He understood then—not by reason, not by Harrowe’s arguments, not by his aunt’s threats—but by the simple alteration of breath beneath his hand.
The thorn did not yield to strength. It yielded to inheritance.
He released her completely and shifted his hold from her wrist to the base of the rising stem and drew it toward himself. The movement was small. Deliberate.
The vine followed.
It unwound completely from Elizabeth’s throat as silk unwinds from a spool, sliding upward and outward and onto him. It circled his arm. His chest. His shoulder. Each coil tightened with quiet inevitability, barbs sinking through wool, through linen, into skin.
Elizabeth fell completely free of its highest hold and gasped, drawing air in a broken rush.
“Darcy—no!”
The thorn climbed his collar. Wrapped once about his throat.
And held.
Darcy fell rigid beforeher, his eyes still locked on her face, though the rest of his body was no longer wholly his own. Vines coiled across his chest, across his shoulders, binding him with a dreadful sort of power. A longer spear of hawthorn had driven clean through the fabric at his side and pinned him to the ground as surely as if the earth itself had claimed him.
“Darcy!” Her voice broke upon his name.
Blood traced dark lines down his wrist and pooled on the ground where the barbs had pierced him. Another thorn pressed cruelly beneath his jaw, drawing a thin red thread that slid toward his collar.
She tore at the vines with bare hands. The barbs bit her palms; silk and skin gave alike. “Release him! Take me—take me back! Do not—do not touch him!”
The thorns only tightened.
His breath shortened. She leaned in to caress his brow and felt it against her cheek—shallow, strangled. She reached for his hand, but could not pull it free. There was only the crook of one finger, catching hers. Then it trembled once and then stilled in a way that frightened her more than any convulsion could have done.
“Elizabeth.” He spoke with effort. The sound was low, scarcely carried beyond her ear.
She lifted her face to his. His eyes were clear. There was pain in them, yes, and effort, but not terror. Not regret.
“I chose this,” he said. He coughed, and blood dribbled at the edge of his lips. “This is the answer.”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head violently. “No, you do not know that—Darcy, please—”
“I do.” His fingers pressed once against hers, deliberate, though the thorns had nearly encased his arms. “Do not grieve it.”
The vine at his throat tightened again.
She saw the exact instant the struggle in his body ceased to be resistance and became surrender. His gaze did not leave hers. Not even as the breath failed in him. Not even as the strength left his hand.
His eyes went vacant.
“No!” she cried.
The world continued in dreadful fragments. Lady Catherine’s voice, sharp and breaking, cried out behind them. “You see what she has wrought! That false woman, that pretender has killed him! You see—”
Harrowe’s answering roar drowned her out. “Stand back from her!”
Somewhere, a horse shrieked again. A groom sobbed. The carriage creaked.
Elizabeth heard none of it in any coherent sense. She felt only the slowing beneath her palm.
She had pressed her hand to his neck, to the place where the thorn had cut him and where his pulse had beaten so fiercely moments before.
It faltered.
