rod in Havilar’s hand? Rohini took the wrong twin. My darling, you’re supposed to be dead, because we are both mixed into this now.”
Do not trust him, she thought. Do not.
“If she realizes you’re alive, she will make certain it’s not for long.” He shuddered. “Or worse. Much worse. You have to leave. You cannot get tied up in her plans. Let her think you’re dead.”
“What is she planning?” And how do I know you’re not a part of that plan too? she thought. Or some worse, greater plan?
How could she claim innocence if Lorcan held her reins?
“Get out of the street,” Lorcan pleaded. “I will tell you everything I know, just come out of the open. It’s not safe.”
Farideh shook her head. “Nowhere is safe with you.”
Lorcan started to retort but his eyes caught on something over her shoulder. “Shit and ashes.”
Farideh heard Havilar’s sharp intake of breath. Heard Brin’s whispered prayer. She turned back the way she and Havilar had come to see two creatures heading toward them, as unstoppable and imminent as a thunderstorm on the horizon.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The creatures towered over Farideh on hooved feet that threatened to crack the cobblestones. Their skin was red as hot irons, and their eyes were black as Lorcan’s. Their armor sucked in what remained of the light and their swords gleamed in the dim. Crowned by rows of cruel horns, one was whip-thin and red-haired, the other black- tressed, with a thick scar running down her throat and across her breastbone, down under the armor plate.
As Farideh stared-the splinters of seconds-they closed.
Lorcan grabbed hold of her arm, and in her terror and rage, Farideh started to draw up the powers to cast a spell-but even before she could, he had pulled her behind him and out of harm’s way. His eyes locked on the creatures.
“Go!” he said. “Run, darling, fast and far.”
Farideh wanted to ask what they were. She wanted to ask what they wanted. She wanted to call him out, to be suspicious of these sudden heroics that didn’t so much as agitate the amulet’s magic. But the only words that left her mouth were those that cast a bolt of fire that turned into a torrent of hellfire. It crashed against the raven- haired monster and splashed flames onto her sister.
Both flinched. Neither cried out as the flames burnt them.
The redhead sneered. “Rohini hasn’t caught your little pet yet?”
“How amusing,” the other said. “Won’t she be livid when we do it for her, Aornos?”
“Let’s bring her the head,” Aornos said.
Her sister’s cold black eyes flicked over Farideh. “No, no: the hands.”
Aornos chuckled. “Oh, Nemea, how clever.”
Lorcan reached back and pushed Farideh away. “Run, damn it.” He cast his own bolt of flames, but the devils closed in on him. And Farideh.
Fear held her reins now, a wild thing urging her to kick and strike and cast with abandon. But the devils were stronger, faster. Wilder. Their swords were graceful and quick, the lightning strikes of their relentless storm.
She saw the trail of blood along her arm before she felt the searing pain of the blade, and as she noticed it, the sword bit again slicing through the robe and the leather of her shirt and into her wounded hip. The nearer one grinned down at her, her black eyes cold and malevolent.
Lorcan was right, Farideh thought. I’m going to die.
She had forgotten, as the devils had in their fervor to kill Lorcan, that there were more than the two of them in this fight.
They hadn’t counted on Havilar, that blanched and shivering girl, to shake loose her shock, take up her glaive, and become a blur of metal and blood, her blade as good as her right hand.
Havilar dived across the courtyard, throwing herself behind the weight of the polearm. With a crack, the blade-aimed just so-split the Hell-forged armor of the black-haired devil standing over Farideh, and buried itself in her back. Nemea’s eyes widened as the blade plunged so deeply Farideh heard a rib bone snap. As swiftly as she’d struck, Havilar twisted, planting her foot on the back of the devil’s thigh, just above her knee. She yanked loose the glaive and buckled Nemea’s knee in one motion. Then she spun the glaive’s spike-capped end upward as Nemea fell and Aornos turned, and smashed it into the redhead’s unprotected nose and cheek. The strike was imperfect-the bone didn’t shatter as it had when she’d hit the Ashmadi cultist-but it startled Aornos and bloodied her nose with viscous, black fluids.
Nemea’s sword sliced toward Havilar’s knees. Havilar moved to block with the haft of the glaive-it will snap, Farideh thought, and then snap Havilar as well.
“
Another cry overtook Farideh’s curse, a fierce, wordless war cry chased by the sound of a sword unsheathing. Brin. Brin, but his voice was no half-grown boy’s, but a voice buoyed by the force of a god. Farideh remembered him yelling in the forest as he attacked Lorcan, his pitiful war cry, all the more pitiful next to this towering bellow.
The devils froze-as if they did not know the sound, as if they did not know what was happening. Lorcan’s sword lashed out, slashing Aornos’s sword arm. She stood the pain well enough to parry his following strike, but Brin’s sword drove forward, sliding under her pauldron. Aornos shrieked and kicked backward, catching Brin’s legs and throwing him backward and across the cobbles. Brin rolled and came to his feet-
Nemea’s hoof slammed into Farideh like a charging bull, knocking her to the ground and pinning her by Farideh’s right shoulder. Nemea reached down and pulled Farideh’s short sword from her belt. She tested the weight of it with a sneer. No match, it seemed, for her shattered sword.
Match enough to take Farideh’s hands off.
The butt of Havilar’s glaive cracked across Nemea’s face, rocking her back onto her other foot long enough for Farideh to roll away. Enraged, the devil swung her shield out to knock Havilar back, but the tiefling was too quick. As she clambered to her feet, Farideh caught a glimpse of Havilar’s flushed face, concentration and unbridled eagerness warring in her features, before Farideh cast another of the shimmering bolts of energy into Nemea’s chest.
Swords clashed. Aornos pressed Lorcan back. He parried and blocked, his swordwork nearly as clean as the devil’s, but one glance at Aornos showed she was hardly making an effort. Lorcan, on the other hand, looked as if a gnat across his field of vision would break his concentration, make him slip, and kill him.
It would be easy, she thought. Call out his name, and he’d look over. Long enough for the devil to break his defense.
She could lose him. She could let the pact go.
Her chest squeezed and the powers of the Hells churned her stomach sick.
Aornos swung her sword into Lorcan’s, catching the blade on his guard. One swift, savage thrust and the force of her blade broke his grip. His sword clattered to the ground. Aornos bashed her shield into his chest and he fell, splayed out on the ground like a sacrifice. She raised her sword again.
There was no place for thought. Farideh shouted the words of a spell she’d used only once, when Lorcan had shown it to her some other dark night in some other crumbling town. Screamed them with everything left in her. The ground beneath Aornos turned molten and swallowed her hooves. Then the fire that should have leaped out of the ground like a fountain instead burst forth like a waking volcano.
Aornos’s screams pierced Farideh to her very marrow. Still she readied the next spell, the blast of energy that she’d first learned. When the fires fell away, she cast it, and the crackling light enveloped the devil. Her screams broke off and she collapsed in a heap.
Only for a moment though-the body suddenly burst into greasy flames and within seconds, the fire had devoured Aornos.
Farideh spared the slightest, most secretive glance at Lorcan as he pulled himself to his feet and snatched up
