Page 110 of The Death Wish

‘I will not speak of the ankou.’ He could not do so if his mind were to keep its pieces intact. ‘Take me back to Seraphiel. I go now, or I do not go at all.’

‘This way, your highness.’

She moved ahead, and he followed. Seeing nothing, hearing little. His pulse was like a drum in his chest, measuring out the paces, a foul nausea sitting with him as Silas’s heartache replayed itself in his mind’s eye.

They traversed a long corridor, moving back into the depths of the palace. He almost called a halt at one point, thinking he was going to be ill. He took hold of himself, shouting down the clamouring instinct to run back to the circle, and tear its prison apart.

He forced himself to recall his days as the Berserker Prince; when he’d cared for little but destruction and chaos: nothing so pretty and fragile and confounding, as that which plagued him now.Thatprince was the creature he protected Silas from, every bit as much as the Watcher King and his halo.

Jacquetta drew them to a halt at the foot of an imperial staircase. Two sets of wide stone steps, curving in opposing directions and winding back towards one another up at the landing. Jacquetta looked to the left, eyes narrowed, head cocked as though listening. Which indeed she must have been, for she nodded, and turned to face him, silver gown whispering.

‘You will be met at the ballroom. We will not return to the cellar.’

Jacquetta took the set of stairs on the right and made her way up.

Pitch trailed behind. ‘So long as this leads to an end, I hardly care.’

‘You’ll be pleased, then. The ballroom is where you shall enter the lake. That is where the Seal lies.’

‘Here? In one of the rooms?’

‘Yes. What did you suppose?’

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected; a long walk through a dark forest, or another trip with the Ferryman perhaps, to reach the entrance to Blood Lake?

Seraphiel’s talk of using the lake waters in his Cultivations seemed far less of a mad fantasy now. Not only had the angel stolen a piece of the Primordial Flame, he’d entered a place that had been made deadly to Seraphim; defying Samyaza’s curse that barred Michael and Ariel and Seraphiel from the lake.

Pitch did not doubt now that Lord Enoch had extinguished his favoured angel; an unstable Seraph with Blood Lake in his veins, was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Pitch lowered his head: watching his knees bend as he took the stairs, his slippers set upon smooth stone, his hand grip at the carved balustrade.

Now,hewas that godsdamned catastrophe that awaited; the keg to the simurgh’s powder, with Blood Lake the fuse.

He grinned, crooked and thin. A good thing he’d betrayed the ankou, then. Kept him safe.

The lake could go ahead and swallow Pitch whole.

‘But you cannot have him,’ he whispered.

They reached the top of the stairs, where there was but one way forward, with no sign of the landing that should have existed between the staircases.

Here there awaited only elaborate white double doors, with their gleaming crystal handles, and ornamented golden scrolls carved into the woodwork.

‘His Grace is inside. He shall show you the way, for he is the only one who knows it.’ Jacquetta lifted her hand, fingers positioned as though she were a conductor readying an orchestra to begin. ‘Shall I open the doors?’

‘What else will you fucking do with them? Get on with it.’

‘Is there anything you’d like me to tell him…when the time comes, and it is safe for the Seelie Court to retrieve him?’

He wanted to slap the pitying look from her face. Instead, he let his flames dance at his fingertips, raising his hand towards her until she flinched.

‘There is nothing to be said. Silas will understand.’

‘Very well, your highness,’ Jacquetta said, wincing. ‘Forgive me. I intrude.’

A twist of her wrist had the doors flinging open.

A ballroom lay beyond, just as she’d said, but it was no empty room, like all the others.