Page 143 of The Death Wish

Silas’s heart clenched, and his own blood fired, seeing the state of this creature he loved. So still and terribly wounded, and so desperately close to the halo.

The pile of bones, the pyre Silas had seen from afar, was but an altar. And now, as he loomed over the lake and all those imprisoned in it, Silas saw the halo.

Its hilt jutted from the stacked and melded remains of the slain. So close, Silas might have reached out and touched it. But the halo was not for his hand. It was not his to take.

Silas went to his knees carefully, for fear of causing more pain with the shift of water. He leaned towards the one whose fate it was to end Blood Lake’s painful legacy.

The bones came for Silas, swallowing his lower legs as he knelt, climbing the heights of his body, marching ever upward, ever determined.

But none were so determined as Silas to tip the balance. And steal this goodbye.

Pitch lay in a shadow of Silas’s making. The prince was more terribly petite and fragile than he’d ever seemed. But Silas fixed his gaze on the strong glow of fire at his fingertips, turning the water gold, hiding the seep of blood from so many wounds.

Silas reached for him. The maelstrom of mournful cries reduced to a whisper. Pitch’s slender fingers twitched, movement stirred behind translucent lids.

Silas took his hand, ignoring the flames, careless of their burn. It would not be long before Silas felt nothing of this world’s pains, and he would weather far worse for this last touch.

Pitch was warm. Not cold and lifeless. A subtle clench of muscle came; a frail clutch of the hand. Pitch knew he was here.

Silas smiled, his heart twisting and his soul lifting. ‘Rise now, my love. Show them how magnificent you truly are.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

VASSAGO WASlifted from the bones; extricated from his cruel prison with strange gentleness.

The simurgh had shaped itself around the bones that invaded him, and now the Cultivation filled him with a comforting lightness.

‘I am no failure.’ The words blurted from him, straining free from where Blood Lake’s morbid heart had trapped them earlier.

‘Never.’

The tone sent a rapturous thrill through his ravaged body. Vassago opened his eyes. He was overshadowed by an enormity that was unmistakable. He was cradled in the palm of a great hand, an island of refuge in this groundless place.

‘Silas.’

Although perhaps only in name. There was a hint of the man amongst the shadows and greatness, but Vassago suspected his own imagination placed them there.

‘Do not fear me.’

Silas’s voice held the distant rumble of thunder and disturbed the very waters of the lake. Waters that still held the thinnest trace of Vassago’s blood. But these ancient flood waters would find no more sustenance from him. They could not reach the safe place where his ankou kept him.

‘Never.’ He repeated Silas’s words back to him. ‘And I ask the same of you.’

How raw his voice sounded; hanging onto its humanity by the last thread.

‘You know you do not need to ask that of me. We shall always know each other.’

Silas had always been wiser than he.

Vassago could not even contemplate fearing this creature. This giant. Silas was written all over the greatness; there beneath the thick mess of black hair, wild as a jungle and just as vast. He was there in the darkness of a beard that hung like a cliff. He was there in brown eyes large as ponds, and there in lips that stretched like banks of sunset clouds.

Vassago–no, it was Pitch, for just a moment more–braced against the astonishing girth of Silas’s fingers, and pulled himself onto his knees. Every hole in his body sent a chorus of biting protest, but the simurgh swept into the cavities and the pain grew dull.

‘Careful now, my darling.’

And there Silas was again, unchangeable and unabashed.

Pitch leaned over the ankou’s thumb, one thick as a shot tower, and watched as his giant carried him closer to the pyre where the halo stood embedded. He glimpsed movement far below, a shifting of white, and his flames lashed beneath his skin. Silas’s body, the hillside that it was, was being overrun by the bones. They covered him like barnacles, sharp as oysters and climbing ever higher through the shadowy vagueness of his lower body.