Page 6 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

The real world, where he stood waist deep in a harmless body of water.

Where his true enemies were not the shades of a past that couldn’t be changed.

He grabbed at the stem of a nearby water lily, anchoring himself.

With a sharp intake of breath Silas let his knees buckle, and sank into the water.

CHAPTER THREE

EDWARD’S ROOMheld the unpleasant tang of the ill. The room was a small one on the ground floor, tucked behind the kitchen and larder. It was clearly for house staff, considering its undressed walls, plain linens, and thin curtains, but Charlie had decided upon it, pleased with the firmness of the mattress and the view out onto a neglected kitchen garden.

The lad shared Silas’s barbarous love of the outdoors. Which was not irritating at all, of course.

Mutual interests and an ancient history. Wonderful.

Pitch’s sour mood curdled a little further.

Now he not only must endure Charlie’s company but a sickroom ripe with the scent of sweat and unhappiness. The window was cracked open, the chill reaching Pitch where he hesitated in the corridor. He was not fond of the human body’s propensity for illness. He himself was not prone to the more severe ailments of the purebreds, of course: the colds and influenza and debilitating diseases that felled them by the cartload. But he knew what it was to be unwell while in human form. The Gu had made him party to that delightful experience, a fucking dreadful few days made worse by Silas’s insistence on coddling him, despite the disgusting mess Pitch had been.

His gaze shifted to the window, beyond where Charlie whispered to the lieutenant while mopping his brow with a damp cloth. There was a considerable downpour outside, the sky low and heavy. Where the blazeswasSilas? Surely even the garden-obsessed ankou would not consider this a good day for a damned stroll?

There’d been no sign of him as Pitch made his way through the sleeping household. No clomp of boots to suggest he moved anywhere about. The only other living soul awake at the ungodly hour seemed to be Forneus, the hound lying upon the window seat in the parlour where Pitch had first woken after the Fulbourn, opening one red eye to watch him pass by.

‘Please come in, Tobias.’

Charlie’s quiet summons drew Pitch back to the room.

He laid his hand against the doorframe but could not quite find the wherewithal to step across the threshold.

Charlie selected a bottle from the plethora set upon the tilted pine bedside table and squinted as he allowed a few droplets onto the cloth. The liquid spewed a bitter scent, a mix of the gods-knew-what Old Bess and Sybilla had deemed necessary. The bottles on the tabletop were joined by a clutter of floral posies, dried and curled but their scent still evident and mingling with that of the lieutenant’s overheated body: lavender, a tight bundle of sage, and another clump of something Pitch couldn’t name, bergamot perhaps. Silas would have known.

He watched as the lad tended the lieutenant. Charlie was painfully gentle with the ailing man, who muttered at his touch but did not open his eyes. There was a second cloth across his forehead. The pendant watch that Lucifer had delivered, the fine gunmetal trinket that had changed everything in the Fulbourn, was pinned to his nightshirt, its gold accents and swirling metalwork ludicrously out of place there. Edwards’s eyelids were a discomforting hue of blue, one that matched the shade of his lips, as though he were freezing despite the layer of sweat that coated his equally grey-tinged skin.

‘He does not look well.’ Pitch stated the bloody obvious, for lack of anything better to say.

‘His fever will not break.’ Charlie swapped over the cloths and dunked the one that had just been against the lieutenant’s skin in a basin of water balanced on the bedside. As he wrung it out, the trickle of water seemed to bother Edward, who groaned and rolled his head side to side. His pillow was patched with damp blots where his sweat-dampened hair stained the cream-coloured material. ‘No matter what has been tried, we cannot seem to ease his temperature. He’s suffering nosebleeds too, but Sybilla’s tincture helps with that at least. He’s not eaten properly in days.’

There were fine cracks in Charlie’s words. The lad looked almost as wretched as the lieutenant, worn out and in great need of a hairbrush through his curled auburn strands. How he was not shivering himself to pieces in this room, Pitch had no idea. The bite of the December morning slithered in through the opened window, managing to find even a fire daemon, who so rarely felt the cold.

Pitch shivered, regretting his decision not to dress more fully. ‘Perhaps his eyelids are frozen in place. It’s awfully cold in here.’

‘He becomes more restless when I close the window. I think he feels too closed in without it open. Tobias, you will need to come closer,’ Charlie urged. ‘He does not say much, and when he does, it’s not much more than a whisper.’

‘Yes, yes. I’m coming.’ He tried for an air of comportment but doubted the act was convincing. If Edward suddenly opened his eyes, Pitch was not sure he wouldn’t screech like a maid sighting a mouse.

Charlie sighed. ‘Today? Or are you waiting for me to escort you in?’

‘I don’t wish to catch what he has.’

‘Tobias, please.’ Charlie blinked bright blue eyes, steely with impatience. ‘I may not understand all that is going on, but that does not make me a fool. Edward’s illness is connected to you…don’t you dare turn away from him now. You’ve not once come to see him. How can you treat a friend so?’

The lad was quite forceful by the end, and Pitch did not like what he had to say at all. Mostly because the accusations were not without merit.

‘Careful, boy.’ He glared. ‘You have seen what I can do. I could turn you to ash before you could turn a heel to run.’

‘Perhaps, but you won’t.’ Charlie’s hand tightened around the cloth, but he held Pitch’s gaze. ‘When it comes to those close to you, your bark is far worse than your bite.’

‘You overestimate yourself in my considerations,’ Pitch said. ‘I care not a whit for you.’