Page 79 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

‘When she was newborn.’ Robin nodded, a tiny moth darting from their ear. ‘The UnSeelie Court think your Tilly dead.’

‘She very nearly was,’ Pitch yawned. ‘If she’d caused me to step on one more brooch, I’d have sent her to her maker.’

‘Stop, that’s an awful thing to say,’ Silas chided gently, but his grin was wide.

‘I can only be honest.’ Pitch nestled more deeply against Silas, rubbing his finger over a mark on his trouser leg. ‘So the Hunt has not bothered you for some time, it seems?’

A nod of Robin’s head sent a fresh shower of petals falling. ‘We are fortunate Lokke’s interest in finding us waned, some time ago. Another plot must have occupied his interest.’

Pitch glanced up at Silas, and he was sure the daemon’s thoughts followed his own: the Erlking was busy with sorcerers instead, and angels.

‘Lokke is the Erlking’s true name?’ Silas asked.

‘It is. He was no more than the court jester once upon a time, until his head filled with plans of grandeur.’

‘And then he murdered and connived his way to the UnSeelie throne,’ the Major grumbled, the burr now a bulge halfway down the trunk, nearer to them so he might be heard. ‘Deception, conniving, and false promises are his forte, and they got him to where he is. His court is full of the same. The more trouble that elf can cause, the happier he is.’ The harps lifted with a more jovial tune, a hearty polka-inspired piece. ‘What’s he want with you two, then? What do they all want, for that matter?’

‘Major.’ Robin settled a fine-boned hand upon the trunk. ‘There now. Even if they would tell us, they should not do so. Knowledge is a double-edged sword. We willingly play our part in sheltering these gentlemen, but we’ll not deepen our inclusion in the troubles of the world any further. What we don’t know is less likely to harm us.’

‘If only that were true,’ Pitch said, quietly, as though he did not intend to be heard at all.

The burr puffed up and deflated, moving like a puce-coloured chest. ‘Then best they are retrieved soon. Lokke is no fool, nor are the fresh witches who run about, making a foul mess of the balance of things. That mare of yours had a fine plan, but it may not serve us long. I’ll not see you end up in that putrid court, Robin. You know he still covets you.’

The dryad glanced at Silas and must have seen his consternation, for they clapped their hands and declared, ‘More mead, and we have some honeysuckle bread almost done.’

Pitch went limp in his arms. ‘Truly? I’ve not tasted that in ages.’

‘You’re hungry?’ Silas asked, pleased.

‘For honeysuckle bread, always.’

A gnome, a chap who could have been Gilmore’s twin, poked his head through the soil right beside Silas’s foot. ‘The leg. Good?’ He was prone to very brief sentences and had said barely more than three words as he coated Pitch’s ankle in mud earlier.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Snot gone?’

‘I’m not sneezing anymore, if that is what you are asking.’

‘You do seem better,’ Silas admitted.

‘Far better than the Valkyrie managed.’ Pitch held his acorn upside down, letting the last drop of mead fall to his tongue. ‘I barely feel a thing, though that is perhaps the liquor.’

‘Why is it that Sybilla could not help you?’ Silas frowned at the lounging prince. His injured foot was bare, but on either side of the bandaging, his skin was its usual alabaster, pink beneath the nails, the warmth of the clearing keeping him comfortable.

‘Because I would not let her, and threatened to hurl myself under the carriage if she told you.’

Silas frowned at the gold-strewn strands atop Pitch’s head. ‘Why would you not wish to be healed? You left yourself in pain?’

‘We are hardly strange bedfellows, pain and I.’ He ran his hands along the place on Silas’s leg he knew to be ticklish. A distraction that would not work this time.

‘Pitch, there was no need for you to–’

‘There was. I needed very much to learn how disabled I am. How long it would take for such a wound to heal. I needed to know if I was capable of healing on my own. Perhaps if you’d all been more forthcoming about your blood theory, I’d have taken a few extra precautions.’

‘Are you lying to me now when you say you are feeling better?’ Silas demanded, some of his intoxicated good humour leaving him.

Pitch sat up, and turned whilst he shifted onto his knees, moving in so close that his thighs brushed at the hardness still raging between Silas’s legs. ‘Oh my.’ He cupped Silas’s cheeks with his hands. ‘You sound as though you wish to slap me, yet you feel as though you have other things in mind. The two need not be distant cousins.’