Page 4 of The Simurgh

Lady Satine may not trust the Dullahan, but nor could she trust Silas, for he would be running off half-cocked the very moment he had the slightest idea of which way to turn.

CHAPTER TWO

PITCH BLINKEDinto rich blackness. He ached. Gods, he ached. He squeezed his eyes closed, opened them again, and found only darkness once more. He felt odd. Muddle-headed and only half-woken. Even the small muscles in his jaw complained at being made to move.

‘Silas.’ He blinked into the inkwell. ‘Silas?’

What the blazes had he been doing to make his body hurt so?

‘Are you there?’

Why did the ankou not answer? He always heeded Pitch’s call. Even when Silas slept deeply, he’d rouse himself when Pitch wished for the pillow talk to continue.

He sought out his flame, that entirely useless thing it was since Edward placed Seraphiel’s shackles upon him. A light glow flared beneath only one of his fingers, and even that could not penetrate the syrupy darkness.

His eyes fluttered closed. There was no difference in the blackness behind his lids.

Perhaps he’d not woken at all. He was drifting about in a dream. And the body aches were merely remnants of a vigorous session in the enormous bed in that undisclosed house in the countryside. But if that were the case, the aches were in all the wrong places. His arse was actually the only part of him that didn’t pain him.

And Silas would never have hurt him like this– where his throat ached and bruises on his back pulsed. Never.

He lifted his hands, shoulder joints protesting, and his fingers touched at a smooth, hard surface almost at once. A wintry panic stirred. Pitch lifted his head. His neck screamed, and between his shoulder blades the muscles contracted like twisting knives. But none of that could distract him when his forehead met the same prohibiting barrier as his hands. He was boxed in. His breathing grew ragged. Pitch skimmed his fingers outwards, the sickly glow from his minuscule flame lighting little more than his fingernail. He found barriers at his sides too. Smooth panels, with their coolness suggesting glass or similar, rather than wood with its innate warmth. He sucked in his breath, held it. He was well aware of the fluttering in his belly, the same he’d felt when he thought Silas had drowned in that forsaken pond. He lifted his foot, bare of a shoe or boot. Barely had his heel risen and his toes glanced against a desperately-low ceiling.

‘Fuck.’

He was contained…like a corpse in a coffin. A coffin of midnight and hard edges.

Pitch’s heart performed a double flip, and his reality thundered in. All the memories flooding him.

Sherwood Forest.

The angels. Oh, by the gods…Sybilla. The Valkyrie had been brought down.

And Pitch had heard the Pale Horse scream.

He stilled.

He’d been so certain he’d heard Lalassu approaching. Absolutely convinced Silas had found him.

But this was no place the ankou would ever leave him.

He flailed against a horrifying thought– the blazing memory of a halo’s blast, the masked figure with raven wings standing there. The power emanating from them was not anything Iblis had possessed.

Power enough to tear a Valkyrie from the sky.

Why not power enough to bring down death’s messenger?

Pitch forgot how to breathe. His blood galloped through his veins, his mind growing foggy with a very different haze now. That of unhinged panic. One that melted his bones and turned his mind to a puddle of melted wax.

‘No. No. He’s not lost.’

Pitch sucked in a choppy breath. He could not rattle apart here. ‘Breathe, idiot,’ he whispered, the words like sandy grit upon his tongue. ‘Hold fast, fool.’

He pressed his hands to the unyielding barrier above him, and his fragile efforts to stay calm wavered. A scream built its nest beneath his ribs.

His body hummed with the urge to bow to the mania that crept over him like ivy over a crumbling mansion.

Pitch lifted his knees, but they barely bent before they were knocked against his confines. His world was tiny. Pressing in on him. Crushing him without even needing to break a bone.