With that sudden recognition that she must become the harmonising force between them, Elizabeth grasped what was needed. She reached for and felt Georgiana’s restorative energy, letting its gentle vibration settle within her. Then, she consciously blended it with her own power, her magic acting like a tuning fork, adjusting the pitch of Georgiana’s magic until it resonated perfectly with Darcy’s.
“Oh,” Georgiana said, a soft, wondering sound.
Elizabeth then sent this towards Darcy.
Seemingly picking up on the pulse, Darcy raised his hand, and a plume of fire blasted from his fingertips, cutting a brilliant, momentary gash across the sky. Then he drew the fire back to his palm, his expression one of intense concentration, and swept his hand over a patch of blighted moss at their feet. The flames washed over it, but instead of scorching, they seemed to cleanse. The greasy blackness of the Blight sizzled and vanished, leaving behind a patch of impossibly bright green moss.
“I felt something,” said Georgiana, sounding startled.
Darcy opened his mouth, the immediate apology already forming, but Elizabeth spoke first.
“It was not his will you felt, Georgiana. It was mine.”
The apology died on Darcy’s lips as he stared at her. “But how was that possible? I could sense Georgiana’s power, yet it answered my will as if it were my own.”
“Because it passed through me first,” Elizabeth said, with unfolding conviction, “My resonance…it does more than just feel. It harmonises. I changed her magic into a form you could recognise and use.”
Elizabeth watched as his entire perception of their power seemed to shift and reassemble behind his eyes. The confusion gave way to a look of dawning understanding. “As you have always done with me,” he said slowly, as if piecing together a truth he had never before conceived. “All this time, I operatedunder the assumption that I was simply drawing upon and directing your raw power. But that was never the case. All this time, you have beengivingit to me.”
He looked from her to Georgiana and back, excitement building in his gaze as a new thought took hold. “This would explain much. At the signal station, when you harnessed the ancient magic of the land itself…it was an act that, by all accounts of arcane theory, should have been impossible. The question of how has occupied my thoughts a great deal.”
Elizabeth’s breath hitched as she followed his words, as the full scope of her own gift revealed itself to her. “That, too, was my resonance,” she realised, stunned, “Idid not use the land’s magic. I felt its song, I drew it into myself…” and she thought of how she had sent it, in sheer desperation, towards Darcy, “…and Iofferedit to you.”
“Your resonance is not mere sensitivity,” Darcy marvelled, “It is the ability to perceive the essential nature of another’s magic, weave it with your own, and present it in a form the recipient can instinctively wield.”
“Then it was not the Concordance that allowed you to use my magic. It was my resonance.”
“Your resonance is what makes this possible, but it cannot bear such a weight alone. Our bond binds my control to your harmonising, allowing the threads to stay together. The Concordance amplifies our power.” He paused, his gaze holding hers. “Apart, we are strong. But together, we are something else entirely.”
A sense of awe settled over her. He was right. It was not just her gift, or Darcy’s absolute magical mastery, or even the bond the Concordance had forced between them; it was the principles working in perfect, breathtaking concert.
The precise polarities required. Bound together, they will create a power, a synergy, that England has not seen, has not needed, in a thousand years.
“And what is more,” Darcy added, “as we were never truly wielding another's power, the fundamental tenet remains intact.”
She could not suppress a laugh. None but Mr Darcy, she thought, would follow such a profound declaration of their unique power with a qualification on its adherence to doctrine. “And did that truly trouble you, sir? The thought that this feat might have been achieved in defiance of the established laws of magic?” she asked, with a playful glint in her eye, “If so, you must own that it vexes you a little to find such a disorderly loophole.”
“You have an unerring ability to strike at the heart of a matter, madam. I see I am entirely found out,” he answered, with a smile. Then he took a step closer, his eyes alight with the thrill of the possibility. “Let us test our theory further. Georgiana,” his eyes fell on the blighted moss at their feet, “we need a pulse of healing.”
Georgiana needed no further prompting. With a nod of assent, she let her magic answer her brother’s call.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, not to block out the world, but to feel. As the cool pulse of Georgiana's healing power reached her, she let her own warmer magic rise to envelop it. Guided by pure intuition, she harmonised the two energies into a single current and offered it to Darcy.
The moment the harmonised current reached him, he channeled it. With a controlled gust of wind from his hands, he sent their combined magic sweeping over the ground. The blackened, blighted moss at their feet did not just turn green. It blossomed. Tiny, perfect, impossibly pink flowers unfurled from the cleansed earth, their delicate petals glowing.
“You have never been able to do that before, Fitzwilliam,” said Georgiana, in awe.
“No,” he said softly, “I have not.” Then he looked at Elizabeth, his gaze filled with an emotion so reverent it left her breathless. The shared triumph, the intellectual thrill of their discovery, and something deeper, something intensely personal, all shone in his eyes.
Then his smile faded as he looked away from her, towards Wickham. The next step, Elizabeth knew, was for him the most difficult of all. “Now we must see how your own magic comports with this, Wickham,” he said.
Elizabeth braced herself for a difficult negotiation of magic. But the moment Wickham’s magic reached out to her — a primal power, a magic of earth, stone, and clay — it snapped into place with the feel of Darcy’s as if it had always belonged there. There was no dissonance, no resistance.
Wickham’s magic was a chaotic, subterranean aquifer of force that had, until this moment, lacked any real channel. Darcy’s will, a marvel of structured control, was the empty canal waiting for a river.
The instant Elizabeth’s magic created the connection between the two, Wickham’s power surged, not fighting the constraints but welcoming them. Instead, as it flowed through Elizabeth, she felt it taking on the imprint of Darcy’s control. It did not clash; it yielded to it, craved its direction, and filled its structure with an untamed, exhilarating energy.
It was this pattern, this structure, that she passed back towards Wickham. He lifted a hand, and with a sudden guiding impulse that was felt by all, a pillar of solid rock erupted from the scarred earth at their feet. It did not crumble into mud; it was a perfectly formed, symmetrical pillar.
