Erin Evans: Lesser Evils

“What end is she to you? She’s my warlock.”

“And Rohini’s doom. I don’t need to repeat the pradixikai’s reports for you-you were there, after all. A warlock, I don’t care about. A Brimstone Angel, I care a little for. A Brimstone Angel who throws off a succubus’s domination and runs her through with so little effort? That I-and plenty of other devils-would be much more interested in.” Sairche smirked. “And then there’s the fact that she’s yours, as you say.”

He didn’t so much as blink, but he was overtaken by the memory of the slender tiefling warlock standing entranced before Rohini, motionless in the middle of the battle of aberration and devil, moments from death. Lorcan in the air high above, waiting for her to die-there was nothing he could do …

And then the charm snapping, almost audible, and Farideh releasing a burst of magic, a slash of blood spraying from Rohini’s burned face as Farideh lashed out with the heavy rod. Relief he would never, ever, voice starting his heart again.

“Was it Zela who came up with that nonsense?” he asked. “You’ve met Farideh-Hells, you dragged her around that crater of a city for half a day trying to woo her away. Do you really think she could have resisted someone like Rohini? Struck her down? The girl couldn’t corrupt a lord in a whore’s parlor.”

“She did well enough resisting me,” Sairche said.

Lorcan snorted, recalling the vicious, calculating succubus Rohini who’d nearly brought Neverwinter-and Glasya-to ruin. Sairche was certainly formidable, and Farideh had done well to ignore Sairche’s entreaties and promises. But Rohini had been a gem of another water-a foe far beyond Sairche’s skills.

Sairche wasn’t entirely wrong. No, Farideh hadn’t been the one to kill Rohini. So far as Lorcan knew, the succubus wasn’t even dead. And quick as Farideh might be to strike out, she’d never have lasted a moment trying to fight Rohini like a rogue in the street had other forces not been in play.

But it couldn’t be denied: that domination would have held firm on any of his other warlocks. And Sairche knew that much by now.

Sairche, and possibly half the Hells.

“All you have to do,” Sairche said, “is renounce the pact. Give her up.”

The night after he’d made her pact, he’d gone back to Toril to find Farideh, weeping beside a campfire in the foothills beyond the sty of a village she’d been hiding in all her years. It had been simple to claim her and simpler still to steer her with sweet words and sure hands-she was a girl who wanted what she couldn’t have and he was the sort of devil to gift her with it.

But then she was also the sort of girl to stand in his arms and ask, first of all, if this would hurt him. She was not a proper warlock or a proper Brimstone Angel.

Do be careful, little Lorcan .

“Who are you collecting for?” he asked. “Not Glasya-”

“Where is she, Lorcan?”

Tell Sairche, he thought, and risk Glasya’s fury-whatever Sairche wanted Farideh for, it wasn’t for the archduchess’s secretive plans. Keep quiet and risk Sairche’s fury-an anger that would lead to much quicker retributions.

Keep quiet, he thought, and you might keep her a little longer.

“I might be able to get you another one.”

“Liar,” Sairche said. Her wings closed tight against her delicate frame. “All four of the Kakistos heirs are claimed. Besides, yours is the one I need. Where is she?”

Quicker retributions, Lorcan thought, all too aware of the blackened chains. But Sairche’s irritation with him was all genuine-she needed Farideh for some reason. And, for now, she thought she needed Lorcan. Until that changed she wouldn’t kill him. If he gave up Farideh, he gave up his only bargaining chip.

Does it hurt? Farideh had asked. I’ll be fine, he’d told her.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said, grinning at his sister.

Sairche narrowed her eyes. “Cissa, Aricia: chain him up and give him an idea.” She didn’t break her gaze as they hauled him to his feet and backward toward the suppurating wall. “But don’t be too eager proving your loyalty. The others will want a turn.”

WATERDEEP

28 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR)

"First there were three,” a woman’s voice says, and it shakes Farideh’s bones like a bell pealing over her head. The red glow of poisonous clouds isn’t enough to illuminate her, shrouded in the shadows of broken Neverwinter. “And then you found the fourth. What a shame you kept her.”

The cambion pinned to the wall cannot answer-the hellwasps have smashed his teeth and torn out his tongue. He is screaming, wordless, and so is Farideh .

“The fifth one is mine,” the woman’s voice says over the din, and she says it to Farideh. From the shadows, Farideh’s sister, garbed in the armor of erinyes, steps out, her eyes flashing gold and her grin someone else’s. “The fifth Brimstone Angel.”

Farideh opened her eyes to a night pallid with rain clouds and the reflected light of the City of Splendors, to a forest she hardly recalled, her mind overflowing with the echoes of a dreamland Hells, of broken Neverwinter, and horrors she thought she might never forget.

Every nerve of her body was taut as a tripwire, every vein carrying fire to her limbs. Farideh squeezed her eyes shut against the twisting memory and tilted her head so her horns pressed into the ground and made her head ache where they anchored to her brow. You’re awake, she thought. It was a dream. Havi’s safe. Havi’s safe.

Still ill at ease, Farideh sat up and regarded her twin sister’s sleeping form on the other side of the fire. Havi’s safe, she told herself again. No one could have said, as peaceful as the tiefling girl slept, that she’d been possessed by a devil and nearly sacrificed to the god of evil a tenday prior.

She’s the one who ought to be having nightmares, Farideh thought. Not me.

The woman’s voice starts laughing when they catch him. Lorcan screams and the blood starts flowing .

Farideh cannot run, she cannot wake. She casts blast after blast at the hellwasps the voice in the shadows sends, but they are legion. They break his wings and his fingers. She casts and casts, but the wasps ignore her flames. They pluck out Lorcan’s eyes, smash his teeth. Blood-blacker than the night-pours down his face, over his red skin. He is screaming and so is she .

“First there were three,” the woman’s voice sings. “And then you found the fourth.”

None of that’s happened, she told herself, staring up at the tips of the evergreens stretching up toward the grayish sky. The clouds didn’t turn red, didn’t boil with hellwasps, didn’t boom with the terrible voice she’d imagined for Lorcan’s liege-lady. All her imagination.

Please let it be my imagination, she thought.

High above, a pine cone dangled at the tip of a ragged branch. Farideh pointed two fingers at it. “Assulam.”

Energy welled through her frame and streaked out her outstretched arm. A pop, and pinecone fragments rained down on their campsite. Farideh relaxed a little-if the spell worked, then Lorcan was still alive and channeling the powers of the Hells to her through her warlock pact and the brand that marked it.

Or perhaps she didn’t know how the pact worked at all. As much as she’d found Lorcan kept her in the dark, either might be true. She shut her eyes again, and slipped a hand up her sleeve to trace the raised skin of her warlock brand.

… the wasps come when the erinyes scream and shatter into a dozen of the enormous insects; wasps with cunning eyes and swords for arms. The air is full of swords and monsters. Lorcan grabs her arm and shoves her back-Run, darling, he cries, run fast and run far-