Page 124 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

His words came in jerky bursts as death fought the snag of his hook and tried to rattle its way free of his impediment. Silas wrapped both hands around the metal that shaped itself perfectly to his grasp, feeling every writhe of the fragment of life he pinned down. Sorrow, grief, hollow emptiness, all the marks of death sought to bite at him. Sharp lashings aimed to loosen his grip. ‘Not this day,’ he hissed. ‘She is not yours yet.’

Good god, death was a monster. And an unhappy one at that.

‘Fuck.’ He spat the word, sinking the hook deeper. ‘Not yet…’ Silas strained against the mammoth, unstoppable tug of life’s end. ‘Izanami…damn it…grant me this so I might do your will. I need…I want the angel returned.’

The heat of the Valkyrie spread through the scythe, scorching his hands, causing him to feel as though his skin was melting into the metal. But he was not about to let go.

Death should serve him.

He had reclaimed Izanami’s scythe, slain an ankou, and freed teratisms from the Morrigan’s bastardised Blight. His ultimate aim was to help Pitch rid the world of the Blight entirely and extinguish the curse that twisted Izanami’s own children, her lost souls, into monsters.

Death should side with him. Give him everything in his power to claim back the prince.

But instead it corralled Sybilla on, pushing her melody towards a horizon from whence it could not return. For all his rebellion, she was slipping from his grasp.

‘Izanami! Do you hear me?’

Fool.

The goddess’s voice, or rather his own, was a hot brand to the inside of his skull. Silas cried out, almost losing the tenuous hold he had upon the scythe, yet at the same time exultant.

He had drawn the goddess out.

Release her.

Izanami hitchhiked upon his own internal voice, which would have been far more unpleasant were he not distracted by something wonderful.

A strengthening of the angel’s melody.

The notes finding some form.

The angel was joining the fight with him. The fight to hold on to some semblance of life.

‘Sybilla…I have you,’ Silas grunted. ‘Stand your ground.’

Horseman, do you think yourself above death?

‘I am no fool. You know that better than most.’ Silas’s arms were burning, the muscles screaming for an end to the terrible hold. He struggled to keep his thoughts in order, to find something that might tip the balance here. ‘But your sister stole Crane from you. He was not hers to take, and yet she did so. Do you not want vengeance?’ A shudder ran through him, a shift of his bones beneath his skin. There was not a deity in existence that did not crave retribution. But Silas could not hold on much longer. He needed more than Izanami’s requital, he needed her approval. ‘I wish to punish her in your name, and to right, once and for all, the ancient wrong done to this world. The Blight must be stopped. That is what all the Horsemen seek, do they not? Give me back the rider of the White Horse, and we shall bring you great honour.’

There was laughter.

Laughter, of all things…here at the brink of existence, upon the precipice where there was only one true master. Death was tearing Sybilla away, and its goddess laughed.

The sound was a steel brush moving beneath his skin, but Silas detected some real mirth with it. A gentler feel than the scorching heat at his hands.

How Samyaza would haveloathed losing you if he knew what you were capable of, Nephilim. But do not deceive me, do not deliver false declarations. For I have raised you, child of the divine, and know you well. And never have I seen you more human in your desires. You fight not for me, nor for this world, or even this angel, but for him.

She did not name Pitch, for there was no need. Silas would not insult the goddess by denying it. ‘So what if it is so? Is not a fervent purpose better than forced servitude?’ His hands ached, his shoulders punished by the stranglehold he managed upon the greatest power the worlds knew. ‘I seek what all do, for this to be over.’ Sweat ran from him like the tears of a widower. ‘I know the prince cannot escape his fate any more than I. We are both pawns, however powerful we may be, and I do not fight that. But can I not seek any reward for services rendered?’

With his strength faltering, his doubts crowded him. Who was he to seek to raise an angel from the dead? Who was he to covet one other above all else?

Silas cursed the gods, and banished his misgivings.

The Valkyrie would not be here if it were not for the games the divine played. Sybilla had served for time immemorial, loyal and steadfast and staining her own conscience to do what was demanded of her, and this was her deliverance?

To die in a field surrounded by fucking cowpats and emptiness? Fuck them all. This angel did not deserve this death, so Silas was removing her from it.

And as for the one he coveted…the prince had been created to fight an endless war. And was treated as nothing more than a bloody pack horse when it suited the higher powers. Never gently, of course. No, no. Only harshness for him. A soul given so little care that Pitch did not recognise what it was to be cared for at all.