Page 125 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

‘Fuck you all,’ he spat between clenched teeth. He would be pushed about no longer. He would spit in the eye of fate and those she favoured.

His anger bubbled with the heat, and something rumbled in the pit of his gut like a bad stew not sitting well.

Silas’s skin was taut. His muscles sought to bulge their way from beneath. He may be occupied with defying death, but it seemed to him that his shadow had grown, covering the Valkyrie who lay beneath him and stretching out into the field. A shadow. Had he always had one? He looked down on her, and the angel seemed further away, Silas higher above.

He felt greater, the world lesser.

Silas hauled on the hook, throwing back his head and catching his groan behind his teeth. Christ, he felt as though he were splitting open, and dared not glance at himself for fear he’d find it true.

But there…there…oh sweet mercy…was the Valkyrie’s song. How beautiful it was, piece by piece rebuilding its splendour. Silas listened, enraptured, though he could not shake the sense of doing so from afar, as though he sat upon the moody clouds, not at Sybilla’s side.

Horseman.Izanami’s cry held surprise. Did her ankou’s rebellion truly startle her?Enough.Let go. Let go before you tip yourself over an edge I cannot keep you from.

‘Then you shall lose us both. I will not let go.’And how he meant it. Silas had never felt so enormous, so significant as he did then.

You are being a fool.

‘Well, so be it.’ The belligerence came easily, rolling off his tongue as though it had worn grooves there with frequent use. ‘Perhaps a fool is more likely to get what he wants than a loyal servant. I have asked nothing of you, and you have demanded everything of me.’

His shadow grew, reached further and further beyond where Sybilla lay, her song delicate and wounded but trying desperately to remain. The shadow was his, certainly, but huge in comparison to the man it reflected.

Giant.

Silas’s arms shook with wherewithal, his lips damp with strain.

He had been repulsed by his Nephilim blood since learning of it at the greensward. And his encounter with the Herlequin proved his repulsion well founded. But what if that blood made the difference here? What if this was what had astonished Izanami. That Silas was capable of holding Sybilla from death at all.

Careful what you reach for, Horseman.You are not as you once were.

‘But I have always been more than an ankou.’ The bumbling, cowardly man Mr Ahari had pulled from the grave had vanished between Holly Village and here. And Silas knew precisely why. It was far easier to be brave and stubborn and fierce when you loved bravely, stubbornly, and fiercely. ‘I was Nephilim. That is why you made me the first of my kind. That is why the prince was entrusted to me to protect. And I will not fail him. I will do whatever it takes, do you hear me?Whateverit takes to be reunited with the daemon they have stolen from me.’

There was a sigh. One from the heavens, and another from far below on the field. He could feel them both from where he loomed large over the land. If he had lived, that day on the loch, if his brother had not drowned him, would Silas have been any different from the Herlequin? Would he have been greater? Or just a bigger monster?

A reprieve, that is all. No more is mine to give. The Valkyrie’s end has come. Your intervention merely forestalls what will be.

‘Just as your intervention does with me.’

Something wry brushed against his mind.

Do you think yourself a god?

He could imagine nothing worse. ‘I think myself too short of time to be anything but immovable.’

Silas might have heard a goddess laugh.

Have your angel. Have your time. Neither shall exist for long.

The drag against the hook vanished. Silas was thrown forward. He didn’t realise he’d closed his eyes until they flew open and he was wincing against a glare. Confusion reigned, and for one curious moment, he thought he must be on his feet, for the ground was too far away for him to be on his knees. But whichever it was, he was unsteady.

Silas threw out his hands. There was a longer moment than he expected before his palms found dirt. Dirt that cracked and crunched, those shards he’d noted earlier trying to pierce his skin.

Silas was on hands and knees alongside the angel. His enormous shadow was gone, as was the hook. His sense of impossible vastness had all but vanished. The glare was only the parting of the clouds above, enough to allow weak beams of late sunshine to grace the countryside and catch at Sybilla’s eyes.

Her lids were barely parted. ‘Silas.’ The angel coughed, a hack like a farrier’s rasp against a hoof. ‘You brought me back.’

‘I did. I hope you can forgive me.’

‘It is you who must forgive me. They have him. I couldn’t stop it…’ The coughing seized her again, a dry, harsh sound that made Silas’s own chest ache to hear. His hands hovered over her, unsure where to touch her, or if he should even try to move her from where she lay. He feared the way her clothing clung to her, as though sinking into her flesh. And at her neck, he saw it now as she shifted, the skin held folds it should not. The creep of burns slunk around from behind, where the damage must be terrible. He glanced at the broken shards around her. Truly they were like pieces of a once-grand chandelier, now smashed to pieces and jutting like broken stalks from a harvested field.