of the Hells was varnished with fresh blood at regular intervals.
That day, the blood of its previous worshipers made the varnish.
Yvon surveyed the carnage. Twenty bodies-or rather the combined parts of twenty bodies-lay butchered on the floor. Sekata had stopped Lector from branding them all with the mark of Asmodeus.
“Eventually they will start to stink,” she said, “and you don’t want the Lord Pretender getting ideas. Let him think it was adventurers.”
Lector had reluctantly agreed. He wiped his dagger on his robes, subdued. The Glasyans had managed to kill Imarella. Yvon felt a stab of pity for his old friend. If a lover had to die, better it was by one’s own hand.
For the reaping, the cell had gathered another ten followers to them and crept up on the Glasyans. As an understanding of peace had been agreed to, the Glasyans had not expected the attack. Only three of the Ashmadai had fallen. They’d tortured the high priestess at length, searching for more information about the orc, but got little. Still the Sixth Layer cultists would think twice before stepping out of line next time, Yvon thought. The Ashmadai ruled Neverwinter as their god ruled the Hells.
The Ashmadai stripped off their ceremonial robes so as not to arouse suspicion and stuffed them into several haversacks, before heading back up the stairs and out into the street in small groups. Above they would separate and take different paths back to their superior cell, where they could regale their betters with the tale of clearing out the Clockmaker’s Way whores and sending a message to the Glasyans that their actions had been noticed.
Yvon went up last, alone, and so it was only he who spotted the line of orcs.
Traveling down the street, like ducklings trailing their mother, four orcs dripping the magic of the spellplague followed a half-elf wearing austere blue robes and the insignia of the hospital and Temple of Oghma.
To Yvon’s trained eyes, the corruption of the Sixth Layer twisted over the man and the orcs like the curling threads of a mold beneath the molten light of the spellscars they all bore. The strange parade passed the temple- brothel by, oblivious to the abattoir their compatriots’ hideaway had become.
