The neck-jarring speed of the seven-league boots had proved ill-suited to the daemon, as Silas had feared. There was something of the sense of flying as they were whisked forward seven steps for every one, and when Silas broke into a jog to hurry things along, it was too much for Pitch.
The daemon righted, blowing out a breath and arching his back with a groan. He wore Bess’s cloak, with Silas figuring it best set upon his passenger so they were both hidden beneath its distorting folds. The blush pink was fetching on the prince, but really what piece of clothing was not? Well, perhaps his current trousers, which were beyond repair. Silas kept his focus on the cloak, for seeing what state his prince was beneath it only served to bubble a rage that was best left simmering for now.
‘Better?’ He rubbed at Pitch’s back, still careful to avoid the areas where the pitchfork tattoo had been, not convinced there was no lingering pain from the loss of the amuletum.
‘Well enough to try again.’ The prince wiped at his mouth with the edge of the cloak. ‘Shall we continue?’
Silas worked at a knot of muscle in Pitch’s shoulder, and the prince leaned into him. Though he was still green about the gills, the daemon was pleasingly warm. ‘We can wait a moment more.’
‘Now you know that is a bald-faced lie.’ Pitch winced. He pressed a hand to his belly. ‘Oh, by Enoch’s taint, I don’t know what’s worse, being stuffed full of magick, or the emptiness left behind.’
‘Does it pain you?’
‘It’s not pain…’ He screwed up his nose, the way that caused the dimples in his cheeks to deepen. ‘Not true pain, I suppose…a discomfort rather. Like before a tooth goes rotten it starts to ache. Dully…not so much that you cannot handle…’
Silas made certain that when he replied he’d sound calm, poised, rather than alarmed and worried as he was. ‘But you suspect it may get worse?’
Pitch looked up at him through long lashes. ‘Maybe. But I’m not in pain now, Silas. I promise you.’
‘Is any of Sybilla’s magick still with you, perhaps?’ That would convince him that Pitch was truly in no distress.
But the question itself seemed to burden the prince. ‘I don’t think so…Silas, you’d tell me if she were…’
‘Of course, she is alive, Pitch. You have my word.’
‘Then how did her death wish come to be?’
Silas looked away. ‘We’ll speak of that another time.’ He let his hand fall from Pitch’s back. ‘What is important is that both you and Sybilla are alive.’ Perhaps not well, but alive. ‘Let’s concentrate on the simurgh for now.’
Pitch’s talk of the emptiness bothered him. He’d been so hellbent on bundling Pitch up and racing him as far from the angels and Lucifer as he could, Silas had not stopped to consider the repercussions of Seraphiel’s Cultivation being removed. The symbiosis that might exist between magick and vessel.
Pitch pointed his finger, making circular motions in the air. ‘Well, turn about now, Mr Mercer. Time to mount you again.’ He winked, his colour returned. ‘And just ignore me if I gag a little. I’ll try very hard not to throw up in your ear.’
Silas smiled but knew the prince’s flippancy a ruse.
He turned and crouched, conscious of every part of Pitch’s body as the lithe daemon leaned in, wrapped his arms about Silas’s neck, and lifted one leg. Silas slipped his hand beneath the daemon’s knee and boosted him up. He held his breath at the bump of Pitch’s hips against the small of his back, and the press of his chest to Silas’s shoulder blades. Once he was settled, they carried on.
What sheer heaven it was to be so near together again. Even if it was a hell they found themselves in.
A pretty hell at that. Confusing, but pretty. All the plants were recognisable in some way, and yet totally foreign in most. Every single plant was a chimera, born of fae and purebred species alike. The colours were dazzling, but Silas eyed with concern the prevalence of thick vines. Snakelike, they hung from the boughs of many of the trees, and occasionally he had to take a leap over a particularly thick bundle that tangled on the ground before him. Or rather, the boots made that leap. Much to Pitch’s unhappiness, Silas found himself with no time to give any warning, the boots deciding when they jumped.
‘Fuck, my balls shall not survive this,’ Pitch cried. ‘You shall be bedding a eunuch.’
Silas’s laughter was strangled as his face was struck with the soft foliage of something resembling pussy willow. They travelled on, Pitch’s warm breath managing to find his ear, his neck, his cheek as the prince clung tight. In the blur of their pace, beneath the spread of Bess’s cloak, it was like being hidden in their own little world. How contradictory it was to feel so happy right now. But Silas had his daemon. And nothing in this land was going to take him away again.
The boots slowed them, and Silas welcomed the change. Pitch’s breathing was growing more hitched, and he suspected the daemon trying valiantly not to halt their progress again.
The tempo settled into a walk, sliding them a great distance still, like an ice-skater on a pond.
The forest was thinner here, and there was a moss-like, faded green growth hanging from the trees and draping over the smaller shrubs, like a summer country residence sheeted for the winter. There had been nothing like it near the towers, nor for most of the forest so far. The landscape was changing and the realisation made Silas uneasy.
‘I’m grateful we’ve not been set upon, but it concerns me, too.’ He negotiated the whispery fronds of what was likely a weeping willow, batting the bright yellow drape of branches, unsettling tiny purple moths, who let out squeaks as they were disturbed. ‘Macha may have concealed what happened at the tower, but she could not have done so for the entire land.’
‘True. But Narci is nothing if not arrogant, he likely did not even consider Iblis would fail to kill me.’
Silas flinched at the very suggestion. ‘Narci?’
‘Narcissus.’ Pitch explained how his valet had heard the purebred tale of the man who was cursed by the gods to fall in love with his own reflection. ‘Forneus thought it apt, and I did not disagree. Speaking of names, how is that slobbering hound of yours?’ Silas’s heart twisted and it must have been evident somehow for Pitch’s embrace tightened.
