Elizabeth simply shook her head, a hollow ache where her own reserves of power had been.
“No,” he agreed, gingerly pressing a hand to his chest, “It would…be unwise.”
The ride back to Newcastle was sombre. Her mount had broken its ties and run off during the battle, and so sherode together with Darcy. His arms wrapped around her, in desperation as much as in support.
They did not speak, too fatigued for such a thing. The silence between them was heavy with the weight of their partial victory, a triumph that had revealed the almost insurmountable scale of the war yet to be fought.
They passed the reawakened monastic ruins on their return, and the sight was almost painful to see. The green on the ground, the golden warmth that pulsed in the air, now seemed like a small, fragile island of hope in an endless, blighted sea. A beautiful, and utterly inadequate gesture against an overwhelming darkness.
Darkness had well and truly fallen by the time their horse clattered into the inn’s courtyard. Colonel Fitzwilliam and Wickham were waiting for them in the dim light of the parlour, their anxious pacing stilled by the sound of their arrival. Their expressions shifted from tense anticipation to genuine alarm at the sight of their state.
“Darcy! Good God, man, you are pale as death!” the colonel said, as he rushed forward. “What happened?”
Wickham was silent at first, but his eyes took in every detail of their ravaged state. “You look as though you’ve wrestled with a demon,” he said, “and only just managed a draw.”
“We succeeded at two nodes,” Elizabeth said quietly, offering no further detail. “Temporarily.”
“We can discuss tomorrow,” Darcy rasped, the effort clear in his tone.
He offered his arm, and without a word, she took it. They ascended the creaking stairs, leaving the others and their questions behind in the gloom of the parlour.
In the privacy of her chamber, the exhaustion was a leaden weight in her limbs. She was barely aware of changing out of her ruined clothes, moving on instinct to the small basin of coldwater. She needed to wash away the grime, the scent of dust and terror and death.
A tremor started in her hands and spread, a teeth-rattling shudder she could not control. The rough cloth trembled so violently in her grip that water sloshed over the rim of the basin. She scrubbed at her face, her arms, but the feeling of the Blight’s filth felt as though it had sunk beneath her skin. Within moments, the water was a murky grey, thick with grime and something darker. It offered no sense of clean, only a reminder of the taint she felt deep inside.
Darcy had been standing silently by the door, giving her space. Now, he moved. She didn't hear him approach, but she felt the shift in the air.
The fouled water vanished.
Then, with a sound like a gentle sigh, the basin was full again, the water clear as glass, with the faintest wisp of vapour rising from its surface.
Elizabeth stared at the clean water, her shaking slowly subsiding. She started to wash herself again. It was only when his hand gently touched her shoulder and he murmured her name that she realised silent tears were tracing paths down her cheeks.
“Elizabeth…”
Before he could say more, she turned, her arms wrapping around him, clinging to the solid warmth of his body as if to anchor herself to the living world. She buried her face against the linen of his shirt, her voice a muffled whisper. “William…”
His arms tightened around her instantly, a fierce embrace that was an answer in itself. He held her for a long moment, simply letting her feel the reassuring beat of his heart against her cheek. “I am here,” he said hoarsely. He drew back just enough to look at her. “Look at me. I am here because of you.”
But when she looked at him, she only saw the bruises around his neck. A fresh sob almost broke from her. “I almost lost you.”
His expression was agonised. “You saved me.”
“You are hurt,” she said, the words thick with unshed tears.
“I am well enough.”
She shook her head, seizing upon a surge of protective urgency as it rose within her. She channeled it, embraced it, letting its blinding, clean heat scour away the icy remnants of her own terror. “No,” she said softly, “You are not. Let me help you.”
Her touch was gentle as she carefully washed the grime from his face. He closed his eyes at the contact, small quivers running through his frame, a silent surrender to her care. When she moved to his neck, to the raw marks left by the Blight’s chokehold, her own hand trembled, the memory of his choked cry a fresh agony in her mind.
He must have felt it, for his hand came up to cover hers, his fingers a warm, steady pressure over her own. She looked up, her eyes glimmering.
When she was done tending to him, he shed his shirt, the linen stiff with grime and torn at the shoulder, and donned a clean one. She turned away then, granting him a moment of privacy. She heard the soft thud of his boots on the floorboards and the rustle of fabric. When the creak of the mattress told her he was settled, she turned back to find him collapsed onto the bed, the last of his strength having finally deserted him.
There was no question of spending the night apart; to even consider doing so was unthinkable.
Later, as she laid in bed listening to Darcy’s slow, ragged breaths, the physical exhaustion warred with the turmoil in her mind. The victory at the first node felt like a distant, dreamlike memory. It was overshadowed by the terrifying image of Darcy,his face a mask of agony, being choked by the living darkness of the Blight.
