The Adversary

Epilogue

The ghost hung unnoticed over the guest room in the Harper hall, waiting, watching. Trying to focus her tattered, scattered mind on the task at hand.

For so long, she had wandered-it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The spells had gone awry, the vessel had been broken, and her own soul shattered. A lesser creature-a less determined creature-would have relented then, and let herself fall away into oblivion. Or perhaps crawled back to Asmodeus, admit that he’d won, and give up the game, beg for a meager place in the Hells, far beneath what she was promised.

But even dead, she was nothing if not determined. Those fragments of soul, those pieces of self found each other, stole bits and scraps of desperate magic to stitch herself back together. Every day she was closer to being whole, closer to becoming someone to fear once more.

Except for the vessel. Except for the fragments still lodged therein. The unfinished ghost of Bryseis Kakistos looked over her sleeping great-greatgranddaughters, the broken vessel that was meant to hold her. The protection spell still swaddled them both, still kept her at arm’s reach from what was rightfully hers.

Twenty-five years on, and she still wasn’t sure who the traitor had been-had Adrasteia softened at motherhood, unwilling to do what must be done and amend the problem her disloyal body had wrought? Had Chiridion found some fondness for the little errors-or more likely, had he been jealous that his purpose was not theirs? Was it Nasmos who always held a dagger to her back? Threnody? Lachs?

And which of her followers had crept in, a sheep in wolf’s clothing, to channel the sort of miracle from the sort of god that could be guilted into protecting two weakling babes from rightful death?

There was no knowing. The few who remained loyal and present were quick to blame the rest. They had scattered since, died some of them, and so she set that aside.

There would be time for retribution.

Ironically, it was Asmodeus who led her back to the girls-not intentionally, of course. He might pretend that this was all a mistake, all an unfortunate result of Bryseis’s impatience, but she knew him as well as any mortal could, and this was nothing but a clever play to get around their deal in one swift move.

When Asmodeus had imbued his Chosen with divine power, Bryseis Kakistos was ashamed to admit she had felt it and come running, like a dog seeking scraps. Some measure of that strength still hid within her, incomplete and untappable. The rest, the parts that mattered and made the magic work, rested in the vessels that still trapped the last pieces of her soul.

She stared at the young women, sleeping peacefully side by side. Not the powers she’d been promised for aiding Asmodeus in the first place, but something-a step toward her rightful place-and they were unreachable, locked in a vessel that Beshaba’s meddling touch had split in the womb.

The Brimstone Angel willed herself nearer and reached out to touch the edge of the protection-it sizzled as she brushed against it, again, and she curled her essence tighter. The dead shouldn’t feel such pain.

What officious god had laid that magic, barging in where they didn’t belong? She still didn’t know, no one seemed to know, and not for the first time, she wondered if it were Asmodeus’s doing, if the god of sin had simply changed his tactics more than she’d thought possible. What other deity would waste a miracle on tieflings?

One who knew to ward against Bryseis Kakistos, she thought, still smarting from the protection’s effects, and that suggested Asmodeus too. Who else knew what she was capable of now? But the Brimstone Angel had felt that sting before: this was divine magic from a much more beneficent source.

She drifted close enough to Farideh to feel the protection’s crackling, close enough to see the young woman’s eyes twitch and shiver beneath her lids as the ghost’s presence drew nightmares up out of the well of her mind. How much had that divine source steered the tiefling as she grew? How much was it reining her in? She had been born-both of them had been, damn it all-to resurrect Bryseis Kakistos. Yet the ghost had watched as Farideh had nearly killed herself a dozen times over trying to right a wrong that was none of her doing and gained her little for the effort.

Such stupidity must fall along the sire’s line, she thought. But stupid or wise, there was no escaping the fact she needed to get past that protection in order to gather the rest of her soul.

And if she wanted to defeat Asmodeus, she needed a body.

There was time still. If Asmodeus could be patient, then so could Bryseis Kakistos.