Erin Evans - The Adversary

She shook her head, buried against his neck. “It should.”

“No,” he said. “You matter. Your sister matters.”

She made a broken little sound, half a sob, half a bitter laugh. “I almost wish you were angry,” she said. “I was ready for angry.”

Mehen shut his eyes and cursed to himself, held his daughter tighter.

“I made a deal with a devil,” she said after a moment. “It was supposed to protect us. It didn’t work.”

“Oh, Fari.” Would it have happened if Mehen had killed Lorcan in the first place? If he’d marched Farideh to the nearest priest and made her renounce the pact? He’d had reasons at the time-but they were so far away, he didn’t trust them, not when his daughters were so broken. “I should have helped you get rid of him.”

“Not him.” Farideh pulled out of Mehen’s embrace. “Not Lorcan.” She swallowed and scrunched her eyes shut once more, as if flinching away from a swell of emotion. “Lorcan’s gone. I think he’s gone forever.”

Well there’s the dragon’s hoard, Mehen thought, pulling her near again. If they had to tangle with such a terrible tragedy, at least that good came of it.

But at the same time, he felt his daughter’s grief acutely, and he had to admit, the cambion deserved a little mourning. After all, he’d saved Mehen once too.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“No,” she said, “it isn’t. I made that stupid deal, and then she hid us for all that time, and I didn’t even have time to find a way to keep Havi safe. I thought I had plenty of time to figure it out.”

“Safe from what?”

Farideh laughed. “I found out who our birth parents were,” she said, as if she were mocking her own efforts. “Or what they were. They were warlocks too-horrible, wicked ones. And their ancestor is one of the worst warlocks, one so bad that devils seek her descendants. They’re going to come looking for Havilar, I know it.” She buried her face against his shoulder again. “And all I’ve done is made it worse. I gave those devils a hundred things to offer her, and now they can find her just fine.”

“And you told me,” Mehen said, “and do you think I will let your sister do something so foolish?”

“Right,” Farideh said dully. “I’m the foolish one when you get down to it.”

Mehen hushed her, and stroked her hair. When he had found the girls by the gates of Arush Vayem, plenty of people had warned Clanless Mehen that he knew nothing of raising children, nothing of girls, and nothing at all about tieflings. But he’d been stubborn, even then, and sure that these were a gift, a reparation for what life had snatched away from him when he stood firm against his clan and was exiled. Day by day, month by month, year by year, he had struggled against the fact that they were right, every one of them-he had to learn every single thing about raising his girls.

It was, oddly, the village midwife who set him right. He clashed with Criella over the girls more often than not, and she’d been quiet while others told him to leave those babies in the snow before he let Beshaba herself walk in the gates. But when the girls were three and Mehen was certain he had made the wrongest choice he ever could have, Criella was the one who said, “You’re not the first to think you have fallen into the mire. This has nothing at all to do with what they are, or what you are. Girls, boys, tieflings, dragonborn-no one knows what they’re doing, raising children. You guess, you mimic, you listen to your gut, and you learn as you go. And you fix what you do wrong.”

At the moment, there was no one to learn from, no one to ape. There was nothing Clanless Mehen had learned in all the years he’d raised his twins, or all the years he’d thought them lost, that would relieve the grief in either daughter’s heart or close the gulf between them. There was nothing he could do to unmake the thousand choices that had led up to this, nor break the threads that tied his precious girls to a fate handed down by some ancient villain. There was no part of him that knew, it seemed, what to do. Listening to his gut would bring all the wrong results-and he couldn’t bear to do anything that might drive the twins away or apart.

So there was only guessing left, only learning as he went. Only holding tight to his daughter as she wept.

18 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Waterdeep

The glaive slipped in Havilar’s grip, the blade turning aside as it hit the dummy. She stopped and patted her sweaty hands on her shirt. When she’d taken up her old weapon again, she’d felt the first faint stirrings of hope at its familiar weight. But after a long practice session, that hope felt as hard to hold onto as a greased string.

Lorcan’s sister might have given her back some measure of her previous strength, her mind might still know how to direct her arms and legs, her wrists and hips and feet. But her muscles hardly listened and all the time the devils had stolen from her had let her calluses fall away. The skin of her hands was soft as a newborn’s and every practiced chop and jab was accompanied by the screaming pain in her hands and the burst of blisters.

Havilar took up the weapon again, gritting her teeth.

In the back of her thoughts, Havilar was as frightened as she’d ever been, and wishing she’d gone with Mehen when he’d asked her to, instead of telling him to leave her be. She wished she’d stopped Brin by the portal and held him tight. She wished she could have just screamed at Farideh, and maybe let out some measure of this anger, this sense of betrayal. She wished she could curl up and cry for a bit.

But if Havilar knew she felt these things, they were buried deep behind a certainty that before anything could be made right, first she had to master the glaive again. Before anything could go back to being right, the one true thing about her life had to be so once more.

And to master the glaive, she had to keep drilling.

She aimed a chop at the dummy’s neck. The glaive broke out of her slippery grip and flipped back over her shoulder to clatter to the ground.

“ Karshoj !” Havilar shrieked, stamping her feet. It was wrong, everything was wrong. She lashed out at the wooden dummy’s chest until the bones of her arms rattled and her breath came hard. She looked at her hands-not just sweat, but blood.

In the distance, the clock they called the Timehands chimed the hour. She counted the bells as she bent to retrieve the glaive. It had been three hours since she’d last noticed the time. No wonder she was so tired.

As she straightened, she saw him standing on the edge of the practice field, all garbed in fine clothes and carrying a battered wooden box.

“Brin.” She held the glaive close, as if she could hide behind it. “I hope you weren’t watching that.”

His mouth quirked into a smile she knew well, even under that stranger’s beard. “Only some of it,” he said. “Mehen said you were out here. He’s worried about you.”

“I’m going in.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Just a moment.”

“I’m worried too.”

Havilar looked at her feet. What did that mean? He would have said, before. He would have told her what he was worried about and what made him say that-her sloppy jabs, her bleeding hands, the late hour, or maybe the fact she’d come back at all? He would have told her things were going to be all right, or if they weren’t, what they would do differently.

Everything was wrong.

“Thank you for keeping my glaive,” she said.

“Of course.” He held up the wooden box. “I thought you might-” He cleared his throat. “That is, these are your things. Yours and Farideh’s. From before.” She crossed the field and took it from him, balancing the glaive against her hip. “Besides, you know, the weapons.”