Chapter 51 A Choice of Destiny #2
“You are bound now,” Lydia crooned. “My own firedrake.”
“She is not yours,” I said. The clarity from Miss Darcy’s song still held. I judged the atrocity I had witnessed. Distilled it into precise fury.
Lydia spun to me. “What do you know!”
“She chose her binding. That is gone. Now, she is only captive.” I was assembling the truth.
“Have you never wondered why draca bind? Why such glorious creatures attach themselves to plodding humans for a lifetime? They treasure understanding. We are so strange to them that we make them curious. They collect memories of us across centuries. Across lives.”
That was the meaning of the crest on our family’s journal: the wyvern holding an empty chest. Marriage gold meant nothing. Bindings were not bartered, or purchased, or forced. Draca sought us out. But they were more considerate than humans would be. They chose only those who were willing.
“What a simpleton you are,” Lydia said. “Draca are toys. Chattel.”
I lost interest in her and turned my attention to Wickham. The pistol was smoking in his hand. His shoulders rose and fell while he stared at the dead woman.
“You are a murderer,” I said. “You shot Mr. Rabb. You killed Denny. Did he discover you were spying for the French? That you were poisoning draca?”
“Denny would have betrayed me.” Wickham’s voice was shaking. He barked a false laugh. “He was a lickspittle for the colonel.”
I was facing the rabid dog again. Except this time, I was not afraid.
I tested Lydia’s black tether to the drake. It was repulsive, like sinking my fingers into a rope of offal, and strong, wound from many different filaments. Or it would have seemed strong not long ago. The music of Miss Darcy’s power still sang inside me.
I snapped one filament to see what would happen. Lydia shouted, and filthy power exploded. It skittered off me like dry leaves off a stone wall. It changed course, reaching outward.
I broke the rest of the tether, and the drake’s mind came free, brilliant and aware. I shielded her from the blackness around her, then opened my mind.
Our thoughts merged. She did not have language like a wyvern, but her feelings transcended words. Gratitude. Awe. Curiosity.
And an offer. Would I bind?
No, I thought. You should go. But will you do one thing first?
I could see Wickham with both our visions. I fixed him in my mind as he seemed to draca senses—the blustering posture that hid his fear, the bloom of heat that revealed his lies.
Kill him for me, I thought.
Her awareness pulled me inward. Human senses faded.
Instincts honed through centuries of hunt considered attacking with flame but rejected it. The man was too close to those I cared for.
Wings grasped air, and I soared upward. The clouds in the sky astonished my human mind—their shapes were exquisite, every wisp a story of wind and drafts.
The clouds vanished as I finished the third sweep of my wings and dived.
Wickham was turning to follow my flight, one arm sluggishly rising to point. I fell to kill him, claws outstretched.
A writhing shape reared into my path.
The collision was hard as rock, not soft like human flesh. A powerful coil trapped one of my wings. My bones snapped in a blaze of pain. Venom splashed my skin and burrowed into my mind.
The scene became a nightmare kaleidoscope. Spear-point legs struck at me. My scrabbling claw found a gap between armored segments and slashed.
Thunder. I screamed as the world vanished in white.
Vision returned in juddering stabs, tear-blurred through human eyes. Waves of pain reverberated between my temples. The gluey acid of vomit burned my tongue.
Lord Wellington’s face, surrounded by cloudy sky, came into fuzzy focus. His hands pressed my shoulders. Held me down while I struggled.
“Mrs. Darcy!” he said. “Can you hear me?”
“What happened?” I croaked. I was so confused. Why was he in the sky? Oh. My head was in his lap.
“A monstrous crawler came. The drake fought it and is dead, shot by Mr. Wickham. You had a fit when it was shot.”
A tremendous scuffle was nearby. I turned my head and saw Mr. Darcy struggling to reach me, pinned down by three men.
“I am not hurt,” I said. He stopped his fight, panting.
I was not sure that was honest. My mind was shredded. I touched my face, and my fingers came away tipped with blood. My nose was bleeding. I fumbled for my handkerchief.
Lydia was screaming at Wickham about losing their drake. Wickham seemed not to hear. A smoking musket hung from one hand. The firedrake lay dead at his feet, her head blown away. Because I had asked her to fight for me. Regret and guilt surged.
Near him, a monstrous foul crawler twined, larger even than the one that had killed Denny. The broken ground revealed a dark tunnel. It had hidden until the drake’s attack.
Lydia’s shouting became frustrated silence. She came to me and crouched. I looked up at her from Lord Wellington’s lap. Her makeup had smeared, revealing a frightening network of blackened veins.
She lifted my left hand, and her thumbnail dug into the ring of braided hair on my finger. “Clever Lizzy. You have been keeping secrets.” She must have heard Lord Wellington call me Mrs. Darcy.
“Lydia,” Wickham called. “This is over. We must go.” He rested the musket against a rock, removed a pouch on his belt, then picked up his discarded pistol and began methodically reloading it.
Lydia shook her head. “No. I want my gift for Napoleon. I want to be Empress.”
“Stop!” Wickham’s voice was desperate. “This is madness. We have gold. We can hide—”
She jumped to her feet, shrieking, “I am not mad! I will be Empress, and you will be the handsome captain of my guard, and we will dance at all the balls!” She stalked to where the guards held Mr. Darcy. “Lift him.” The men dragged Mr. Darcy to his knees.
“Darcy is mine,” Wickham said. He rammed the charge into his pistol and screwed the ramrod under the barrel.
Lydia shook her head. “Not yet.” She reached to stroke my husband’s hair, but he strained back in disgust. She laughed.
“I read the French legends of l’enfant du lac, the great wyfe who draws a dragon from the water.
That is me! I am the Child of the Lake. And I want the wyvern that hides in the water. ”
Mr. Darcy’s reply was coldly exact. “I told you before. I know nothing of this.”
Lydia’s lips spread in incongruous delight.
Smudges in the crimson covering her lips revealed dark purple flesh like a spreading bruise.
“Before I did not care much, so you thought it was safe to lie. Now, I need that wyvern.” She stepped back, considering him.
“Do you know my husband admires your sister?”
Behind her, Wickham had been listening with angry impatience. At her words, he stiffened. “That is not true.” His voice was tense.
The man who had shot a woman in cold blood was afraid.
I would have laughed if his fear was for himself. But he had cast a worried glance at Miss Darcy. Could he be fond of her? Before his schemed elopement, they grew up together, almost as brother and sister. But it was hard to believe a murderer could care about anyone.
My head still spun from the shock of the drake’s death. But under that, strength remained from Miss Darcy’s song. My abilities hummed in resonance.
What if Lydia’s claim about Pemberley lake was true?
I cast my mind toward the lake. I no longer needed to close my eyes. It was like part of me could fly, piercing the first hill that blocked my view, then the second. I fell into the water—clear, nurturing, and pure. But there was nothing. I sank ten feet. Twenty.
I was stopped as if I had struck impermeable ice. Hidden depths remained below.
Lydia raised her voice. “What did you tell me about his sister, Wickie? She plays harp… no. Pianoforte. Endlessly. I should find endless scales most dull. Shall we break her fingers?”
Miss Darcy had been huddled and pale since the Frenchwoman was shot. She scrambled to her feet in an attempt at flight, her thin limbs gawky as a frightened deer. One of the guards restrained her effortlessly.
Mr. Darcy also tried to rise. His guards beat him down, striking his legs with the butts of their muskets. He fell back, gasping.
Lydia’s lips stretched in fascination. There was no concern. There was no feeling at all. Not even the empathy of cruelty.
I drove my mind against the impenetrable barrier deep in the lake. It was like pressing a finger against a mountain. But I was an idiot even to try. This was not about force.
I understand, I thought. Everyone is wrong.
They think we claim you. That marriage gold grants power to enslave.
But it is just permission, like signing a contract to show we are willing.
You are the ones who choose. You bind us for a lifetime to share our world.
I will share my life with you. My soul. But I wish you would save these people I love.
The guards had wrestled Mr. Darcy to a rigid, kneeling standstill. Lydia grabbed a handful of his hanging hair. “Or is a sister not enough? I do not like my sisters much.” She lifted Mr. Darcy’s left hand, her thumb pressing the ring on his finger. “What of a wyfe? What of Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy?”
Wickham spun. In two steps, he reached me and yanked me to my feet.
“Not him!” he cried. “He ruins me for sport! You will be nothing to him. A pawn to hurt me.”
“I love him,” I said.
Wickham slapped me, driving my face against my shoulder. My cheek burned under my tumbled hair.
But I had been hit harder than that.
I threw my hair aside. “The last man who struck me was dead within a minute.”
Wickham shoved me, powerfully but without purpose, a bully pushing a smaller child. My heels caught on Lord Wellington’s legs and I fell beside him.
Lydia shouted. Wickham shouted back, and they began a raging argument.
Beside me, Lord Wellington whispered, “There are men in the woods preparing to attack. When you hear gunshots, run.”
I was not expecting that. “What?”