“Jane needs you!”
Do not go! Stay with—
Violently, I slammed my self closed and forced Yuánchi’s thoughts away. Human vision returned.
Miss Rees stood a dozen paces away, Gramr smoking in her hand. A blur of writhing bronze and gold tumbled between us. The wyverns were fighting. Chunks of stone sprayed as they strained for purchase, their claws gouging the floor.
I opened my mind, and the invisible conflict was revealed. The venom-fueled potency I had pushed back into Miss Rees had broken free, vastly strengthened. A writhing black leash had captured the mind of Lady Catherine’s wyvern and commanded her to attack. If Jane’s wyvern had not blocked her, we would be dead.
Jane, big belly and all, was beside me, her hand stretched toward her wyvern, her face straining. “Help me!” she cried. “I am losing her.”
A second black leash was attacking the mind of Jane’s wyvern, held back—barely—by a shaking silver orb that surrounded the wyvern. Jane was supporting her wyvern’s defense, pouring strength through the silver thread of their binding, but the silver orb was failing.
This, at least, was a situation I had faced before when Lydia tried to take Mamma’s drake. I grabbed Jane’s hand, found the gleam of their binding, and added my strength to hers.
The golden wyvern’s defense flared blinding bright. Every trace of the vile black filling the room burned away like mist in a blazing noon.
The slashing frenzy of the wyverns ceased. They separated, feinting and wary, hissing through bared teeth. Ripped strips of wing hung. Gashes in their scales dripped golden blood.
Miss Rees collapsed to her knees, her white gown puddling around her. Her sobs filled the deathly still room. The dagger slipped from her fingers and rang on the floor.
“Thank you,” Jane said softly to me. “I did not know what I was doing.”
“You were doing very well,” I said.
Mary emerged from the crowd. She took a cautious step toward Miss Rees. “Joane?” Miss Rees turned her tear-streaked face to Mary, eyes wide with recognition.
The crystal chandeliers tinkled. The floor vibrated under my toes. Yuánchi had arrived.
I reached for his mind, expecting to see the museum courtyard, but his perspective was high in the sky. An astonishing panorama of moonlit London narrowed as he plunged toward the silver, frozen Thames.
Eyes closed, I felt the floor shake under my feet. Tipped objects clunked and smashed. I struggled for balance, hands outstretched, but I stayed in Yuánchi’s view while the stone floor jerked and shouts rose.
Yuánchi was diving, his wings tucked, air thrumming. The scene on the ice became distinct, late-night celebrators fleeing, lamps and torches falling, people sprawling. Then the ice buckled. A black crevasse split, unlit, cold, and deep. Huge, wet wings splayed over the ice, then a lithe, black neck emerged.
Yuánchi’s thoughts filled with awe.She wakes. Then, with an urgency I had never heard,Elizabeth Darcy Bennet. Hold fast to me.
The black head rose. A colossal body clambered free. Each clawed step smashed thick ice. The faceted eyes turned toward Yuánchi—and looked through his eyes into mine.
Violence, ruthless as bitter winter, filled me. A dragon’s voice, feminine and ecstatic, caressed my soul.My wyfe of war.
A cyclone of black strength filled my veins. Fear melted away. I laughed and shifted back to my own vision.
Mary was kneeling beside Miss Rees and holding her hand. Miss Rees’sother arm was extended, propping up her swaying torso, her palm flat on the floor.
Her fingers were inches from the hilt of Gramr. The hilt she had dared to hold.
“Thief,” I whispered. “The dagger is mine.”
Issuing judgment was a long-lost delight. The sentence of punishment was effortless, a command I sent that crushed the defenses of Jane’s gold wyvern and seized her mind—a command that made the wyvern dig her claws into the stone floor and hurl herself forward.
A wyvern’s attack is not the floating leap of a wolf or a bear. It is the streak of a loosed crossbow bolt. The gold wyvern struck Miss Rees faster than a human eye could follow, but I felt the scythe claws cut and the blood and flesh spray.
Yuánchi’s mind fell on me like an ax, shearing away the mad, dark presence that had filled me. His embrace trapped me in featureless quiet. The chill of black strength drained.
Only my weak, human eyes remained to view the carnage.
25
