Page 20 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

With this last seal, you will know true weakness.

Pitch banished the thought with a flick of his wrists and was rewarded with the hint of flames at his fingertips. He skirted around the blackberries, close enough to curse them as they grabbed at him, scratched their thorns across his lightly glowing hands. Too damp to be under any threat from his fire.

‘Hold him down longer this time.’ The dreary voice came from up ahead.

Matilda. The wet lady.

‘And hold him at the bottom. No matter how he might protest.’

Incandescent anger bloomed, sucking what air there was from Pitch’s lungs. He raced through a lopsided rose arch, brushing the rotten timber as he went, making the whole structure tremble.

Matilda stood at the edge of a pond, an unimpressive body of water that was stifled with bullrushes and a carpet of green upon its surface. At its heart the liquid bubbled.

As though someone screamed from beneath.

‘Silas!’ Pitch roared.

But his hands did not. A single, contemptible flame at his forefinger. Nothing more. Fuck, what was wrong with him? His lungs were tight, his body constricted as though he already wore the severest of corsets.

‘What are you bellyaching about?’ Matilda cast a sideways glance, as though he wasn’t worth the effort to turn for.

‘Let him go, now.’ His shout was not so formidable as he’d planned. It was hard to bellow when you could not draw breath. ‘You traitorous bitch.’

Matilda’s disdain wrinkled her face, her hair hanging like wet lengths of liquorice to the backs of her knees. ‘Are you drunk again?’

Fuck the flame, he’d use brute force instead. Panic reared. A stallion kicking at his innards. But not the fucking stallion he needed. ‘Let him go.’

‘You need to calm down.’ Matilda was droll, and painfully unthreatened.

Calm down? While she held Silas in his greatest nightmare? While the great and terrible Prince Vassago could do nothing but point a flame-ridden finger to terrorise her? ‘What have you done, Matilda?’ That time he nearly ended up on his arse, his foot catching in dense ground matter.

‘Stop shouting like a maniac and I shall say.’

She was so fucking patronising. It was infuriating. Pitch’s throat tightened with mindless rage. Heshouldhave been burning the pond dry too. ‘I swear, if you have harmed him…’ Gods, was this possible? Matilda stealing the ankou from him right beneath his nose? A quieter part of his mind cast doubt but could barely make itself known over the fear.

Silas is gone. You are alone.Pitch’s heartbeat tolled.

‘I do not have the ankou.’ Matilda folded her thin arms, her dour expression saying clearly she thought him out of his fucking mind. ‘Astaroth, you should take a breath before you make more of a tit of yourself.’

But he had no time for the trivialities of breathing. Matilda stood between him and the water. Between him and Silas. Pitch lunged at her, a woman who could run like a river. Matilda was gone before he’d taken three steps. He charged at empty air, rain-soaked but empty air. His feet hit the mud at the edge of the pond; his boots flew out from under him. His arse hit hard enough to make his teeth clatter, and he slid until he was waist deep in the water.

‘Fuck.’

The water was beyond cold. And Silas was likely beneath it.

Pitch rocked onto his knees, the silt claiming them, and launched himself at the water. He crashed into it with all the aplomb of a brick.

The shock of the cold stole what vapours were left in his lungs. He was light-headed nearly at once. His arms slashed at the veritable forest of water plants. The pond was choked and murky as a London fog.

The merest glow came from his eyes, but the flame was as useless there as elsewhere. The sickly yellow pallor illuminated no more than a few inches ahead of him.

Useless, useless godsdamned flame.

Tiny bubbles escaped from the corners of his mouth. Pitch’s lungs were two chunks of lead in his chest. The thrash of his pulse was at heady gallop. His heart wanted out of its ribbed caged.

A strange hysteria crept over him.

Useless, useless daemon.