Page 130 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘It is.’

Sybilla stared down at the lieutenant, and Silas wished he could read her expression more clearly. ‘I see.’

Two simple words weighted with far more weight than they should carry. But Silas was too impatient to get to Pitch to bother with pressing her on it. He should have been at the daemon’s side the moment he was on his feet.

He broke into a jog, headed for the column that was the last before a set of swinging doors that would lead them out of this ward and this asylum at last.

And at the base of the column was Pitch, sitting as though he had placed himself there to rest a moment. His head hung forward, hands in his lap, slender legs splayed wide. His back rested against the column, and Silas drew a sharp breath. The amuletum could not have endured after the prince’s expansive use of the flame. Being pressed up against anything like that would cause the daemon no end of misery when he came to.

Silas was at his side in three giant strides. ‘Pitch?’

He tilted the prince’s grime-stained chin, searching for signs of life. But there was nothing. ‘Pitch, can you hear me?’ He held the back of his hand against the daemon’s mouth, and some of the knots he’d wound himself up in loosened. ‘He’s breathing.’

‘I did say so.’ Bess had come to stand right behind him, Charlie muttering in his arms. The lad’s eyes were still closed, but he’d lifted his arm to cradle it against his chest, looking so terribly young in that moment.

‘Pick him up, for Christ’s sake, Mercer.’ Sybilla was not so careful with holding Edward, the lieutenant slung over her shoulder like a stole. ‘We need to go.’

The rumbling of the storm mingled with another, less pleasing vibration, coming from below, making the floorboards grind against one another.

‘I’d say we have overstayed our welcome considerably.’ Bess’s heeled shoes rapped the wooden floor as he carried Charlie towards the door. ‘Let us vacate this miserable place.’

Silas gathered Pitch’s legs together, slipping one arm beneath his knees, the other easing him away from the column and wrapping about his back. He braced for the feel of rough skin, burns reemerging after the strain the Sanctuary had put upon the prince. The amuletum could not have survived that onslaught. But if the halo’s wound showed once more, it was hidden beneath the prince’s ruinous corset. The prince the Morrigan now knew lived and breathed, thanks to Silas’s recklessly loose tongue.

Christ, he despised himself for that moment of madness.

He exhaled and embraced Pitch tightly. The daemon was warm, certainly, but not concernedly so. The flame did not plague him within. Silas had seen the shock on Pitch’s face when Edward had reached into the inferno and touched him.

None of them would leave this asylum the same as when they had arrived, but the lieutenant most especially so. There was no denying he was part of Seraphiel’s design.

Silas pressed his mouth against Pitch’s hair. ‘Pitch, we are free,’ he whispered. Bess and Sybilla were already making their way through the swinging doors. ‘The Order found Edward’s light, they foundus. And it was your sacrifice that made it so. You kept us alive. Now, we are all safe.’ He kissed gritty strands, relishing the feel of Pitch’s ribs against his hand, the shallow but rhythmic rise and fall as the prince breathed. ‘Truly you are a marvel. How could you ever imagine yourself a monster, my darling?’

Silas stilled. That last should not have been said out loud. But if Pitch had heard him, he showed no sign. And good god would he not have made a song and dance out of Silas’s sentimental slip of the tongue if he had heard?

With a smile, and great care, Silas rose to his feet. He did not need to turn to know that the teratisms flanked him. Their presence was like an extra layer of clothing upon his back.

No longer slaves to the Blight, they followed a new master.

He thought on George Brewster, the chimney sweep who’d stopped a daemon in his tracks long enough for Silas to arrive. He hoped somehow the ghost had found his way free of the Sanctuary and there would be a chance to thank him one day.

Silas shivered, from the damp or the weight of what it was to discover his power, he did not know. He carried Pitch out of the ward, nodding a thanks to Sybilla, who held a door open for him.

The waft of smoke hit him first, rich enough to make him wince. The corridors were dimmed by a smoky haze. ‘The asylum’s on fire?’ he cried.

‘Best way to get everyone out in a hurry,’ Sybilla replied. ‘Isaac has it under control though. The place won’t burn down.’

Silas nodded, knowing just how convenient a well-placed fire could be. Isaac’s quick thinking at the Charters’ residence had seen Silas and Pitch make a smooth exit from the soirée.

‘Quick steps everyone.’ Bess sounded almost cheerful as he led the strange group down the smoky corridor. ‘The Fulbourn might not burn down, but that’s not to say it won’tfalldown. I’ll be happier when we are in a carriage.’

Never had Silas agreed more with a sentiment, but it also struck him that there were certain members of this party who might not be welcome in that carriage.

The ones who had just shouldered their way through the swinging doors so violently one side flew off its hinges, the other slammed so hard into the wall there was bound to be cracking in the plasterwork.

The teratisms did not follow along meekly. They raked their impossibly long nails along the walls and butted at one another like unhappy wolves in a pack.

But before Silas could wonder at what to do with his merry band of miscreants, Bess was kicking at a white wooden door, landing her foot so hard there was barely a protest before the lock snapped and the door swung wide open.

Yellow light, the colour of a field of dandelions, spilled into the corridor. Mixing with the smoke came the damp, crisp relief of fresh air.