Page 151 of The Simurgh

Behind Silas came a tribe of teratisms, so many of the grotesque things that Pitch’s arousal lost its heat. Their injuries and deformities, broken bones and ruined flesh, were made all the worse for being so gathered together.

Silas slowed to draw alongside an appalling hunchback whose chin touched at their chest. Their broken ankle hindered their passage and he caught at them as they stumbled, speaking softly to the creature who lifted sickly yellow eyes to take in the ankou. There was happiness there in that soulful gaze, a touch of reverence as he looked up at the man who tended him.

Pitch bit his lip, and let his gaze shift.

Jane was there, on Silas’s left, her hair loosened and lively against her back, as though a dozen Scarlet’s hid in the strands, lifting them. The elemental’s scent filled the air, and seemed to reach right into Pitch’s senses, cleansing them of the reek of the cockaigne and its bleak magick. Old Bess was at Jane’s side, a gentle smile upon his tired face, tangled hair its natural grey, the cloak he wore torn and smudged with mud, and gods knew what else. He gripped a woman by the arm, in a way that suggested he thought them in danger of trying to run away, but she did not seem to protest at his hold. Her chignon was in a sorry state, and her floral gown in need of a seamstress.

Pitch studied her only briefly, for he’d found Sybilla. The angel was mounted upon Lalassu, with Isaac leading the mare, staring at Pitch from beneath the folds of his black scarf. The Valkyrie was pleasingly upright. A stark white staff laying across her lap. Bones, Pitch suspected, from what the soothsayer had said. Their eyes met and a tingling ran beneath his skin, a shivering echo of the magick shared. Sybilla’s eyes lit up, and she tried to wave to him, but taking a hand off the pommel seemed too much for her, and she slumped forward, nearly losing the staff, and in turn her seat as she grabbed at it.

‘Watch ‘er, Jane. Last thing she needs is a bloody broken neck,’ Tyvain called, and rightfully received a scowl from the elemental.

‘I am hardly going to let her fall, Ty.’

‘Nah, but Isaac might.’

‘Go to hell, hag.’

‘Pretty sure we all just got back from there. Don’t fancy a revisit.’

The soothsayer chortled at her own wit, and Pitch’s gaze shifted back to where it was always, invariably, drawn. The ankou had finished fussing over his wretched teratism, and strode ahead, his gaze now matching Pitch’s for how unwavering it was.

‘A right pack of vagabonds, eh?’ Tyvain said.

‘Very much so.’

The motliest bunch Pitch had ever laid eyes on.

His vagabonds.

His ankou.

The surge of neediness was too much. It frightened him far more than avenging Seraphs and lost halos and Blood Lakes.

He glanced back to the road.

An empty road.

Lucifer was gone. Phillipa and Scarlet fussed over the simurgh, the carriage awaited. The way ahead was clear.

Relish the time afforded you.

Words from one who knew what it was to lose deeply.

Pitch inhaled. This was a terrible mistake. He’d been very, very good at being horrid. He should have held onto that more fiercely, and never surrendered to the ankou’s slow and gentle invasion. Never coveted someone like this, never discovered that he was capable… of being enchanted.

‘Pitch?’ Silas called. ‘Are you sure everything is all right?’

There was still several feet between them, and Silas could have covered it in a blink of the eye with his ugly boots, but he paced himself.

Mindful, Pitch knew, of moving too quickly for a reticent daemon.

‘What you waitin’ for, luv?’ Tyvain said, softly.

A good question indeed.

Go to him.

Digging in his toes, the grass gentle on bare feet, Pitch cast reticence aside.