Page 50 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6
But any fear he had for the lad’s safety abated when Pitch released a sigh. ‘Oh fuck, what I wouldn’t do for a pipe, right now.’
Silas braced his hands on the seat, a sudden wave of melancholy driving at him. Every fine hair on his body seemed to tug at his skin, and the prickling at the back of his neck grew into a scratching. He touched his fingers to his throat, where the tightness made it hard to breathe.
Christ, he felt low. Caught by a sudden, vicious despair. The bandalore shifted restlessly in his pocket. He felt its heat against the crux of his thigh. But he could not reach for it; he was too heavy with sorrow.
‘Silas?’ That was Pitch, somewhere far away.
The pain forced Silas to close his eyes. And waiting behind his lids was all the gloom, the terrible dread that hindered him. It flew at him, an enormous flock of crows, pecking at his nerves as though they sought to snap them one by one. He opened his eyes, to where the world was turned watercolour by a flood of tears.
‘Silas.’ Pitch was rather more alarmed this time.
‘Pitch…I just need a moment.’ Silas reached for the daemon, or at least tried to. His arm didn’t appear to have registered the request at all. ‘I don’t feel quite myself.’
The world tilted dangerously. He was fairly certain he was toppling out of the driver’s seat, but his arms refused to do anything but hang like limp branches by his sides.
‘Shit,’ Pitch cried. ‘Silas.’
He wished he could reassure the prince all was well. But it would be a lie.
‘Catch him,’ Charlie shouted.
Yes. Silas was definitely falling. And he could find no will of his own to do anything at all but wait for the ground to meet him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE WASclose to the ground. Silas could just glimpse the unevenness of it through a yellowed haze, less than a foot away. He’d not fallen completely somehow. Perhaps Pitch had managed to stop him from planting his face in the dirt. There was a rhythmic inhale and exhale surrounding him, filling his ears. But was it him? Silas did not sense any pressure at his lungs, no breathlessness. He was numb of body. But not of mind.
His thoughts were wrapped in dismay, and he knew at once what it was.
The same disconnected sense of anguish that had teased at him for days. Silas closed his eyes, trying to dislodge the haze ahead of him, trying to find some solace. At least…he tried to close his eyes. He knew it was what he wished to do, but the damned things were wide open, refusing to shift. As though they were quite disjointed from his body and any orders sent from his mind.
‘What the…’ The worlds bubbled and died. Not on his tongue, for he could not feel his mouth any better than he could his feet.
What the bloody hell was happening here? And why was Pitch not shouting at him to get up? There was no sound save for the odd huffing of breath that surrounded him. Like an exhausted messenger trying to catch their breath.
Wherever this was, Pitch was not here. Nor Charlie, nor Sybilla.
Panic scampered spiderlike through Silas’s mind.
Had the carriage been attacked? Had the Morrigan snuck up upon them while they discussed Edward?
No. He shoved at the panic, stashing it away as he’d learned how in the pond with the kappas.
Anger took its place, and found a foothold in Silas’s numbed world.
The murkiness cleared in one sharp rush, rising like a curtain. The straw-yellow haze remained, as did the sense of wishing to cry for all eternity, but Silas’s view ahead cleared as the dragged breath grew louder, louder until it clanged in his head like a drummer’s beat.
Silas’s view of the world lifted. He had the sense of standing, though he had no feet to do so with.
The panting shifted to rough, quick puffs of breath. And Silas’s view tilted suddenly towards the ground.
Christ, those feet. Bare, scratched till they bled, and covered with unsightly warts. His view tilted a little more. A long chin, skin like melted wax, touched at a chest where black lengths of hair, coarse as rope, were stuck fast to wet skin the colour of lichen, blotched and greyish green.
Good god, this was no more Silas’s body than the emotional despair was his own feeling.
The panting gave way to a grunt, like an old man rolling over in his bed, and the creature that Silas shared eyes with lifted their head. They were bracing themselves against the ivy-covered low ruins of a small cottage. And as Silas peered at the overly long fingers, gnarled and swollen at the joints, the pieces of this puzzle slipped into place.
He knew those hands. Black fingernails upon half the fingers, the others torn free. The muck and dirt of endless years discolouring the skin, which was rough and dry as tree bark.