Page 109 of The Death Wish

‘Hush. It is what I want, and I will have my way in this.’

Silas’s moan was borne of desolation. Realisation settled on him like the Morrigan’s ravens. ‘Don’t…leave me.’

Pitch shook his head, a blur of golden brilliance, with a hint of green gems and fire at their midst. ‘They cannot take everything from me, Sickle. Do you understand? They will not have you.’

‘Stop…stop it.’ Silas worked at forming the words, but he could not tell if they actually made it from his mouth. ‘Let me…go.’

‘You don’t belong in Blood Lake, you fool. Can you imagine the suffering you would shoulder there? You must live, however much time you have. I want you to live. And I shall ensure it is without the Blight to plague you. Think of how wonderful it will be, spending your remaining days tripping over your own feet and fussing over your dead with your pretty little sickle. You will drive your ghosts mad with all your intolerable gentleness and patience –’

‘No.’ Silas felt the world cracking open; readying to swallow him.

‘It must be this way. You’ll see it soon enough.’ A childish fervour clung to Pitch’s words, a plea to be believed. ‘They’ll not make monsters of both of us, Silas. Do you hear me? One is enough. And I am used to being vile. I was made ugly, but you were born in defiance of your maker. If you were to succumb to Samyaza…I fear what my rage would make of me in that place. I would be beyond the Berserker Prince, beyond an angel’sCultivation. I would bring down an apocalypse upon us all, if you were taken from me.’

Silas stared up at him. His vision was hazy with a crushing need to sleep, and the boil of tears. Anger simmered, too.

‘Bastard.’

He was sinking, drifting down where the air and light could not reach him. The moss made a steady creep over his body, and the scythes were useless about his finger, ignoring his unspoken commands for help.

‘I tried to tell you what I was,’ Pitch said. ‘But you would not listen, my stubborn, remarkable oaf.’

Pitch was all but a blur; a setting sun delivering its last rays of warmth and promise.

The moss tucked him up like a body in a shroud. The plant life he had always felt such an affinity for betrayed him in the worst of ways: aiding Pitch in abandoning him.

He struggled against it, but Christ, he wished to sleep; to close his eyes to this nightmare.

Pitch leaned over him; leaned down and leaned close.

‘Goodbye, Silas Mercer. What a wonder it was to have known you. You have carved a heart in this chest of stone. Now sleep for me.’

His kiss was serene and impossibly unfair.

The caress of daemonic enchantment swept over Silas, and he knew the battle lost. The prince’s incubus charms fed on feelings that already existed; inflated them and rendered their owners insensible.

Silas would already do anything for him, without manipulation. Now, he was Pitch’s slave.

He gave in. He closed his eyes and slept.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE MOMENTPitch knew Silas deeply asleep, every rasp of breath familiar, he stepped from the faerie circle. He knew what he’d done was right, but that Silas would view it as an act of cruelty.

But Silas was at rest now; as he deserved.

Pitch had kept him safe. In one piece for his goddess. Time would wipe away his sorrow, and Silas would find another on whom to bestow his affections. Of course he would; if he could love Pitch, then he loved too easily.

Pitch’s feet sank into the spongy depths of the moss, and his heel found the edge of one of the faerie circle’s stones. Jacquetta had told him that the island on which she’d built Seraphiel’s Sanctuary held many ancient circles; some so old, she doubted the most long-lived of the fae could speak of their origin. This one, where Silas slept, was primordial. Pitch had nearly choked on the irony.

Pitch stepped back onto the path. He ran a rough hand across his mouth, trying to wipe clean not only Jacquetta’s potion, but the memory of Silas’s face when realisation had dawned. For all Pitch’s talk of wishing to save him, he had drowned Silas anew; done nothing, whilst the greenery smothered him, and enchantment overwhelmed.

But he had kept the ankou safe.

Was that not selfless? And weren’t those who loved supposed to be selfless?

He rubbed at his stomach, all the more hollow for the absence of the simurgh. He needed that wildness returned, so he could get lost in its stolen power.

‘He sleeps deeply.’ Jacquetta appeared at his side, falling into step.