‘Your flame was weak, you are not.’ Silas’s voice came from a strange direction, one that did not match where his arms felt to be, wrapped about Pitch’s middle. ‘Do not let them run you down. Is the bandalore still safe? Is Scarlet?’
‘I think so.’ Gods, he was pathetically unknowing.
‘Good. I have another scythe now…Crane is dead, Pitch. Truly dead.’
‘Balthazar Crane?’ Silas’s remark distracted Pitch from how they drifted about now, moved in a current that had not been there before.
‘He was with the Hunt, but he’s with no one now. He has paid for what was done to you. The rest will follow. I promise you that.’
Pitch drifted quietly, taking in the ankou’s words. Tasting their fierceness, relishing their iron-clad promise.
‘Silas.’ Pitch reached for him.
When had he let the ankou go?
‘I’m here.’ They embraced again. But there was no mistaking how different it felt. The ankou’s quiet curse told Pitch he felt it too. ‘It is ending.’
‘Yes.’
He did not mention the odd tightness he felt, down where his ankles might be, around where his wrists rested against the ankou’s shoulders. Silas was kissing him again, but the depths were growing shallow.
‘Do not give up hope, not for a moment.’ Silas’s voice found its way through the currents that pulsed and swirled and sought to sweep the velvet away. ‘I will find you. I will never leave you. Do you hear me, Pitch?’
‘I do.’ The press at his limbs was heavy now, dragging at them so he was forced to let go of the ankou.
‘Pitch, do you hear me?’ Silas was urgent.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Pitch, damn it, can you hear me?’ The currents buffeted him, wrapped themselves around Pitch where Silas’s arms had been a moment before.
They called to one another across a growing chasm. And it was clear that the ankou did not hear him.
They were waking. And no amount of shouting and cursing and angry refusal was going to alter that. But gods damn it, he wanted Silas to know he’d heard. That he had no intention of giving up.
The ankou needed to know, so he’d not wake in anguish.
Pitch fought against the current, swam with limbs that were barely his own. He fought against the drag at his wrists, the tug at his ankles. Just a few simple words, that’s all he wished here.
Pitch leaned into the tidal press that worked against him. The siren’s call of the waking world. He clung to the memory of holding onto the ankou. The vision was an immovable mountain in his mind. Pitch dug in his climbing pick, secured his rope, and dragged himself to the peak so he could call into the void.
‘I hear you, Sickle.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SILAS SATbolt upright. His head slammed against something hard that shifted with a violent jerk.
‘No, no. I don’t want to wake.’ He threw up his hands and found the smooth underside of a table. He upended it easily, toppling it onto its side. Something hit the floorboards with a thunk and rolled away. ‘I don’t want to wake.’
I hear you, Sickle.
Pitch’s words had come to him as the darkness peeled away and the scent of the room rushed in: wood smoke and something sweeter. Silas was back in the sitting room. On his arse on the floor, where he’d fallen when the bastard Dullahan had knocked them all out.
Silas felt sick with loss. He’d held Pitch. Had him right there in his hands.Christ, don’t let it have been a cursed dream.The sense of it was all too real.
‘Now, my lord, no need to take it out on that defenceless table.’
Silas used the leg of the fallen furniture to get to his feet. He was terribly woozy, barely able to stay upright on his knees. His skin tingled with what had felt so much like Pitch’s touch. His lips hummed from the kisses shared. ‘Put me back to sleep, now.’
