Page 120 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6
A strike of horrendous power. Pitch’s confusion mingled with terror. If Iblis had nursed such strength all this time, why show it only now?
The Valkyrie’s hold slackened, her wings afire but still beating, seeking to slow their maniacal descent. A brave though fruitless endeavour, considering she fought to carry his weight while massively injured. If she let him go, perhaps she could find a speed with which to dive and douse the angelfire. He knew it a tactic of the angels; he’d seen it done above the Hellfield.
A horde of pained sounds came from the Valkyrie.
‘Release me!’ he shouted. ‘Syb, you’ll not survive another blow, but they want me. They’ll come for me…and you might escape.’ It was a fraught and foolish idea, but with nothing else to offer, he’d glue himself to it. ‘I’m begging you…let me go.’
Sybilla grabbed his chin, tilting his head with no gentleness, drawing them eye to eye. ‘What is left of my magick goes to you, Tobias.’ The words were harsh, forced through gritted teeth.
Pitch recoiled. Or at least, he would have if the Valkyrie was not pressing him so tightly. ‘I don’t want your fucking death wish, Syb. I want you to live.’
‘But I have.’ She burned, her wings consumed by an angelic inferno. ‘And now it is what I want for you. To truly live.’ She hovered in the enlightened space between life and death. The very same space that had given Samyaza the power to wreak his havoc, the power to imbue his halo with his divine magick. ‘May the last of my divinity protect you, Tobias. You. Not what you carry, not the burden that is yours, butyou. The daemon who has suffered enough.’
Sybilla brushed back a lock of his hair and breathed a word against his ear. A word of singular beauty, holding all the nuances of the angel, the fine threads that wove her together. Her true name. The one written by the creation fire on her soul when she was birthed from beneath the Ophanim Throne. A name known and understood by none but the angel who bore it.
Sybilla pulled away and smiled at him in that grim but determined way of those who knew that fate did not favour them. The flames licking at her wings shuddered, flickered…and snuffed out. ‘Be strong. You know you are not alone. Do not despair.’
They touched down upon the ground. Pitch’s bare feet met a coolness of soil that pulled him from the reverie of Sybilla’s gift. He did not recall letting his legs fall from her hips, did not recall her gaining control of their descent. It must have been agonising for the angel.
But he was falling no longer.
The Valkyrie’s eyes closed, her knees buckled. And he was not quick enough to stop her collapse. Pitch heard himself cry out, as though from a great distance.
‘Sybilla, no.’ He dropped to his knees beside her, shoving the bandalore into a pocket, while Scarlet keened softly at his ear and a tidal wave of anguish swept in with the sound. ‘Open your eyes, Syb. I’ll not have this. Take it back. I don’t want your stupid wish. I want you to open your fucking eyes, damn you.’
A shadow stole the light, creeping over the Valkyrie lying so still on the ground, her once lustrous wings, made brittle by the heat, were now crystalline shards beneath her. As though she had landed upon a huge mirror.
‘Sybilla,’ he whispered. ‘Please, come back.’
The faint whinny of a horse reached him. He knew he was being watched. Knew that something…someone nefarious observed his grief. And it enraged Pitch in a way he could not name. He was done with being stolen from.
He rushed to his feet, swinging about. ‘Fuck off!’ he roared.
A figure stood not two feet away from him. Cloaked, masked in those absurd feathers the Morrigan preferred. At their back, ravens drifted on the wing, arranged in two tiers, the birds mimicking bleak angel wings.
Pitch ran at them all, never more the Berserker Prince than he was now. Though it was not the wildness consuming him but the twin furies of loss and denial.
The figure regarded him in stillness, a glow at their left hand, a flare of light, blue as a glacier’s depths around their gloved fingers. And again, the sound of a distant horse. This time the animal screamed. Defiant, threatening.
No ordinary creature.
And Pitch knew. Heknew, and his heart swelled in his chest until there was no room for anything but certainty.
The Pale Horse.
Silas was here.
Pitch turned a vicious grin toward his watcher. They raised a gloved hand, the gleam of ancient ice flaring, and he was struck.
Right in the chest where his heart pounded, strong and sure. He knew a moment of insufferable pain before deep, drowning darkness arrived. Stealing him away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE DULLAHANhad his blue roan at a formidable gallop. The headless horseman rode one-handed, his handless limb tucked beneath his coat, and Silas’s arm around his waist. The rhythm was almost soothing, the predictable, reliable pound of hooves near hypnotic, the pair of them moving as one. Silas was in no fear of slipping from the horse’s back. Seated surely, as though he were in the saddle, his feet in the safety of stirrups. There was no sign of either though, just an extraordinarily beautiful rose-hued saddle rug beneath them, its intricate gold embroidery speaking of weeks of careful needlework. Or perhaps none at all.
Perhaps such beauty was easy to come by in the UnSeelie Court.
The Dullahan had discarded the uniform cloak of the Morrigan, and his celadon-hued coat beneath was extraordinary, high-collared, embellished with roped trim and more sophisticated embroidery. But beautiful as it was, the denseness of the fabric did not hide the startlingly svelte figure beneath. Hips sharps, waist terribly narrow, as though all the years of servitude had whittled the Dullahan to nothing.