Page 110 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“Reports?” Mary blinked, her posture crooked as she took her weight off her hurt leg. “I do not know. He gives her orders…” Georgiana slipped an arm around her waist, supporting her.
“She does, then,” I said. “She is his swiftest, most lethal asset. He uses her for his most crucial tasks. She fought you, and won, and learned the flute is destroyed. She came here to kill Jane, and could not find her, but she thinks she fought and killed a great wyfe’s wyvern. She will report back. He is a general. He has instilled obedience in her.”
“Elizabeth,” Darcy cautioned. His arm was half extended, just short of where Gramr’s blade wove through the air between us, black serrations shining, my hand twisting it as if it had a mind of its own. Finally, he stepped lightly around the blade and touched my shoulder. “Put away the dagger. Grieve your mother.”
“I can find Napoleon,” I told him. “When we flew over London, I saw his forces. It was like a map, a window to his thoughts. A web where every strand reveals the spider. When I find him, I will find the perfumer.”
Darcy shook his head. “He is protected by two countries’ massed armies. You cannot reach him, and it is wrong to try. The perfumer has erred. She revealed our enemy’s weakness. Bonaparte fears that the great wyves will unite.Thatis how we win. You must stay with Georgiana so, together, we can find Emma.”
The conflict between my internal selves spiraled. Grief and fury ground together like millstones, flaking and splitting.
“Win?” Mary spat bitterly. She shrugged off Georgiana and waved her deformed spectacles furiously. Her eyes were reddened wrecks, her face tear-streaked and bloody. “I wanted to kill the perfumer. You would have, Lizzy, but I am pathetic. Now the colonel is dead, and Mamma is dead, even thehorsesare dead…”
Georgiana grabbed Mary’s windmilling arms, holding her until shecollapsed into a moaning embrace. Darcy began a speech about revenge and war and old prophecies, I was not even sure for whom.
Give me your grief, the mad voice whispered.I taste it. I will remember it. You will be free.
“My grief is myown!” I shouted it this time, brandishing the dagger, and a memory shifted my grip, pressing the pad of my thumb to the flat of the blade. The polished surface touched my skin—
It was cold, absurdly cold, impossibly cold, a chill that burrowed up the tendons of my hand and rode my veins to my heart. My grief and loss, those barbaric tortures, retreated to a remote place, crystallizing into an abstraction so alien it held only analytic interest.
My wyfe of war, Fènnù whispered in ecstasy, and a chorus of past wyves sighed in relief and despair.
In the field, Yuánchi shuddered. His head dragged up, turning blindly toward me, but I felt our binding flare in glorious brilliance. His voice was undiminished, and it thundered in my mind,Elizabeth Darcy Bennet. Come back.
The words barely touched me. An icy clarity sorted my thoughts. A revelation. Even Mary, who could argue for an hour why a mouse should not be punished for gnawing into a flour sack, had seen the truth. Victimhood was unjust. Grief was unfair, weak, and wrong. There was only vengeance.
You are not a victim, Fènnù’s crazed voice said in my skull.You are my wyfe of war.
Yuánchi’s voice roared again,Help her!This time, the others heard. Mary and Darcy winced, stopped their argument, and turned to me.
“Your hand,” Darcy said, his face blanked by shock.
My thumb was cut. I had not felt it; the dagger’s edge was that perfect. Blood wandered over and among my knuckles, insinuating its slippery presence between my palm and Gramr’s leather-wrapped hilt. I held the dagger higher, admiring how the red reflected the light.
“Give me the dagger,” Darcy said, his hand outstretched. I read the tension in the muscles of his palm, the wariness of his stance. He thought he was soliciting a madwoman. Behind him, Mary and Georgiana were wide-eyed.
“I am not mad,” I reassured him. “This war is mad.”
“What do you mean?” Darcy said cautiously, edging closer. Gramr flicked between us. I was adjusting the angle, watching how it made my blood run, though not yet along the blade…
“Mary is right,” I said. “This war is unfair. This pain is unfair. It should end.”
Georgiana lifted an appealing hand. “The war will end when we heal the song.”
“Thatis mad,” I pointed out. “The flute is lost. The song cannot be healed.” I slashed the blade through the air to point out the infested field. It was not a threat—the tip passed at least an inch short of Darcy’s cheekbone—but he ducked anyway, which made me smile. “We are too late. The blight spreads.”
“Lizzy, I was not thinking when I spoke,” Mary said. “Give Mr. Darcy the dagger.”
“I cannot,” I told her. “I need it to end the war. We thought we needed three great items, but we were wrong. The dagger is sufficient. We thought we needed three wyves. We do not.Iam sufficient.”
“The dagger is affecting you,” Mary said. “Fooling your mind. Look!” She pointed to Yuánchi, dragging himself to us, his tremendous shoulders shivering, his blind head high as if he could see through the ragged, weeping black scales where his prismatic eyes had been. “You can do nothing alone. Yuánchi is too spent to fly, let alone battle an army.”
I inverted the dagger. Blood trickled down the glossy blade. As it crossed each hidden symbol, smoke spit and hissed. Curious, I turned the blade horizontal. The symbols formed an uneven pattern—music, in some ancient form.
“That is not what I meant!” Mary cried, her voice speeding to a desperate staccato. She gestured frantically at Darcy. “Do not let her sing. She will summon Fènnù.”
I laughed. Papa had loved my singing—I had a pleasant voice for a country lady—but these symbols were a cipher. She might as well tell me to sing by staring at a box of bolts.
