Page 93 of The Death Wish

‘He shall need to be.’

‘Is there no other way?’ Silas pressed. ‘He must enter the lake?’

Seraphiel shifted his shoulders, there was no flexibility there for him, so he moved like one stuck in a strait-jacket. ‘Of course he must enter Blood Lake, there was never any other way. How else shall he destroy the halo? What fool question is that?’

Vassago chewed at his bottom lip, his arms crossed at his belly. The ankou looked evermore like a dark thundercloud, though he gathered the prince into his arms with a butterfly’s delicacy.

Neither of the fools said a word.

No one did, until Seraphiel turned to Lucifer, his mouth twisted with indignation.

‘Why am I in bedclothes, Luci?’ His hair moved like spiderweb in a breeze. ‘I have no need for sleep. Get me up at once.’

Lucifer’s exhaustion swept him anew. His own injuries drained him, but it was the ruin of the angel that made his knees weakest of all. Seraphiel hung by a delicate thread to the life he had reclaimed; his mind as damaged as it had ever been.

He could not look at Vassago. For he knew what he’d see there. Doubt, prickly as a rash from the sun. What hope did this Cultivation have, in light of its creators failing state?

Lucifer said nothing, merely nodded, when the ankou brought the vacant wheelchair to the side of the bed, and lifted the curt and exacting angel onto its seat, saying nothing as Seraphiel ordered him as if he were a valet, and not a lord of death.

Lucifer stood, teeth ground against his revolting pains, grateful for the handles against which he could brace himself. He refused an offer from Silas to wheel the snappish angel to the north wing; where a dressing room he preferred was located.The journey sounded torturous, but what was a few more arduous steps?

‘No. I have him.’

After all, Seraphiel had said it plainly enough. He was only here,because of you.

Lucifer had begun this; now he must survive until the game played out to its end.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

PITCH STRADDLEDSilas’s lap, where the ankou lay across a window seat marvelling at the array of blooms in the courtyard below. The bay window was diamond latticed–much like the one Pitch had awoken next to, after the Fulbourn–and afforded a fine view. Milky water spilled from another grand fountain. This centrepiece was a depiction of a creature, part horse, part mermaid; teeth bared, its mane a luxurious flow of carved marble, its lower half all sea creature, with a wide fluted tail.

Pitch could not bear to look at it. He was unsteady enough after the meeting with the angel. To remember Lalassu now was too much.

‘Look at all those musk orchids,’ Silas said, his back propped against silk damask cushions. ‘They are lovely though, don’t you think?’

Pitch hummed in the same noncommittal way he’d been using for the past twenty minutes, tracing his fingers over the smooth velvet of Silas’s vest. A jerkin, in keeping with the odd affinity for clothes of eras past that Jacquetta seemed to relish. But by the gods, how the style suited the ankou.

By strange coincidence, or simply because the colour suited him so well, the jerkin laid out for Silas was royal blue, the same shade exactly as the ankou’s beloved Inverness coat. Black trimaround the embellishments at the shoulders and waist made the jerkin even more reminiscent of that coat.

Pitch ran his finger over the trim. The tightness of the fit accentuated the broadness of his ankou’s shoulders, the solidness of his girth.

‘You like this outfit?’ Silas asked, deep and soothing.

Pitch nodded and tapped his nail against each of the gun-metal grey buttons that ran down the jerkin’s front; worn over a black satin doublet which was fastened tight at the wrists. Black leather trousers completed the ensemble, trousers that were far tighter than Silas liked, and he had said so a dozen times already. But they were exactly tight enough, as far as Pitch was concerned. He sighed and curled his fingers into his fist. His thoughts kept straying to the damage done to Lucifer’s hand. His vestige gone. Torn free by Michael.

The Seraph was not known for complacency. He’d hardly scurry back to his rooms at White Mountain because of one fire-lashing from a couple of errant daemons.

Michael would hunt.

Pitch leaned back, resting against Silas’s raised thighs. The ankou lay with his knees raised to accommodate the shortness of the seat and his considerable length. Pitch’s fingers followed each line of the criss-cross laces on Silas’s trouser front.

Jacquetta had directed them to a dressing room–deep within the meandering halls of the massive palace–where hose had been set out for them to wear. The Child had seemed surprised at Pitch’s refusal.

‘You enjoyed the frivolity of fashion in the past. These were among your favourite.’

All the more reason to refuse them now.

‘Trousers,’ he’d replied, and Silas’s relief had been tangible.