With Roderick behind him, Darcy placed the spade in the ground, right in the center of the oak grove, and began to dig. The shovel slid in easily as the land cooperated with him, opening itself and separating out the roots to make way for his spade. He sank into his knowledge of the earth, sensing the earthworms and the insects, the burrowing dormice preparing for winter, the squirrels with their nests almost full of nuts. The powerful roots of the majestic oaks supported it all.
How he had missed this connection when he was in France!
To think that a year ago he had also been without his land Talent at Netherfield, preparing to wed Elizabeth! How different his life was now – yet the world beneath the surface was unchanged, full of the cycle of life. Birth, death, and rebirth in the spring.
After the first two shovelfuls, he surrendered the spade to Roderick, who made short work of the rest.
Then Darcy returned to the cottage, where Elizabeth was now sitting in a rocking chair nursing little Jenny – and three dragon nestlings clustered around her. Little ones, the largest the size of a roe deer, but they were all bigger than the puppy-sized hatchlings he had helped through the Gate in the Vosges Nest. Together they crowded the small room.
“What is this?” Darcy asked.
Elizabeth turned a rueful gaze on him. “Apparently little Jenny is going to have a dragon brother or sister, at least for a time. The Eldest insists, because of her exposure to dragon magic.”
“Are not all children of dragon companions exposed to it?”
She smiled, then looked down at their baby with a bewitchingly adoring expression. “She more than most. She was part of me when I made the blood bond to Pemberley with Cerridwen, when I took my final vows, and when I came through the Gate. Add in Rana Akshaya’s healing, and that is a great deal of dragon magic for a very tiny mortal baby.”
His stomach churned. “Do they think it may have hurt her?”
She shook her head. “More that it might cause her Talent to be unpredictable, or even to erupt very early. Hence the desire to have a dragon watching her, for her own safety.”
He frowned. “No. I will not agree to a blood bond.” Jenny was far too tiny, and he would not permit even the slightest danger to touch her.
“As I understand it, the bond would be only on the nestling’s side. That is why they are trying to decide who is best suited for her.”
“I thought a dragon cannot be away from the Nest without a companion.”
The largest of the nestlings looked up. “That is only for grown dragons. We are young enough to go anywhere.” He said it as if it were obvious, and Darcy a poor pupil not to have known it.
Yet another dragon in his household, which was apparently quite full of them at present. Cerridwen in Elizabeth’s bedroom, Rana Akshaya in the state parlor, Frederica’s dragon in the ballroom, Rowan somewhere with Roderick, and now another for the nursery.
But he no longer doubted their motives, and if it helped keep Jenny safe, that was all that mattered.
The baby seemed to be done with nursing. Elizabeth lifted her to her shoulder and tentatively patted her back.
“Mine.” It was the mid-sized dragon, the one no larger than a fawn. “She is mine, I think. I can feel her.” He sounded awed. Or was it a she? If there was a way to tell with a dragon too young to have developed the head crestthat marked the adult males, he had not learned it. Darcy almost envied the creature; how he would love to be able to feel his daughter’s presence! Perhaps this would turn out to be a good thing.
Darcy aimed a bow at the nestling. “May I have the honor of knowing your name?”
The tiny dragon did not take his eyes from Jenny, watching her as if she were the most fascinating thing in the universe, a sentiment with which Darcy wholly concurred. “I am Agate.”
“You are welcome to our home, Agate.” Darcy turned to Elizabeth and added, “I am about to complete Jenny’s land bond. Do you wish to join me, since you have your own bond to Pemberley? But only if you feel able to walk that far, of course.”
“I would not miss it, and I am eager to get my legs under me after all this time in bed,” she said firmly. She stood up, handing the baby to Chandrika, and then winced at her first step.
Alarmed, Darcy said, “Perhaps you should stay here, if it hurts you.”
She gave an amused, if weary, laugh, music to his ears. “It is normal to have pain after pushing a baby out, even a very small one! But walking will help me heal.” That was his Elizabeth, always ready to press onward.
Now he was particularly glad that he had chosen a nearby spot for the ritual.
He collected the package Mrs. Sanford had prepared for him. His half-sister, another new beginning.
A different dragon was waiting outside the cottage, an unfamiliar one, with wings glinting in blue and bronze like Cerridwen’s. Darcy stopped abruptly and stared. ItwasCerridwen, doubled in size, if not more. No longer the size of a small stag, but an imposing figure larger than a stallion. He had not seen her in dragon form since before he had gone to France, but still, that was an astonishing rate of growth.
Cerridwen said nothing, only lowered her head in acknowledgement of the importance of the ceremony about to take place, but under his feet, her familiar dragon power swirled through the earth.
Darcy nodded back and led Elizabeth into the grove. There he gently laid the wool-wrapped afterbirth in the prepared hole. Letting his power sink deeply into the land, he covered it with the earth of Pemberley. At last all the soil he and Roderick had removed was back in place, heaped up slightly over the surrounding ground.
