Page 41 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6
‘I think it is though.’ The changeling’s tiny hand rested in his palm. ‘Where are your mothers?’
‘Sleeping.’ She patted her chest. ‘I help them. Better they sleep.’
The fae was sedating her parents to help them through this. How blissful a thought. To go to sleep and only wake when all was well.
‘Clever girl.’ He squeezed her hand. Tilly’s eyes were on the earring Pitch wore. She tugged at one of the necklaces, dragging its pendant from beneath her nightshirt. The matching amber earring dangled there.
‘Friends.’
‘You have dire taste in friends, changeling.’
Tilly smiled, and Pitch could not stand there another moment.
‘Get away with you now.’ He nudged her aside under the watchful eye of the hound. ‘And you…fetch your master from where he’s playing housemaid.’ Pitch was not going to enjoy telling Silas all that had happened. ‘There is much to be done if this house is to be rid of me.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
SILAS ANDCharlie readied the horses and carriage, the sizeable brougham belonging to Adamaris and Nancy, each lost in their own troubled thoughts. The lad had quickly given up instructing Silas on how to settle the horses into their straps and cinches, for it was evident almost at once that he held innate memory of it. Silas had gathered up the breeching and settled it on one of the bay’s hinds, buckling it in place before Charlie had finished tying up his horse.
‘You’ve done this before, then?’ the lad said.
‘It would appear so.’ Not so surprising, considering his lives lived, Silas supposed. Though it would have been nice to be equally so adept with riding from the outset and have saved himself a few falls.
The stables were quiet, with only Hastings in residence, sucking down her chaff greedily after being ridden hard, and the building was luckily grand enough to allow them to prepare the horses inside, avoiding the drizzle beyond the wide-open doors. The silence was broken only by the click of buckles and the snorting of the pair of bays as they were strapped up. Silas would have preferred more noise, anything to distract him from what Pitch had told him about the events in Bess’s room. Anything to wipe from memory what he’d heard as he passed along the upstairs corridor, drawing near to Bess’s chamber. The tsukumogamis’ ghastly rattling tunes were like none he’d yet heard nor wished to again. Whatever melody they’d held before was made grotesque by their strange, lingering deaths.
The bay stamped his foreleg, and Silas barely moved his boot in time to avoid a crushing.
‘Easy there, nearly done.’ He rubbed the gelding’s neck, as much to soothe himself as the horse.
How sickening it was to think on how close the Morrigan had come to Pitch. Indeed, to everyone in the household.
Silas glanced at the stall where Hastings ate her chaff. A lucky thing there had been a stall without a gate. The massive mare’s hindquarters stuck out into the walkway as it was. She was still damp with sweat, despite a rub down.
Sybilla had come in at a gallop and had barely slowed to a trot before she leapt from the horse’s back and rushed into the house. That was half an hour ago. He’d seen no sign of her since, but the grim sounds of distress coming from Bess’s chamber had ceased.
‘Are they certain there is nothing to be done for Ronin?’ Charlie asked. ‘Surely amongst all of you, with all your preternatural powers, someone can help him?’
Silas lost hold of the tug buckle he’d been securing. ‘I am told there is not.’ He knew it to be true. He’d heard the hopelessness in the inevitable fading of Ronin’s song. ‘It is a terrible state of affairs.’
One Pitch was not dealing with well.
He’d looked a beautiful, wretched sight, startlingly pale against the maroon corset he wore as he relayed to Silas what had happened while pulling their clothes from the wardrobe and tossing them in a pile. The prince barely seemed able to stand unaided but warded Silas off the moment he drew close.
‘Tend the horses, I’ll see to our clothes, and have Sybilla ready Edward as soon as…’ He’d drawn in a breath. ‘As soon as she is done.’
Charlie secured the bridle of the second bay. Both were done now. The horses need only be settled between the shafts and the reins run through the terrets and the brougham was ready to be taken over to the house where it could be loaded.
‘But Tilly and her mothers, Bess, too, they will all be safe here once we are gone, won’t they?’
Charlie’s question had Silas stepping around the horses to find the lad. ‘You willallbe safe here, Charlie. The Morrigan have not found us, Bess is certain of it, and the tunnel between the Sanctuaries is now severed. Once Pitch and I are gone, the Morrigan’s interest will follow.’
The lad stared Silas right in the eye as he declared, ‘I shall be with you, Silas.’
‘You absolutely shall not, Charlie.’
The lad set his jaw, straightened so he was as tall as he could make himself. ‘I can be of help. You don’t understand how things have–’
‘Silas, are they ready?’ Sybilla moved into the stables like a low-lying storm cloud, her black leather coat fanning around her, stirring the hay-strewn floor. She held a rigidness about her that stopped Silas from asking after Ronin. He knew enough anyway. With death that close by, he’d know when its last notes were played.