The shrieking gale died instantly. The sudden, absolute absence of sound was more shocking than the howl had been. Darcy’s magic had cut the windstorm from the sky.
But her relief lasted no more than one precious heartbeat. The Blight would not concede its prize so easily. With a slurping sound, the blighted earth beneath Darcy's feet liquefied into a grasping mire of black sludge, forcing Elizabeth and Wickham to leap back.
Before Darcy could fully form a defence, the mire surged upward, forming hungry arms that pulled him down. He slashed outward with a hail of ice, but the shards barely slowed the foul, wet corruption. Darcy fell with a strangled cry as the sludge began to engulf him, pulling him under.
In an uncoordinated reaction, Elizabeth and Wickham struck. A blast of her fire and a surge of Wickham’s jagged earth magic hit the heaving mass of corruption at the same instant.But it was like throwing stones into a great, dark river. The fire was smothered, the rocks were absorbed into the ooze, and the suffocating tide did not even slow, its purpose fixed entirely on swallowing the man it held in its clutch.
Elizabeth felt a hollow drop in her stomach. The signal station. It was happening again. She reached vainly for the resilient magic of the land itself, the power that had saved him once.
But this time, the land was silent to her senses. The Blight’s presence here was too strong, a blanket that smothered the force she sought. And her own fear was a blindfold. She could not reach it. She could not save him.
Her desperate eyes found Wickham’s across the chaos. She saw a look of absolute, cutting understanding in his gaze.
He knew. He knew what she had thought, what she had suspected from him in that moment of opportunity. He had seen the suspicion in her heart. She had seen the temptation in his.
And now, what she saw was not goodness, not heroism, but a raw, furious defiance.
“You will not have him that easily!” With that shout, Wickham plunged his will into the oily substance. He commanded the rock and soil beneath the mire to reject the corruption.
Elizabeth saw the ground around Darcy’s feet begin to smoke, the black sludge hissing as the earth it was rooted in turned against it. Shaking off her own fear, Elizabeth understood. She followed his lead, adding her own will to his, desperately pouring all her energy towards the effort. Wickham staggered under the weight of her power, but clung grimly on.
The groping shapes of filth were torn from their anchor points, ripped from the ground as the land itself convulsed and threw them off. A roar tore from Wickham’s throat as he went on the attack, becoming a whirlwind of motion. He weaponisedthe debris, flinging a constant barrage of rock and stone at the Blight's faltering defences. He hammered at the points where new arms of sludge tried to sprout from the ground and shattered the shadowy claws that tried to form in the air. It was a desperate, furious assault that gave Elizabeth the opening she needed. She gathered her air magic in a gust, hurling the battered remnants away from them all.
Darcy fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Georgiana flew to him, her skirts whispering against the ravaged ground. She didn't hesitate. Her hands hovered over his heart, and from them poured a light that was pure and life-giving. Elizabeth could feel the healing from feet away, a gentle pressure against the air, a song that vibrated just beneath the edge of hearing.
Darcy’s ragged gasps steadied. The vacant look in his eyes dissolved, replaced by a dazed and wondering focus. A choked word escaped his lips, sounding almost desperately young and vulnerable. “Georgiana?”
“I am here, Brother,” she said soothingly, “Be calm.”
An unsettling cold fell over the clearing, colder than the Blight’s wind. The shadows deepened, coalescing, turning with nefarious intelligence.
The healing had been a beacon. And the Blight came for Georgiana.
It flooded her with the agony of every sick child, the grief of every starving mother.This is your fault. Your healing is a lie. Every life you try to touch, you only prolong the agony. You are tainted, and you taint them. Let them go. Let them have the sweet peace of death.
Through their connection, Elizabeth felt the horrifying assault. And she felt the twin waves of terror that erupted from both Darcy and Wickham an instant later.
Darcy’s magic flared weakly, a guttering flame against the darkness as he tried to protect his sister. “Georgiana, no!” his panic was a sharp command through the bond, a desperate attempt to sever, to shield, to wrench his sister away from the poison. “Get away!”
At the same instant, Wickham's fear broke in a bitten-off expletive. His own magic surged, trying to make the earth beneath them crack and swallow the source of his wife’s torment. “Come for me, you stupid thing!” he screamed, “Damn you, get out of her head!”
The two impulses — to sever and to assault — slammed into Elizabeth from opposite directions. It clashed into a shrieking dissonance within her. She was the heart of their union, and their opposed wills were tearing her apart. Darcy’s will pulled one way, a desperate, icy command to retreat. Wickham’s power surged the other, a hot torrent demanding to be unleashed. The pain was excruciating, a magical laceration that threatened to rip her very essence in two.
The Blightlaughedin her mind.
The quarry, the wind, the land — it all vanished. Elizabeth was standing in the suffocating silence of a nursery, the air thick with the scent of herbs and unspeakable grief. Before her was a small cradle, and within it, a tiny, still form, wrapped in a linen that could not warm him. The Blight’s voice whispered in her mind.
Your magic does not give life, Elizabeth. It only takes. A chill seized her heart, a grief so deep it threatened to shatter her.
She cried out, a voiceless scream in her soul, and felt her own power falter. But as she staggered under the weight of her own personal hell, she felt the agony of the others bleed through the magical connection that bound them.
From Georgiana, she felt cloying self-loathing. The image flashed through her mind of Georgiana’s hands, no longerconduits of healing but turning black, her touch bringing rot and decay to a beautiful white rose. The Blight’s whisper was one of corruption.Your shame poisons everything you touch. You cannot heal; you can only spread your own ruin.
From Wickham, it was not despair, but a surge of hot, grasping ambition. She saw him striking Darcy down and taking his place as Master of Pemberley. And she heard the Blight’s seductive promise.I see into your heart, my friend. Why pretend to be what you are not? They scorned you, they held you back. You have never been enough for them. Take what is yours before they deny you again.
Pain slammed through her as she sensed her companions pulling away, crumpling under the mental assault. Everything became to unwind within her, the magical bonds unraveling wildly.
