The weakness deepened with the next step. His sight remained clear; the world did not reel. Yet something essential drained from him with each attempt to advance, as though the effort of standing upright were no longer fully his to command. His arms hung heavier. His knees answered him by degrees so small they might have gone unnoticed, had he not been watching himself so closely.
He stopped again, his heart pounding as if he had run a mile.
The ground ahead was broken.
Not by hedge or ditch or any deliberate boundary, but by a long, jagged fissure torn through the earth itself—as though floodwater or tremor had split the land open and never been mended. The edges were raw. The soil beneath lay exposed, dark and uneven, falling away into a depth he could not determine.
He knew it at once—not by detail, but by recognition. Hertfordshire lay beneath his feet, but what rose on the far side belonged to another order of knowing. In the distance, that same mountain lifted against the horizon, its shape unmistakable. He had seen it before, surely! From afar. Never like this.
At the edge of the rupture stood a thorn tree. It did not mark a boundary in the common sense—neither hedge nor orchard nor fence—yet it claimed the place with an authority that halted his gaze. He could not have said why. Only that his attention fixed upon it and would not be persuaded elsewhere.
At its base stood a woman, turned from him.
Her cloak hung loosely from her shoulders, hair snarled free of its pins by wind or neglect. He could not see her face, and the absence did not feel accidental. As though to look upon her directly would require more than he yet possessed.
But he knew her.
Not by feature or dress, not by any detail he could later name, but by the certainty of her presence. The line of her shoulders struck him with a familiarity that burned, like the sudden recall of a name learned long ago and never spoken since.
“Madam,” he said, meaning only courtesy.
She did not turn.
“I am not—” He faltered. Whatever ought to follow refused coherence. The words he reached for—explanation, entitlement, insistence—collapsed before they could take form, as though they did not apply here.
“You are not real,” he said instead, the words brittle, offered as resistance rather than belief.
She turned.
Not all atonce, but enough that he knew her utterly. Her face would not resolve—featureless in that peculiar way of dreams—yet recognition struck him with a force no clarity could have improved. She lifted her hand toward him. Not imploring. Not urgent. Simply held out, as one might indicate the only course that exists.
The ground between them yawned open. A raw break in the earth, torn wide by water and upheaval, its edges crumbling still. He saw at once what no courage could alter: there was no bridge, no footing, no leap to be made. Not by a man. Not by a horse. Not by any means he had ever trusted. His breath staggered, sharp and panicked, and the old instincts rose in him—measure, retreat, command.
“What is this?” The words scattered even as he spoke them—Netherfield, the morning, duty, the ordinary course of things—each excuse failing the moment it touched the air. “I want nothing to do with any of this!”
Her hand did not withdraw.
Something in him broke loose then—not fear, not pain, but the last, desperate motion of assent. He stepped forward without ground to receive him, reaching for what could not yet be reached—and the strength that had held him upright, intact, certain of himself, simply ceased.
His arms pinwheeled as he stumbled backward, but no power of man could save him now. Whatever had held him together—muscle, balance, the habit of standing—gave way all at once. He did not feel himself fall. There was simply no ground left to meet him.
There was no suffering in it. Only the certainty that Fitzwilliam Darcy had ended—not because he failed, but because he had answered.
Darcy bolted upright inhis bed.
The chamber lay in darkness, the familiar lines of it momentarily strange. His heart beat hard against his ribs, not from terror but from a furious need tounderstand. He dragged in a breath that felt sharper than it ought, and pressed his hand against the mattress as if to reassure himself of its substance.
Brutus stirred, rising halfway before settling again at a wordless sound from Darcy’s throat.
Itwas only a dream. A wild one—one that was already fading from memory.
Yet even as he told himself so, the image of the stone—newly uncovered, cold beneath his hand—was a sliver that refused to fade. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose, crossing to the window, though the night beyond offered nothing but darkness and the faintest suggestion of movement in the trees.
He stood there longer than he meant to, his thoughts circling restlessly, seeking purchase.
Utter insanity,he told himself again, with more force this time.
And yet sleep did not return.
