Page 54 of The Simurgh

‘That’s it, that’s it,’ Gabriel whispered.

The angel had shifted like one of Silas’s ghosts to stand right up close. Fuck, what a terrible time to think on the ankou. Here. Where Pitch heard his demise in the sorcerers’ chant.

The Morrigan reached deeper beneath Pitch’s layers. Found a way through the drenched pores of his skin with their grimoire and awkward words. It was a wonder he did not simply slide out of his bindings, he was so slick with sweat. Boiling from the inside, as something so innocuous as words reached down to where the beast slumbered.

Another body-contorting hiccough consumed him. The suddenness nearly had him biting off his tongue.

Pitch coughed and wretched. Bile, hot and bitter, flew from his mouth. He aimed it at Gabriel but the Archangel deflected the onslaught with magickal propensity.

‘Not long now, Your Highness.’ Gabriel moved in close once more. He pressed one palm flat against Pitch’s saturated belly, over the place where Iblis had made his mark. The angel’s touch was ice to the intense heat. And despite all Pitch’s godsdamned intentions, a tiny whimper left him.

‘Does that hurt, little prince?’

Gabriel did not smile, not exactly. The bastard would fear the wrinkles caused, but there was smug satisfaction there beneath the stony regard.

‘There is nothing small about me, I assure you.’ Pitch sucked in his belly, trying to create a gap between he and the angel, but he was already so empty, his belly concave. Gabriel seared his touch into Pitch’s skin. Great taints of the gods, it was painful. Another hiccough found him, though this one was strangled with delirious laughter. Gabriel’s touch was icy. Pitch was certain he’d have frostbite where the angel’s hand lay. Sybilla’s magick was all but faded, melted away by the onslaught.

The Archangel spoke beneath his breath, only snippets reaching Pitch’s ear. The language of the Higher Angels certainly, but beyond that he had no clue. The timbre did not match that of the sorcerers’. Gabriel followed his own path.

The cold wormed its way deeper inside, threading itself through Pitch’s veins.

Still muttering, and with his aura pulsing and evident, Gabriel pressed his free hand to the small of Pitch’s back. There was no holding back a scream. It tore from him as he twisted, desperate to dislodge the angel’s hands. Caught between pincers of ice that pierced him. Diving deep.

Into that space where wild things lay.

He felt the wildness shift at the brutal awakening. Making Pitch strain at his seams.

Gabriel shone, his hues shifting around him, his fervour growing.

‘There…there you are.’ Not angelic mumbling this time, but altogether clear. ‘Do not seek to hide, we will reach you. Come to your new master.’

The sorcerers’ voices rose, lifting high. The pitch was astronomical, reaching for the Celestials themselves. Pitch’s eardrums pounded, and the wildness slammed against his spine, tormented and wholly restless. Another scream found freedom, and Pitch despised himself for weakening so. He’d intended to remain defiant, all the way to the end of this. But the bullying at his innards was horrendous, the sense of his skin being stretched to its limit, sickening. Whatever Edward’s touch had done to silence the wildness, however the amuletum had strapped it down, was being undone now.

The Morrigan, the Archangel, roused the beast.

The wildness raked its claws through his tender flesh. Unhappy, so very unhappy with being disturbed.

Pitch, weary, hot and hurting, let his head drop forward. He could see his stomach muscles contract around the splay of Gabriel’s hand, the ripple beneath his skin nothing to do with his gasped breaths.

He burned, and he froze. He shivered and he sweat.

And the angel urged his witches on.

No matter how much Pitch writhed and spat and cursed every living soul around him, the spellwork continued. He sought to send his own flame streaming, send it out through that place between his shoulder blades that it favoured. But he was utterly impotent. Pitch was stifled, his fire finding no air to breathe.

The iciness gave way to the inferno. Pitch groaned against his teeth. Eyes squeezed tight, searching for fortitude, as the sun rose in his belly, emerging from beneath that layer of himself he’d never found a name for. The layer Seraphiel had woven, and now Gabriel unstitched.

He moaned his pain, his frustration, hisconflict.

Would it be so bad, so terrible, to lose this burden? To be free of its weight forever?

He knew what the answer should be. But gods, that freedom. So tantalising it hurt as much as the angel’s touch.

‘Keep going,’ the Archangel commanded of his coven. ‘Fear not the resistance you feel. There are hexes in place but they are soon to shatter. The Seraph was not so brilliant as he believed.’ Gabriel did not laugh. Pitch doubted the angel had ever done such a thing in his interminable life, but there was delight in his declaration. ‘Do not stop. We are close.’

Pitch bit at the inside of his lip, forcing himself to raise his head. To hold back his cries. Suffocate his screams. Damned if he was giving them any more of his pain to gloat over.

So he would do the one thing he was truly good at, andpretend. Pretend they did not hurt him. Pretend he could not feel the bars of the cage surrounding the wildness falling one by one.