Page 81 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

‘Oh, they are playing with our minds all right. I suppose Macha thinks herself very clever, adding little pieces of our past to this pissy attempt at a Sanctuary.’ Pitch’s arm tightened against Silas’s backside as the ankou wavered, light-headed suddenly. ‘Take it easy, Sickle.’

Silas shifted his weight closer to the wall, fingers nearly clawing at the wallpaper, as though the smooth surface might give him some purchase. The daemon was doing a damned good job of keeping him going, but he did not wish to burden him any more than necessary.

‘We are being hunted.’

‘Yes,’ Pitch agreed easily. ‘There is likely no way out of here, save for the one I could burn for us.’ He raised his tone, placing a question there subtly.

‘No.’ Silas’s toe clipped the next step, but he barely staggered as Pitch quickly steadied him. ‘There’s no telling how much of you that would demand.’

God damn it, how he wished his skin and bones would knit quicker. He was useless to the daemon in this state, and it was infuriating. He shrugged his shoulders, as much to shake off the needling melody that followed behind them as to shift against the strange twinges and pinches that came at his back. Hewasmending, he knew it, but it was far too bloody slow.

They climbed. And climbed some more, and even Pitch was muttering about his thighs and the infernal things he would do to the Child of Melusine who had made this place when a thought struck Silas, defying even the calamitous noise filling his head.

‘Harvington Hall,’ he said in a rush.

‘Stay with me, Silas. Keep your wits,’ Pitch replied. ‘We are not at the hall.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ Silas planted his feet and edged about gingerly to face the wall, forcing Pitch to move onto the step above and bend awkwardly so he might still keep his arm about Silas. ‘The walls…the spectre showed me how to move through them.’

‘You have just thought of this now?’ Pitch said, exasperated. ‘We’ve been walking for hours.’

‘A slight exaggeration, and I was preoccupied with trying to keep my ribs from skewering my lungs.’

Silas was snide, but he’d not deny it felt as though they had trekked across the damned Sahara by now. His face was damp with sweat, glistening with the effort of ceaseless climbing. He darted a glance down the staircase, where the steps sank down into a pit of shadows. Any trace of the corridor was gone. He squinted, peering into the gloom that clung like a fog over a field, hiding all beneath. There might have been a swirl of movement there in the bleak depths.

‘Wait…do you see down –’

‘Shit, Silas!’

He had leaned forward, teetering dangerously. The prince grabbed at him, trying to find purchase as Silas tottered.

And Pitch’s fingers sank deep into flayed flesh.

Silas’s punished lungs released a sound that trembled between a roar and a scream. So loud it succeeded for an instant in drowning out the drumming notes of the teratisms below.

‘Fuck, fuck. Gods, Silas I’m sorry.’ Pitch had already withdrawn the offending hand and darted to stand one step below Silas, both hands pressed to his chest to prop him upright. The fingers on his left hand held a gory glove of red.

‘I’m fine.’ Sweet lord, he was nothing of the kind. Tears blurred his vision.

‘And a fucking terrible liar.’

Panting, his body shaking, Silas shook his head. The white blur at the edges of his vision faded as the pain subsided. ‘They are close, Pitch… We have to find a way out of here.’ He wiped at the tears. ‘We can’t follow the path being set us here…but perhaps…I can…’

Silas pulled himself upright, trying to grapple his thoughts into something more coherent than panic. At the hall, he’d been desperate to find Pitch, and no wall could have stopped him.

He was desperate here. Perhaps it was enough. Silas pressed both hands to the wallpaper, which stilled the trembling in them at least. He splayed his fingers, gritted his teeth, and focused on the black-tipped beak of one of the birds in the wallpaper.

‘Silas? I don’t think you can glare a hole in the bloody thing.’

He shrugged off Pitch’s attempt to move them both on and leaned his weight into his hands. ‘You will not keep us,’ he whispered.

‘Oh gods, Mercer. A thoughtful idea, but you are not so large you can shoulder your way through a wall, especially not in a place like this.’

‘I found you at the hall.’ Silas blinked. He’d found Pitch through sheer desperation.Do not stop when it seems you must,the spectre’s words as he urged Silas to overcome the barriers put before him and find the daemon.If you wish to reach him, you must keep going.

His overwhelming desire to reach Pitch had driven Silas then. He needed such a passion now. Silas closed his eyes, drew a stuttered breath, and allowed himself to think of Charlie. Of the lad lying in the glass coffin, so still and quiet.

He imagined it was death there, and not slumber.