“I fear I have intruded,” Emma’s voice called behind me.
Georgiana’s eyes had lit with amusement. Outmaneuvered, I answered, “You are welcome.”
Emma came up, dressed in surprisingly sensible walking clothes. She made a respectful curtsy to Lizzy’s sculpture. “I sometimes visit to talk with her. To imagine her advice. I am worried about a choice I made.” She folded her hands, freed of the fixations I had noticed yesterday. “But I know I am right.”
I tugged my arm free of Georgiana and found that was solely so I could cross my arms and scowl.Be civil. I tapped my fingers on my sleeve, seeking a topic. “Do you still sense Yuánchi?”
“In a way,” she said vaguely.
She and Yuánchi had been destined to bind. But fate decreed this harsher path.
I gestured to the three of us. “Georgiana said we are the great wyves. But not truly.” I met Georgiana’s questioning gaze. “You are the wyfe of song. I am redundant.”
“No,” Emma said. “You are joined. Can you not tell?” She took off her gloves and offered her palms. Georgiana took one. Uneasy, I took the other, then held Georgiana’s hand so we formed a triangle.
I expected a show of effort—Lizzy had always concentrated to invoke her powers—but Emma smiled sunnily. “There is the most beautiful blue glow of binding between you. When I first saw it, I fancied that you had bound each other. But that was silly. You cannot bind without a draca. It is… a shared promise of binding. But even as a promise, it is bright. When you bind, it will be a marvel.”
Georgiana gave me an enchanted grin. I sensed something too, but what it was, other than love, I could not say.
With a quick-drawn breath, Emma turned to the western hills. One rounded crest seemed to rise and darken, then Fènnù’s silhouette soared over the summit. She sped downslope, too distant to hear, but the treetops in herwake shook like grass in a squall. An airy rumble reached us as she skimmed the waves, so low that her claws cut the water and tossed spray twenty feet high. Then her wings stroked, lifting her like a wild swan.
“She will pass twice more,” I said, for that pattern had never altered.
She banked and crossed again, then flapped a long, curved path around the valley’s periphery to begin her third pass from the far shore.
Preciselyfrom the far shore. Her shape hung pendulous above the water, swelling.
“She is coming here,” Georgiana observed, her voice a little high. “Is that usual?”
“No,” I admitted.
The rumble became thunder, and her monstrous bulk filled our eyes before she veered, wings flaring. A torrent of wind and spray pummeled the shore forty yards beside us, but my skirts only fluttered as I brushed blown locks from my eyes.
Fènnù settled, broad chest toward us, gravel creaking beneath her claws, her wings held half-spread and her shoulders hunched, a posture ungainly and uneasy like a wounded bird. Her head tilted one way and another, studying us. Her slit nostrils gaped like chimneys for each bellowing breath. Venomous drops leaked from the sores on her jaw and wings, and an astringent scent prickled.
“Goodness, she is very big,” Georgiana said tensely. “Why did she land? I thought she sought Yuánchi. Or the dagger.”
“Do not worry,” I said, summoning courage. “I have spoken with her before. Spokentoher, at least.”
“When?”
“When Lizzy and I flew to London.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“A great deal happened after.”
Emma’s face was uplifted and raptured. “She hurts. She fears us, or… no, she remembers fear. Her mind skitters like breaking glass.”
“Lizzy wanted me to understand her,” I said. “To help her. I should approach.”
“No!” Georgiana locked my wrist in both hands. “Mary, she is not a book to puzzle through.”
With a feathery flutter, a shining blue song draca landed by my foot. Another plopped down a yard in front. A third, the bold one that had followedfrom London, found my shoulder, his ebony claws pricking through layers of cloth. These arrivals no longer surprised me, although I did not know why they came.
They all watched Fènnù, curious but no worse than that.
“They would not come if there were danger,” I said, not sure that was true, and eased Georgiana’s fingers loose. Encouraged by woodwind cheeps, I took a step, then another, but, heart pounding, my knees balked at a third. Awe had overpowered my resolve.
