Page 29 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Silas, on the other hand, knew it all. And yet he was still spouting words as warm as treacle.

Pitch turned to wait for the ankou.

Fothergill’s face was chalk white against the darkness of his clothing. He shook visibly, nodding like the madman he’d made Edward out to be. Silas turned his back on him, and Fothergill staggered to the drink’s cabinet, grabbing at the decanter and managing to slosh half the bottle onto the cabinet, the other half in his glass.

Silas hurried to reach Pitch, and the scratching at the daemon’s back intensified as the watch came with him. But discomfort be damned if it meant having the ankou close.

Silas saw the daemon watching him. He smiled. And it was like a knife cutting loose the remaining knots that held Pitch within.

‘Do you have what you need?’ Silas spoke softly.

‘I do.’

‘Good. No need to spend another moment here, then.’ He placed his hand over Pitch’s, which was grasping so tightly at the door handle that his bones ached. Silas guided the door open. The sounds of revelry downstairs drifted up to them. Laughter and loud voices, clinking crystal and abandon. Cigar smoke flecked the air, and the tempo of the music suggested dancing might be in order for some of the guests. Gods, how wonderful it would be to spend the night dancing and drinking.

Pitch didn’t realise he was just standing there, staring longingly towards the top of the main stairs until he felt Silas’s hand on his shoulder. He jumped.

‘It’s just me.’ The ankou removed his hand and stepped back.

He would have done so because he thought it the right thing to do, to give the daemon breathing room. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what Pitch wanted. Silas should come closer, he should touch him. Maybe then it would be easier to forget angels and their hands of fire.

Pitch coughed and fussed with the creases that had formed in his skirt. ‘I know it’s you. I recognise the oaf beside me, even though your face seems to have gone bald.’

Silas chuckled, rubbing at his chin, and led them down the hall away from the stairs. Pitch didn’t know where he was being led, but he would follow the ankou without question.

‘What do you think?’ Silas said.

‘Of what?’ Pitch drew his gaze from where it had been drinking in the ankou’s new profile. He was having to work hard not to limp, but that didn’t bother him for once.

‘The shave.’

Pitch thought he would like to kiss every inch of the smoothed skin and trace his finger over the tiny mole that had been revealed low on Silas’s jawline.

‘Well.’ He shrugged. ‘It makes you look less like a wild hermit I suppose. The grey hair gives you a sophistication you lacked before too.’

There was that smile again. Gods. The tincture must still be playing havoc, and the floor must be decidedly uneven in this particular spot, because Pitch stumbled.

‘Let us leave this place.’ Silas leaned towards him as he spoke so his words were for Pitch’s ears alone. ‘I may have bribed a housemaid to show me the quickest route to this floor. It will make the best route of escape too.’

Silas turned to a wall panel as though he were about to attempt to walk through the wood. Before Pitch could ask what he was doing, he pressed at the wall. There was a click, and the panel swung out into the hall, revealing a servants’ entrance. They made their way down a candlelit staircase, Pitch in fear of tumbling down, as his skirts made it impossible to see where the next narrow, uneven step was. Silas reached the bottom first, only asking five times if Pitch needed any assistance.

‘It is not my first time in a skirt,’ the daemon hissed. ‘And I’ve used a staircase or two.’

The stairwell at Harvington Hall came to mind, where Pitch had tried to rut his confusion away in a ménage à trios. What a disappointing affair that had been. The soothsayer had made it worse by appearing in the heat of things, asking about the lieutenant.

Pitch glanced at Silas. A flutter of guilt mingled with the incessant scratching of the pendant watch. The ankou had rescued him there too. Lying with him to draw him from a mournful abyss. And what had Pitch done in return? He’d abandoned Silas. Because Pitch was a lily-livered piece of shit who had been too selfish to just admit the union had overwhelmed him. He’d been utterly desperate for what Silas offered: shelter, safety, careful handling. And the Berserker Prince did not dodesperatewell.

The last step caught him unawares. Pitch thought he was stepping onto the floorboards, only to find his heel clipping one more raised piece of wood. ‘Shit.’

He barely stumbled. Silas saw to it, getting an arm around Pitch’s waist at the same time the daemon realised he was falling.

‘Before you protest, I know you are fine.’ Silas’s mouth was close to Pitch’s ear. ‘But a good brother would hardly hold back when his sister was in need. I have to keep up appearances.’

Oh, Pitch was going to have words, many words, about Silas’s decision to make them brother and sister. It was very unsettling.

They travelled along what Silas insisted was the path he’d taken, but after they struck a dead end in a room with furniture covered in sheets, he admitted he might have been in too much haste to pay attention to the way he went. They came across a black-suited footman with his rattling tray of empty glasses, who agreed to take them to the kitchen after Pitch put on a teary display, weeping about the family emergency that needed Miss Margaret Cargill’s immediate attention.

Silas had asked the footman if any new servants had been employed of late. A cheery fellow with freckles and blue eyes? He’d promptly deflated when the answer was no. The journey would have been quicker were Silas not dragging his heels, peering into each room, as though Charlie might be hidden beneath a table somewhere.