Brimstone Angels Read Online Free

the south, riddled with giants and their kin. The great Underchasm split Faerûn to the west. To the north lay Chessenta … and if Farideh’s burn meant what he thought …
    The lines that laced her shoulder were red and oozing. They ached. They itched. Worse, they
pulled
, as if the burn were a tether and something was holding the other end.
    Mehen settled a blanket over her shoulders. “You should go to sleep,” he said gently. Havilar was already fast asleep, sprawled facedown with her horns curling back from the ground.
    “I’m not tired,” she said, hardly above a whisper. Her throat ached from the effort of not crying. She couldn’t—not after all she’d done.
    He was silent for a moment. “We’ll be all right.”
    Farideh nodded, though she couldn’t see how.
    “Farideh,” Mehen said. She looked up. “Trust me. I’ve done this before.”
    “And so we can’t go to Tymanther,” she said dully.
    Mehen snorted. “There’s a lot more world than Arush Vayem and Tymanther. We’ll make our way, take bounties or serve as guards. We’ll find someone to help you get rid of that pact, and we can come back.”
    Farideh pulled the blanket close. “You know we can’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut. The cambion had been right. One mistake, and she was as good as dead.
    Fine—if that was how the world was going to treat her, perhaps she’d just keep whatever the cambion offered, and to the Hells with them all. If they all thought her damned, better to damn herself right.
    The thought frightened her, but there it was.
    Mehen was watching her. “If you’re not going to sleep, keep watch. Wake me when you’re tired. Or if you hear anything.”
    Farideh doubted she would ever be tired again. Once Mehen had gone to his own bedroll and dropped off to sleep, she let herself weep quietly into her hands.
    “What on all the planes are you crying for?” a voice said. “You’re much better off now than you were.”
    She froze like a rabbit before a wolf, looking up at Lorcan silhouetted in the firelight. He was still ferociously handsome, still unspeakably fiendish, and this time there was no circle—not even a broken, haphazard one—to separate them. Havilar and Mehen slept on.
    “Are you here to take my soul then?” she said quietly.
    Lorcan burst into laughter. “Oh, Glasya skin me, that’s adorable. No, I’m not here to harvest you. We have an agreement, and I’m here to see to that.”
    “Oh.” She wondered what exactly it was she had bargained away in the heat of the moment and the tangle of his pretty words. “But you will? Is that what this is?”
    “Dear girl,” he said, “the king of the Hells’ own blood runs in your veins. A soul was never a certainty for you. I’d suggest you stop worrying about it.”
    “So I
am
doomed,” she said. “And you
are
here to take me.”
    “There you are again,” he said, with a shake of his head, “being melodramatic. I’m merely giving you some perspective. That isn’t the sort of deal we’ve made at all.”
    “You’re talking in circles again,” she said.
    “My darling, I already told you: If all I wanted was a petty little soul, there were dozens I could have snapped up quicker and neater than yours.”
    She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. “Then what
do
you want?”
    “A warlock.” He stepped closer. “You, in particular, as my warlock.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t … I don’t know what you mean.”
    He gave her a dark look, as if she were being deliberately obtuse, but she could only shake her head again. Lorcan sighed. “It means you’re bound to me. For the pleasure, I grant you powers. Powers you seemed to dearly want, before.”
    “Spells?” she asked. “What … what do I have to do?”
    “Nothing. You’ll find it’s much simpler than other sorts of spell-casting. Now,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the firelight, “do you want a taste of what you’ve purchased?”
    She shifted