Page 80 of The Simurgh

I will find you. Understand that if nothing else.

Silas was searching for him. Pitch might yet lose everything to the Morrigan.

‘Leave him be, you bastard.’ Nemain was shrill with fear and defiance and stupidity. She got to her feet, the heat so intense her dark hair shifted.

‘Nemain, stop!’ Iblis choked out, the blackness at the heart of an angel pouring from him now as the daemonic embers ate at him. ‘Don’t.’

But she was defiant, wild-eyed. ‘Does the ankou know you are a Seraph’s whore? Has he seen the true heart of the monster he is fucking?’ She pointed at him, jabbed her finger like a headmistress scolding her pupil. The foolish courage was astonishing.

Pitch stared at her through the glow of the fire he’d allowed free rein, a fire still miraculously within his control. His marrow was liquid with all the heat, his heart pumping in one steady hum in his chest.

Of all the insults she could have chosen, that was where she landed? On what could hurt him the least?

‘Silas knows me. I think he is the only one who truly does. So yes, he understands who he is fucking.’

Nemain wavered, her eyelids fluttering, as caught off-guard by his words as he was. If she’d intended to enrage him, distract him from his torment of Iblis, her plan was faulty.

‘Then he knows this is who you are?’ She thrust a shaking, blackened hand towards the angel. ‘Not just monstrous but evil too? A savage who can stand by as another endures such agony.’

Iblis groaned, and mumbled something. Likely telling her to stop trying to goad a Dominion prince. Wise man.

Pitch almost missed it. The subtle twist of the hand hanging at her side, the jagged piece of purple stone in her grasp, the single bead of blood hanging from her knuckle.

A mistress of blood magick, wasting his time, so she could gather her tools.

‘Terrible idea,’ Pitch said.

Iblis’s moan was guttural, and utterly bereft.

Nemain splayed her hand, the amethyst shard falling, leaving a blood spattered palm. Her lips parted.

But whatever she intended here was futile.

Pitch quietened his wings, and brought the flames to hand.

A single word of her incantation found its way free, before Pitch lit up the sorcerer like a bonfire. Nemain did not scream long but she burned bright and fierce.

Iblis’s battle cry was one for the ages, filled with grief and grievance. Impossibly, the angel found his feet. And his hands glowed white-hot.

No halo.

No vestige.

Angel and daemon synchronised their attacks.

But Iblis was far too weakened for hope of winning this battle.

Daemon flame and angel fire collided. Iblis went from man to dust in an instant. The blast shattered a hole in the far wall, the shock wave lifting the remaining tapestries from the walls, and a daemon off his feet.

Pitch was sent hurtling, crashing into the chamber’s opposite side.

He quickly righted himself, coughing as ash shoved up his nostrils, tickled at his throat.

The wind gust from the blast had extinguished the flames still consuming Nemain. There was little of the sorcerer left, her charred remains barely resembling anything of the human form. There was nothing at all to see of Badh or Harut now. And Iblis…well he was nought but a sprinkling of glittering dust across the floor and up the walls on either side of the gaping hole made in the chamber’s wall. His halo, useless now without its wielder, lay shattered and dull nearby. Pitch took in the view, but only briefly, noting that he was high above the landscape.

A tower then. If the fucking fae weren’t leagues under the ground in mines, then they were building themselves nests, high as the eagles.

Pitch searched for Macha, slowly dragging himself to his feet.