It was not a physical attack. It was a deluge of pure, concentrated non-existence. A crushing weight of utter, absolute hopelessness that slammed into their defences. It was the roar of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand souls giving up.
And the full brunt of that onslaught crashed squarely into Darcy.
Darcy’s shield, which had withstood rock and ice and wind, buckled under the soul-crushing despair, its golden light flickering and thinning. His protective fire-vortex collapsed, extinguished by a force that had no heat, no substance, only an all-consuming emptiness.
“Darcy!” Elizabeth’s horrified scream was torn from her throat, only to be dissolved into nothing. His face was a rigid landscape of horror, every muscle pulled taut. His gaze, though wide and staring, seemed to see nothing of the world before him.
She could feel the shield's integrity failing through their bond, the steady hum of his power breaking apart into erratic, disconnected pulses. The warmth of its protection was rapidly leaching away, replaced by the chill pressing in from all sides.
Then the shield shattered away completely.
“Darcy!”
Her call skittered across the surface of his consciousness, never piercing through. His gaze remained petrified, fixed on some point beyond her, lost to a vision she could not see.
Her world seemed to fall away, leaving only pure terror. She shouted again, her voice cracking, raw now with new desperation. “William! Focus on me!”
But still he did not seem to hear her. She tried to move towards him, to ground him with her touch, but the Blight would not allow it. A violent squall of icy wind tore between them.
Panic seized her. She threw her power at the barrier, a desperate blast of fire, but the icy gale smothered her flames before they could even form. She tried again, attempting to shape the air, to create a counter-current, but her control, so painstakingly won in the quiet glades of Pemberley, was no match for this raw, vicious force. Her magic was a desperate thing, lashing out without precision, dissipating uselessly against the Blight’s focused assault. She was a breath away from him, yet she could not reach him.
Through their bond, she felt a different kind of magic, a gentle, insistent persistence. Georgiana. She was pouring all her energy not into attacking the barrier, but into trying to calm the raging terror of Darcy's mind from within.
The infuriating futility of their efforts made a cry of frustration tear at Elizabeth's throat. Georgiana was trying to heal, but the Blight's assault was too strong. She needed an opening. Gritting her teeth, Elizabeth grasped the wind with her magic. A gust, born of pure desperation, slammed into the Blight's icy gale. It was a head-on collision. The two forces met in a shrieking vortex.
It was not enough. The barrier held.
Just as a fresh wave of helpless fear threatened to consume her, a presence registered on her magical senses — acute, focused, and shockingly close.
Wickham.
He stood on the other side of the windstorm, his greatcoat whipping around him, his body held with unnatural stillness.
Through the swirling vortex of ice and grit, Elizabeth saw something cross his features. It was an impulse, an ambition, a cold recognition. It was the look of a man who had covetedeverything another possessed, and suddenly saw it all lying unguarded before him.
That look sent a primal chill down her spine, a blade of ice in her gut, sharp with the horrifying certainty that she had been almost laughably, spectacularly,monumentallywrong.
And then the air around him crackled, and she felt a violent thrum of raw magic begin to coalesce within her and around her. It was his power, gathering like a tidal wave before the crash.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Elizabeth acted without thought. Her magic sprang to her command, a desperate surge of power coalescing into a blast of fire beneath her hand, her will a hair's breadth from unleashing it. She did not know if it would pierce the Blight’s conjured wind, or if it would be enough to counter the terrible, gathering force she felt from Wickham. She knew only that in the next instant, she might cross a line she could never uncross. She might become a killer.
Darcy’s warning from the inn parlour returned to her as a phantom echo, a chilling whisper against the screaming wind.
I wonder, Elizabeth, if you have considered what Wickham truly stands to gain from this venture. If I should meet my end here, who, then, has the strongest claim to Pemberley?
Revulsion, hot and acrid, filled her mouth. Her magic burned at her fingertips. The power felt foul, its purpose a violation.
But then her mind flashed to Georgiana’s earnest face, to her unwavering faith in the man she had married.
I have seen a tenderness and courage in him. The responsibility of his rank has changed him. Being a husbandhas changed him.
The two competing truths churned within her: Darcy’s world-weary logic against Georgiana’s heartfelt faith. The man Wickham had been, versus the man he might have become. Her magic wavered, caught between a lethal strike and a desperate hope.
But in the fraction of a second before she could commit to one action or another, a glint of metal at the edge of the clearing tore her attention away.
The colonel. He was braced against the howling gale, his rifle to his shoulder, the long barrel a steady, dark line. Bile rose in her throat. The thought of its imminent, brutal finality was a physical, nauseating thing, made all the more so by its grim necessity.
