Page 81 of The Death Wish

Letting the ankou walk ahead. Allowing him to approach the threshold that Pitch himself could only yet stare at.

And his lips, damn them, would not part to tell the ankou to stop. To stay away. To leave while he still could.

Silas strode ahead, steadfast, whilst Pitch roiled. The ankou took the handful of wide splayed steps two at a time. He took hold of the pheasant’s tail, up near the base of its body, and glanced over his shoulder.

‘Ready?’ Silas said, brown eyes soft and full of kindness.

Pitch should never have allowed him here. Certainly never should have gone along with the ankou’s notion that this task was best done together.

Before Pitch’s cracks could widen further, he shrugged on his familiar, acerbic guise. ‘Get on with it, you oaf. It’s a door, not the Seal itself. I don’t understand why we must knock at all. Fucking dreadful hospitality.’

Not a one of them reacted to his little temper tantrum, none recoiled, nor told him to fuck off.

He talents were embarrassingly rusty.

Silas lifted the knocker and let it fall. The clang that rang out was not the heavy clack of metal on metal that Pitch expected. Instead, the pretty notes of a windchime filled the air: tinkling delicately, where all else of this place seemed so solid and robust.

Barely had the melodious ringing begun than the green-gold door opened, swinging inwards. Silas backtracked down the steps.

A woman stood silhouetted by the glow from within, her figure like something brought to life from a Reuben painting: a generous swell at the hips and breasts, with the slightest of narrowing at the waist, accentuated by the ruffling of a modest peplum. She did not acquiesce to the dress expected of her sex, and instead wore what appeared to be stockings with melon hose. If Pitch’s assumption was correct–and in clothing he was rarely wrong–her costume was at least a century out of date. The finer details were ambiguous, as the light cast her front into shadow, but her aura, subdued as it was beneath the greater brightness, told Pitch a grand story indeed.

A Child of Melusine.

She was a sister to Old Bess. And, less pleasingly, to Palatyne.

Though who she was, he could not say. The Children of Melusine were multiple in number. And their allegiances varied wildly: Bess pledged himself to the Order, Palatyne had been bought by the Morrigan, or the Erlking, perhaps. And Seraphiel had lured this creature into his employ.

Silas glanced at him, and mouthed a single word.Child?The fact he made a question of it gave Pitch reason to think her naming melody was as contorted as her aura. Pitch nodded.

The Child’s colours were right, for the most part, but there was an unusual amount of sunflower yellow in the design, that was foreign to the half-fae’s usual presentation. As though the Sanctuary’s heavy gold accenting had tattooed itself upon her.

The woman bowed deeply. ‘Your Grace, the warmest of welcomes to you. Long have I awaited the return of your presence.’

‘Me?’ Pitch frowned.

She righted, a soft tinkling joining her movement, the click of jewellery somewhere on her person.

‘No. Though your return, your highness, is just as longed for. It is the point of everything, after all. You do not remember me, I suppose?’

‘You suppose right.’ Pitch glared, in part because she was infuriating, and partly because his lack of memory formed a hard ball of tension in the pit of his stomach, near where the simurgh huddled, as unhappy about things as he was.

Silas glanced between them both. ‘You were here, when Pitch was held by the angel?’

‘I have been here since I built this Sanctuary. I have served His Grace for several centuries,’ she said, an airiness clinging to her words.

‘Then you knew him a prisoner?’ Silas’s voice held an angry tenor, all the more ominous for his deep tone, but the Child was unmoved.

‘Prisoner? That is too harsh a word.’ She shrugged lightly. ‘He was confined but not neglected, I assure you. However ferocious his incubus appetites were, His Grace was most generous with seeing that his vessel was sated. He needed you in fine form, after all.’

An actual growl came from Silas, and his step forward held all sorts of menace. As rousing as it was to see the ankou ready to throttle the half-fae for his sake, Pitch edged Edward’s feet, so that Silas would have to push him aside to go any further. The ankou would do no such thing. His glance was filled with displeasure though.

‘My Lord Death,’ the Child continued, unflinching, despite the obvious dislike of a very large man. ‘Might I offer my condolences on the loss of your mare? The Lady of the Lake mourns with you. Do come in.’

Silas deflated at once, and Pitch’s fingers dug a little tighter against Edward’s body.

‘Satine is here?’ Silas asked, carefully.

‘Not entirely. Not as you would think.’