Page 24 of The Death Wish

‘What is happening here?’

‘What he needs. Your task takes much from my ankou. It will take more yet, should all things come to pass.’

Pitch resisted the urge to singe the boy’s cheek. He’d only punish a child if he did so: not the goddess for her cruel reminder. ‘He told me he was just tired.’

‘As the winter is just cool.’

He shook off his irritation. Gods were cryptic, there was no changing that. ‘He has been keeping something from me, I’m sure. Is it your doing?’

‘The end is always my doing.’

‘Fuck, will you just speak plainly?’

The glow of silver brightened. Herbert blinked slowly, and no longer shivered with Pitch’s flame so close. ‘I grow tired of that being demanded of me.’

‘Then perhaps you should learn from it.’

‘Careful, daemon. It is not you I favour.’

‘I do not need your favour. You are not my goddess.’ Other Celestials held greater sway over the children of Arcadia. ‘What is happening to Silas?’

Pitch’s flame crackled between them, burning in the quiet that held.

‘You busy yourselves too much with one another. There will come a time when you must let him go. That time has always been forthcoming. It is the fate of all who live and die.’

‘I know.’ The ache that came with saying it reached into his bones, twisted around every vein. ‘But this is not his time. You said yourself, he is not gone.’

He had a dreadful moment of imagining the goddess a trickster. A tormentor. Letting him stand over Silas’s grave with false promise.

‘He is not gone this day, but his days have always had a number upon them.’

Pitch nodded. ‘And he knows that number, doesn’t he? That is what he keeps from me.’

‘You’ve grown wiser, daemon.’

If it was so, it did not bring any solace. Pitch went to his knees beside the great pile of soil dug from the grave. His cloak fluttered wide, shifting dirt, causing it to trickle down where Silas lay. ‘Why did you summon me? What am I to do here?’

Pitch knew how to fight, to lash out at his enemies, to bring destruction. But there was not a flame, nor vestige, nor halo in all the known worlds that could help him here.

‘It was he who summoned you. What you do here is no concern of mine. What you shall do, matters far more, Prince of Arcadia.’

Pitch studied Silas’s lifeless form, hearing the goddess speak but caring little to return a reply. Silas lay like a great stone effigy of himself. Unmoving. Not breathing. Silas had summoned him here, but Pitch was clueless as to how to help him. ‘How long will this last?’

‘As long as it must.’

‘What am I to do then? I don’t know what he needs.’

‘He summoned all that he needed.’

‘I didn’t bring anything…what is that supposed to mean?’

Pitch turned, and found himself alone, save for the ferret who had scampered up the length of the shovel and now balanced on its handle. A light frost had settled upon thegraveyard; a dusting of white everywhere, except for the circle around Pitch, where his warmth had made it impossible.

Was that it then? A fire daemon was what Silas needed?

He shifted off his knees, unclasping the cloak and letting it fall away. He stepped down into the grave. Treading carefully, moving thoughtfully as he lay the cloak over Silas’s body; the man he knew would be unhappy with such nakedness, no matter how magnificent a body he had. Silas was mighty, but he was also a prude. Satisfied with the tuck of the cloak, the hue of pink pleasing against the darkness of Silas’s beard, Pitch settled behind the ankou and drew the remainder of the cloak over himself. He was just as cold as Pitch had imagined.

He settled his arm over Silas, just as the ankou did so often for him.