Page 87 of The Death Wish

Silas cursed the burden of the sickly king, and was none too gentle about gathering him up, lifting him off his feet so they might move faster. Lucifer’s low moan was not pleasing, but Silas did not like how still Pitch was in the doorway.

‘What is it? Is something wrong?’ Silas winced, Lucifer’s heat almost too much to bear. ‘Talk to me, damn it.’

Pitch turned. The light made his appearance seem gaunt and haunted. His eyes shimmered, cold chips of emerald.

‘I remember, Silas. I remember this room. This is where Seraphiel kept me on my back. And it seems he’s found a new plaything.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

PITCH STEPPEDinto the room before Silas could touch him. The pained look on Silas’s face, a whirl of anguish and sympathy, and unexpected hurt, had given Pitch the impetus to move, when just moments before he’d thought another step, another breath, impossible.

He stepped to one side, pressed his back against the wall.

He could not look yet at the bed, at the figure lying there. No matter how the simurgh battered his innards. Pitch felt himself at the edge of an abyss. And he was not yet ready to fall.

Fuck Seraphiel, and this game he played. If all that Pitch had left in his arsenal was avoidance, then so be it.

The room held a medieval sensibility to it. Jacquetta’s clothing was not so jarring now in this space. But the lack of windows certainly was.

Their absence hadn’t bothered him in the past. He remembered.

He’d been too preoccupied…or too manipulated…to wonder why the only light he ever saw was that from the candles that circled the huge lighting fixture hanging at the very centre of the room, a piece of metal large and round as a wagon wheel, and held by five link chains. It held twenty candles at its periphery; each as thick as his arm.

Twenty candles, exactly.

He knew. He’d counted them many times: in what he’d always remembered as a drunken stupor, or strong haze of enchantment, or post-coital bliss.

Pitchrememberedthis room: the fawn tiles on the floor that were always warm, the wallpaper with its busy yellow and blue design that reminded him of fleur-de-lys but with sharper tips upon the plumes, the rosewood beams with their thin trims of gold, and the coarse stone mantle with its hearth deep enough for a dozen logs. So dull compared to the florid, Baroque fashioning of the rest of the palace.

No part of which he recalled.

Had he ever been allowed from this room?

Whilst the others bustled around him, Pitch’s memories fell over themselves, tangled up their pieces and pushed at him like a frightened herd of cattle. He could not make out their shape and substance.

He could not tell if a single one of them was real.

Pitch sought to keep his breath even, his mind from fraying at the edges. He dug his fingertips into his stomach, pressed down till he felt the warmth of blood. The simurgh quietened, sank deeper, gave him the space he craved.

Only then did he let his gaze settle on the bed: a rosewood four-poster, with black velvet canopy and hangings, perched upon a platform of red-painted wood.

A man lay upon a royal blue quilt, his head against black satin pillows which accentuated the spun-gold of his long, straight hair. Pale skin, a Roman nose and square jaw, with a jutting chin that held a deep cleft. Handsome, defined features; the sort of face that would have caught Pitch’s eye, back when he was hungry for senseless desire.

But he had never seen this man before.

He swallowed against the immovable lump in his throat. Pitch had barely made it into the room, whilst everyone else, including Silas, moved deeper.

Pitch and the golden-haired stranger were the only points of stillness in the room. They, and the simurgh; the wildness had moved so far into its cage it could barely be felt.

The ankou approached, having settled Lucifer in an armchair he’d dragged closer to the bed. The king leaned out of the chair, his arse at the very edge. If he moved an inch more, he was likely to fall off. Scarlet took it upon themselves to grab at his shirt collar, hauling back, like the King of Daemonkind was a belligerent, bruised and battered, dog on a leash. Lucifer did not swipe at the wisp. He barely seemed to notice them at all. He gripped the ends of the armrests, eyes locked upon the man. His expression was not one Pitch recognised as common to the king. Fear lay there, bold and unapologetic, with barely a hint of royal daemonflame to see. He was dull, Pitch thought. Too dull. But he spent little time observing his sire. Edward, wretched with unnatural twists and jerks of his body, was negotiating the platform, Charlie and Jacquetta helping him ever closer to the prone man.

To whatever play this was, in Seraphiel’s end game.

Pitch watched it all, the world around him moving in a languid way, his ears stuffed with cotton, voices muffled and distant.

Silas reached him. And did not seek to drag Pitch from his place, but joined him there. Stood beside him, his back to the wall, his hand just touching Pitch’s own. Not a word said, nor question asked, only offering the comfort of silence and presence. And Pitch wondered, as he did so often, if love was what he felt for this man. Because these odd feelings were intangible and indescribable, and made him troubled and euphoric at once.

Silas ran his smallest finger over the back of Pitch’s hand, and together they watched as Edward sat himself beside the sleeping beauty. The lieutenant laid a hand upon the other man’s chest. One that did not rise nor fall, so far as Pitch could tell.