Page 23 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

‘There, you see?’ Silas said softly. ‘You are safe.’

Matilda made a sound that could pass for amusement or ridicule. Whichever it was, Silas startled to hear it. He’d forgotten his audience. But he did not look away. Pitch stared up at him as though he were the only star for his ship to navigate by.

‘I don’t think it was his safety he was worried about, Mr Mercer.’ For a water elemental, Matilda was very dry. ‘You didn’t tell him about the pond.’

It was not a question, so he gave no answer, but surely the prince was not so concerned that he’d become paralysed with fear?

Silas raised Pitch’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, which were small hills of ice. ‘Is that what caused this? I’m so sorry, Pitch. I should have told you what I intended to do…I thought you’d think me foolish.’

He’d been a fool all right. He’d sought to make himself more useful to this glorious creature, not render him incapacitated with worry. Silas’s gaze slipped over soft, full lips that now held a hint of their more desirable pinkness. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered again.

The prince nodded, and when he blinked, the last of the shadows were wiped from his gaze. They breathed in unison for a few breaths, the prince finding a stronger rhythm with each rise and fall, his eyes never leaving Silas’s face. But blast it was cold, and they were both saturated. Pitch’s shivering would not end if they stayed here. Silas set aside the niggling voice that wondered why a fire daemon shook so.

‘I should get you back to the house,’ he said.

He was not prepared at all when Pitch freed his hands and shoved them against Silas’s chest.

He let out a startled cry, rocking back on his heels, barely stopping himself from being thrown back into the water. The prince scrambled away as though he’d been held a prisoner in Silas’s arms.

‘What the bloody hell was that for?’ Silas demanded.

Pitch’s rise to his feet was made inelegant by the slip of his boots in the slime and mud. ‘Being an idiot.’ He was hoarse, coughing his words. Pitch gestured at the pond. ‘What the fuck do you think you were doing, Mercer?’

Oh the daemon was himself again all right. Silas sighed. ‘I will explain it to you when we are drying by the fire.’

The prince flinched and his scowl deepened. ‘You’ll explain it right bloody now, ankou. I’ll not be ordered about.’

‘I’m not ordering you about, Pitch,’ Silas replied.

But gentle as he sought to be, irritation stirred. Silas had the grit of the pond in all the wrong places. He’d barely managed not to have become a mindless mess of nerves himself at the bottom of that pond. He wasn’t steady enough yet to handle the return of the daemon’s sharp tongue.

‘I’ve enough to be bothered with, Mercer,’ Pitch said. ‘I don’t need to be racing around after you when you decide to take swimming lessons from toads.’

The kappas, watching the show from where they squatted on either side of Matilda, clicked their jiggling throats in annoyance.

‘Mind your pretty mouth, daemon,’ Matilda said. ‘I tire of your theatrics.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

Matilda’s eyes narrowed. She flicked her fingers at the air. Sharp pellets of frozen rain drove down at Pitch– but missed Silas entirely.

The prince launched into a dance of many curses, flailing his arms about and coming up with a multitude of ways he was going to put an end to the water elemental, which only caused her to hurl larger hailstones at him.

‘That is quite enough,’ Silas declared. ‘Matilda, I appreciate your assistance, but I’d say we are done here.’ He strode to the prince’s side, grateful when the hailstones ceased. In one precise move, Silas took hold of the flailing daemon’s waist and lifted him, casting him over his shoulder.

‘What the fuck do you think you are doing?’

‘Putting an end to this, Pitch. You are freezing.’

‘Set me down, you bastard.’

The prince slapped at his back, a halfhearted effort at best, considering his strength. Pitch could extricate himself from Silas’s hold in a heartbeat, if he so desired.

‘Stop wiggling about.’ Silas, acting on sheer impulse and mild exasperation, slapped Pitch’s arse, a sharp flick of the wrist that rang out against pert flesh. The most adorable sound of astonishment escaped the daemon.

‘How dare you, Mr Mercer.’ But the barbs had smoothed from Pitch’s tongue.

Silas, his own angry mood considerably dulled, turned to Matilda and the kappas, who watched the whole spectacle intently.