Lady Catherine cleared her throat with a rattle. “Whatareyou people?” She turned to Georgiana. “My niece sings, and wounded, crazed draca lie down like sheep. Andyou!” Her pale blue eyes pinned me. “You challenge a madwoman like some sorceress—”
“For once, hold your tongue!” Darcy snapped. “You criticized my mother throughher entire life. Do not criticize my sister or my wyfe. You have no idea of what you speak.”
A rough laugh split my lips. “Criticize me? Better to condemn me outright. I deserve it.”
Georgiana squeezed my hand. “That is not true! It was frantic. You cannot manage every draca.”
“Ikilledthat woman. I condemned her because she touched the dagger.” My memory of those moments was unforgivingly clear, but my reasoning was lost. Incomprehensible. Why command Jane’s wyvern to attack?
“Mr. Knightley saw another dragon,” Georgiana said to Darcy. “A black dragon. Is that what the dagger summoned? When that woman sang, it was like the bedrock of London awoke. Something sang an answer.”
“She raised Fury,” I muttered. “The dragon’s name is Fènnù. It meansFury.”
“The dagger is gone,” Darcy said.
That penetrated my murk of self-despair. “What? Gone where?”
“Missing. Wellington’s guards searched the area, then the buildings. Even amongst Miss Rees’s… remains. Someone took it.”
I closed my eyes and again tried to reach out with my mind.Yuánchi. Where are you?But my awareness was crammed within my own head—locked in by Yuánchi’s strength, like a lunatic locked in an attic. Presumably so I would not murder more innocents. All I could sense was that he was far away.
“I assure you that I shallnotoffer my museum for future balls,” Lady Catherine announced.
The horses reined in. We were at Chathford. Lady Catherine disembarked and spied our servants with a hair-thin smile, finally having someone to order about. I trusted Mrs. Reynolds would keep her in check and walked to meet the wagon. It was little more than a wheeled box of planks pulled by a single horse, the sort that delivered cheap goods to back doors throughout London.
Two pairs of scintillating wyvern eyes met mine as I arrived, astonishingly beautiful but as opaque to my mind as real gems. What had Yuánchi done to me?
Charles helped Jane down, and she pulled me into an embrace. “Dear Lizzy.” I clutched her like a scared toddler and found I was leaking tears onto the shoulder of her gown.
I swallowed my sobs. “How is your wyvern?”
“They have both stopped bleeding. I do not have your gift to hear herthoughts, but”—she gazed at her crouched, tense wyvern—“she is not yet herself. She is withdrawn. Or… frightened.”
“What have I done?” I whispered.
“Oh, Lizzy.” She pulled me tight again. “You are my beloved sister. I wish you did not face such trials.”
Here I was, unharmed, being comforted by Jane, who had almost died twice in the last year. “You are too good. But I seized your wyvern’s mind savagely. You cannot imagine the power I had. I was euphoric. Intoxicated.” Two disparate facts linked in my mind. “I have felt that before. It is what I sense in wyves who are dosed with crawler venom. But it flowed from the black dragon. From… Fury.” I whispered her name, afraid that the sound would summon her. Or change me.
Emma and Georgiana ran up, breathing hard. Georgiana must have searched the house to find her.
“Oh.” Emma’s gloved fingers caught at her lips, her eyes wide at the wyverns’ gashes and scrapes glistening with golden ichor.
“Help me,” Georgiana said.
Emma shook her head. “I cannot.”
“You can.” Fearlessly, Georgiana cradled the bronze wyvern’s jaw in one hand, then she took Emma’s hand with her other, fingers meshing tight, and began to sing. Her voice was beautiful, the tones strange and foreign, but that was all. I did not sense the power she unleashed.
“Is something happening?” I asked uncertainly.
“Can you not feel it?” Jane asked breathlessly. Rapturously.
I turned away, digging my teeth into my lip until I tasted blood. The front door stood wide open. I went through. Lady Catherine’s strident tones echoed from one direction. I turned the other way.
After two rooms, I found Darcy in quiet conversation with Charles. I did not even wait for privacy. “I killed that woman.”
Darcy caught my arms, his grip firm. “That is unjust. Remember my self-recrimination after the death of Lydia. You helped me then, so apply your own counsel. You had an instant to choose—”
