Page 102 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

Iblis shifted on his feet, running his tongue over his lips before Azazel’s voice came from him once more. ‘Destroy what, little prince?’

Pitch flinched, and that tickling in his throat forced him to clear it before he could speak. ‘Destroy the…’ His gaze shifted to Robin once more, lifting to follow the lines of their petrified vines to where a gaping hole punctured the brambles. Gods, he felt odd. ‘I want to see Silas now.’

‘That can be arranged, as soon as you answer the question.’ The Exarch’s words dripped with syrup. Pitch could barely drag another of those precious breaths into his lungs. ‘Tell me what your angel seeks to destroy, sweet one.’

A ripple of something terribly unpleasant caught at Pitch’s gut. ‘I don’t like that name.’ Onoskolis had called him that as she violated him. The ripple strengthened, bitter and coarse and indigestible. ‘I want to see Silas now.’

‘Forget the ankou.’ Brusque talk, the harshest from Azazel thus far. Iblis blinked. He may have gritted his teeth. ‘My apologies, Your Highness. Tell me, which name do you prefer?’

‘I prefer…’ He closed his mouth on the astonishing, mortifying truth. Pitch would not be that honest, not even as the saccharine words Silas bestowed on him pressed at the back of his teeth, brushed at his tongue, yearned to pull free. This truth was Pitch’s. Not even the angel who listened could take it from him. He squeezed his eyes shut, searching for illumination in the darkness, inordinately afraid that if he told Azazel he liked it best when Silas named him “darling,” the Exarch would destroy all hope of ever hearing it said again. ‘I prefer Pitch. Please let me see Silas now.’

‘Very soon. I promise you.’ The angel was so fixated on honesty, why would he lie himself? ‘Pitch, be honest with me, what did Seraphiel seek to destroy?’ Azazel’s voice was full of comforts, warm furs in winter, a hot bath after a long day’s ride, while Pitch was sore and aching and so very tired.

‘He intends me for Blood Lake–’

Scarlet burst from a crack in the tree like a deranged fledgling leaving the nest too soon. Waving rainbow-hued arms about, chittering madly in its indecipherable tongue, its immovable eyes giving it a crazed look.

‘Get rid of that bloody thing,’ Iblis, and not the Exarch, shouted. So damned close his breath made Pitch’s eyelids flutter.

‘I don’t want you to hurt that creature,’ Pitch said. ‘They are not too awful to have around.’

Will Scarlet flew like a bee drunk on honey, avoiding three frustrated angels, who were in danger of hitting one another rather than the tiny will-o’-the-wisp. Scarlet darted straight at Pitch and slapped his cheek. The most ineffectual, insipid slap he’d received in a long history of such things, but by the Archangels’ taints, it bothered him. He’d just declared the bright flittering critter moderately bearable, and this was his reward?

‘That did not hurt at all.’ Pitch’s tongue continued to heed the Exarch’s demand for honesty. ‘But I am greatly offended that you think so little of me.’

Harut brought an end to the miniature assault by backhanding the will-o’-the-wisp against the fortified tree. Scarlet’s startled cry was short-lived. It dropped to the churned soil at the angel’s feet, and Harut kicked its tiny body, barely larger than a plum, sending mud and leaf litter flying.

Pitch turned his head, peering around his own arm to try to catch sight of the rainbow, distantly aware that it hurt his shoulder terribly to do so. ‘That happens so often to those around me,’ he whispered. ‘I wish it were not so.’

‘Focus, daemon.’ Iblis and his master returned with hard fingers on soft skin, squeezing Pitch’s jaw, forcing his head about. ‘Forget the unimportant things and return to what you were telling me.’ Iblis’s voice was not his own once more. His grip was tremendous, giving Pitch no recourse but to stare into those eyes within eyes, into the fastening hold of the Exarch who pinned him despite what must be an enormous distance between them. Azazel was on his throne in Elyssiam. The world of the purebreds had long ago been made unreachable for him. ‘Tell me what Seraphiel seeks to destroy in Blood Lake?’

Pitch stared at Iblis. Blood. There was blood upon the angel. A tiny trickle oozing from one nostril. There in the whites of his eyes too. Splatters like ugly snowflakes around the abyss where Azazel waited impatiently.

‘You’re bleeding.’ Pitch stated the very obvious and irrelevant truth.

‘Answer me.’

Of course he would. Pitch wanted nothing more than to speak the truth. ‘The halo. Samyaza’s halo remains in Blood Lake.’

There was utter stillness around him and within the angel who listened. Iblis’s pupils flared wider, the black submerging all the angel’s own colour, the Exarch taking over completely. ‘The halo survives?’

‘In Blood Lake, yes. That’s what I said.’ Pitch bit down hard on his lip, skin splitting with the pressure. His eyelids fluttered, confusion gripping him. ‘Didn’t you know?’

Shouldn’t Iblis know? Should Azazel? Fuck, why was it so hard to keep his thoughts in a row? He glanced down, seeing royal blue, and the dugout in the earth where Harut’s boot had dispatched Scarlet.

The will-o’-the-wisp had slapped him. Shaken its head. Tried to stop him?

‘And you are the vessel that would destroy the halo?’ Where had the angel’s comforting timbre gone? Azazel sounded…well, there was venom where there’d been sugar coating before. Pitch sucked at his bleeding lip. Should he answer that? He was not so certain as before.

Be honest with me.

Iblis stroked his chin and touched at the corners of his lips, and Pitch replied, ‘I am the vessel.’

The angels who flanked him were restless, impatient. Why was everyone so impatient all of a sudden?

‘You, who are at our mercy?’ Iblis’s laughter joined with that of the angel’s he carried, and neither was pleasant.

Pitch frowned into the odd phrasing. ‘At your mercy? I thought you just wished to listen to me?’