Page 145 of The Death Wish

A ripple ran along his spine, tracing the lines where the amuletum had laid, pooling around the great gash in his exterior made by Seraphiel’s halo. There was no hint of his molten flame in that place, extinguished eternally, an abyss he would always carry.

But he had survived. Not only the Seraph’s blast, but the mess it had made of him after, and before.

He would not succumb here.

Vassago resettled his hands. The cacophony of the lake’s protest rose, the cries of a thousand deaths, and two thousand years of resentment drove at him, made razor-sharp by desperation.

He tried to pull the blade from the bone another time. Then another.

With each try his fury bubbled; with each failure rage ate greedily at his patience.

On the sixth try, he was livid, driving his foot into the shattered remains, screaming his foul discontent. Cursing all manner of man and god. His flames billowed, his desperation to see this done hollowed him out.

Something turned his head. An impulse that struck him firm and fast.

And changed everything.

The ankou was down, smothered by the bones, a few trails of his hair like long black rivers cutting through the clear waters. He was buried, yet again, and in water none the less.

The Berserker Prince’s roar resonated through the pyre, setting the halo vibrating with a ferocity that fed his insatiable hunger to destroy. Sweltering mindlessness took hold. Lust, the most savage and bloodthirsty of its kind, tangled through his flames, setting him ablaze.

The simurgh screamed. The halo groaned. The bones cried for mercy.

On the seventh attempt, Samyaza’s halo slid free of its bony sheath.

The prince held the halo aloft, his entire body aflame, bones turning to ash around him. The simurgh crashed against his basalt walls, cracking them open; the wildness was intoxicating. Vassago dived into the intoxicating bedlam of fury. He rivalled a hundred suns. Never had he burned so.

But it was not only he who must burn.

Guided by instinct, he aimed the tip of the halo towards the black crags of his chest and drove the blade into his ill-beating heart.

The simurgh was there, the Primordial Flame at its own heart. Positioned perfectly. Waiting for this longed-for spark.

Seraphiel’s work was complete.

The stupendous collision of ancient death wish and divine Cultivation shifted the world beneath Pitch’s feet. Then vanished that ground altogether. But he did not fall.

He soared.

CHAPTER FORTY

LUCIFER STOODin the ballroom, surrounded by fallen bodies. Jacquetta hurried Edward, away. The purebred prophet had been found gasping for breath and bleeding beneath the bone chandelier.

In reply to Seraphiel’s sharp command for an answer, the man muttered about having stumbled across all the purebreds, and wishing to guide them somewhere safe. The Sanctuary’s near-constant trembling added some weight to his explanation.

Lucifer did not look at him as the Child hurried him by. He had the answer he sought well enough. The ankou was not here. And as Silas would not have left Edward in that state, nor those few survivors who remained on their feet, for anything but a matter of the gravest importance, he knew Silas Mercer had entered Blood Lake.

‘Is there something you wish to tell me, Luci?’

Seraphiel stood at his side, vibrant, and yet drained. He had discarded the luxurious layer of his coat, clad plainly in a white shirt and gold breeches that gathered at the knee where black boots rose to meet the material.

‘No. I simply await your instruction.’

‘You do nothing simply.’

Lucifer frowned, but did so lightly. There could be no darkening of the Seraph’s mood here. The ruin that lay aroundthem was evidence enough. Barely a handful of couples survived. ‘I don’t understand what you are asking.’

He did. Seraphiel knew Edward had not been here for the dancers.