He was certain Lucifer sighed. A whisper of sound meant to be noticed by no one.
Pitch moved so he too could see into the carriage. The creature’s long draping feathers seemed to fill the floor between the seats, as though it had unravelled and couldn’t find the strength to re-affix itself. The elegant neck, with its blemish of grey feathers, was curved, the gold beak still tucked beneath a shifted wing. The emptiness, the space inside Pitch where the wildness had dwelt, had been wracked by painful cramps and spasms when the angels were doing their worst, but now the space swirled with a dull ache, like bruises on the mend. ‘I can’t say for certain, but I think it is recovering…healing in some way, from what was done to it. I’ll admit, I’m not sure, I was hardly on friendly terms with it when it was taking up space inside me, and now the connection is even more tenuous.’
Lucifer’s fierce countenance returned, and the king’s glare would have made lesser daemon’s tremble. ‘Then put it back. Take it back into you. Perhaps it needs your succour.’
‘No. I will not.’ He would not relinquish this lightness easily. The emptiness was a place of strange serenity.
‘Why bloody not?’
‘Because I don’t want to. You spend a day with divine magick festering inside you, then ask me that.’ He tipped his chin towards the slumbering Cultivation. ‘Besides, if it were needed, would it not be trying to claw its way back in? I don’t think…I don’t think it needs me anymore.’
He loathed the pitiful hope he heard in himself. But gods, let his time as a beast of burden be done with. Let him breathe.
Lucifer regarded him with disdain. ‘You don’t think, or you know?’
‘I’ll not take it back, Reginald. I am so damned tired.’
‘I don’t give a damn about your fatigue.’
There was the daemon Pitch loathed. How the blazes had he found any sympathy for this arsehole?
‘Oh, fuck you. I will not bow to your will, Lucifer, nor to anyone’s, anymore. So if that does not please you, then go ahead, draw your flame and let us be done with this ridiculous charade.’
The simurgh lifted its head, topaz eye bright. Scarlet tittered madly, and the coldest of breezes swept through, rustling overgrown grass.
‘Hadrian!’
Tyvain’s shout nearly had Pitch lifting off his feet. She was so damned close. She must have moved like a cat from her tombstone because she was right behind him. The soothsayer was staring at Lucifer, a vacant look in her eye.
‘Antinous thanks you, Hadrian.’
Lucifer could not have looked more shocked if she’d slapped him with a wet pilchard. His mouth actually hung open, and one hand clutched at his chest. Fire hinted in his eyes.
‘What is going on?’ Pitch frowned. ‘Tyvain?’
Her eyes flickered, and Pitch thought them about to roll back in her head.
He took her by the shoulders, shaking her. ‘Ty, look at me.’ Because looking at the king had turned her into a dullard. He was one inhale away from shouting for Silas, for Jane, for anyone who might return the soothsayer to her senses.
Tyvain found her own way back. She shuddered beneath his hold, and blinked.
‘Feckin’ balls.’
Pitch relaxed his hold and exhaled. ‘What the blazes was all that about? ’
The soothsayer was naturally a pale woman, but now she was a fresh-bleached sheet, freckles stark. ‘Somethin’ that needed sayin’. Not much else I can tell ya.’ She belched, a noise both horrendous and astonishing and smelling of garlic.
‘Gods.’ Pitch pinched his nose.
‘Don’t think so,’ Tyvain shook her head. ‘But maybe? Christ, ain’t it been a weird feckin’ day?’
‘Who gave you those names?’ Lucifer spoke smoothly, low and measured. He had composed himself, mostly. There was still an air of bewilderment about him. And flicker of flame in his eyes.
The simurgh had returned to sleeping, and Scarlet back to crooning a nonsense lullaby as they patted at grey feathers.
‘Just came ta me. Happened a couple a times today. Not lovin’ it, have ta say.’ Tyvain shifted to lean against the stone wall. ‘Like a big smack round the back of the ‘ead each time. But looks like that one got you in the guts too, eh?’
The answer was glaringly obvious. Lucifer had taken steps away from the Hag of Baera, and the daemon backed away from no one.
