“You are generous,” I said, and to be generous myself, I headed off a faux pas by adding, “Jane has brought hers also, so London is doubly blessed.” Lady Catherine exhaled in sharp annoyance.
Lady Catherine’s wyvern, shining beautiful bronze amid the hundreds of candles, approached us, drawing gasps and murmurs. Wyverns have the same general form as other winged draca, two-winged and two-legged, but they are shorter necked, solid, and heavily muscled, quite different from the lithe elegance of the smaller firedrakes or huge Yuánchi.
Lady Catherine loftily addressed the room. “Do not approach her. She is exceedingly dangerous.” Lady Catherine appended a quelling glance at me with a clear message:hands off. I had demonstrated my ease with her wyvern when she last visited Longbourn, but I had no desire to embarrass her, so I simply smiled.
Her wyvern, however, had spotted me and was trotting forward with her usual enthusiasm. I sent a silent thought,Please wait. I shall give you a scratch later. Like dragons, wyverns communicate with articulate thoughts—or at least,thoughts I could comprehend as articulate. With other draca, I communicated through images and feelings.
Disappointed, the wyvern stopped beside Lady Catherine and sat on her haunches, wings snugly furled and the tip of her tail flicking. Then her gaze swung to Emma and fixed there.
Another great wyfe. An unfamiliar one. While planning the ball, I had worried about the mysterious dagger, Gramr, but I had forgotten this would be the first meeting of other potent forces.
Emma sank down until her eyes were level with the wyvern’s, her posture perfect as a ballerina. As she dropped, her gloved fingers skimmed her spreading skirt so it fell symmetrically on the gray granite, her hands finishing behind her so the hem formed a golden oval. The bronze wyvern approached until their noses were a foot apart, and the room silenced.
The great secret of this meeting was that this wyvern was unbound. Decades ago, Lady Anne Darcy, a powerful great wyfe, had summoned a wyvern to conceal an embarrassing truth: her sister, Lady Catherine, failed to bind when she wed. Ever since, Lady Catherine had flaunted her prestigious draca, unaware that the wyvern accompanied her solely to honor her dead sister.
Like dragons, wyverns have faceted eyes that shimmer in a rainbow of reflected colors. Those prismatic glimmers now stared unblinkingly into Emma’s hazel eyes.
23
THE PRINCE REGENT
EMMA
The wyvern’s eyes shimmered,and the chaos around me faded.
The day before the ball, my compulsions began a wicked spiral. By the time Harriet and I entered the museum doors, the crowd was blurring—a wet oil painting smeared by an unseen palm, first one way, then the other. Isolated details stuck in the air. An unbuttoned cuff. A gold cross hanging crooked below a necklace. Miasma trickled thirty feet from the ceiling, pooling wetly on the floor, splashing hems and slippers with colorless pestilence while hunting a victim I would mourn.
Now, the wyvern’s eyes shone, steady as summer sun. A single word chimed in my mind like a crystal bell:
healer
“I hear you,” I whispered—not even whispered, just shaped words on my lips. I knew she heard.
The wyvern’s thought,healer, did not thump my skull like Yuánchi’s mind, but it sang of inhuman wisdom. Then my disbelief bristled. I had served Nessy tea brewed from the green leaves from the physic garden. It tasted pleasant enough—I had tried it, as well—but there was no miracle. This talk of healing was a fool’s dream.
it is long since great wyves gathered. together, you are strong
“I do not feel strong.”
you must bind for strength
That again. Aware of the watching eyes, I did not even mouth my next words. I only thought,I would fail if I tried to bind.
The wyvern’s head cocked, avian in her curiosity.the dragon songs broke. together, the wyves are strong. healer, can you heal a song?
“I do not even know what that means.” Frustration swamped the last of my awe. “Stop saying I can heal! My papa died in my arms.”
I remembered the firedrake healing in the physic garden. But that was like a country doctor straightening a bone. Everyone knew draca healed quickly all on their own.
the great wyves gather. the great ones stir. a messenger awaits to the north
The facets of her eyes glimmered with the gold of my gown and the yellow pinpricks of distant candles. Then she simply trotted off, her tail lifting in a curl and her claws rasping the stone. The flex of her muscles hinted at untapped, explosive speed.
The world flooded back as I rose. I half expected a miracle of my own—the miasma banished—but the room resumed its skittering and shifting.
The wyvern reached the isolated corner where Jane’s gold wyvern had settled. The two touched noses, and the crowd’s silence burst with amazed exclamations and admiring claps. As a rule, draca ignored each other.
“What triviality,” Lady Catherine said. “Why has my nephew not presented himself?”
