Page 156 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
She opened her hand, and her ferretworm crawled into her grasp. She pinned him between her knees, then dug in her reticule and removed a short-bladed heavy knife, the kind used to shuck oysters. She grabbed her ferretworm’s muzzle and bent his head back, exposing the underside of his neck.
The ferretworm’s neck was injured, a handful of small, crusty cuts. Lydia pressed the point of the knife into one, twisting and prying. The ferretworm squealed. For the first time, the French wyfe looked up. My own fingers tautened until the bones grated. Beside me, Miss Darcy moaned in disgust.
The tip of the knife caught. Blood beaded. This was not the clear gold I had seen when I took a few drops for Jane. The swell was thick and reluctant, a murky, jaundiced yellow. I remembered the Scottish maid saying draca blood must be given willingly.
Lydia giggled in an obscene, wanton crescendo. She dropped the knife and wiped her fingertips through the blood then thrust them deep in her mouth like they held a delicious sweet. Her back arched. Her face, caked with cracking white paint, stretched in a rictus of gasping delight.
There were disgusted exclamations from her audience. Wickham made no sound, but his lips twisted in distaste. Miss Darcy was still moaning. Even her distress sounded melodious.
Lydia stood and spun, her arms outstretched. It was the pose of a little girl rejoicing on a spring day, but she looked strong and cruel. “Do it!” she shouted.
Even without opening my awareness, I felt power rolling off her, icy and foul on the back of my neck.
Wickham pulled the cork from the vial. The scent of sour orange and bitter almond burned the air. Both the ferretworm and the firedrake reared, hissing. Wickham waved the vial near the drake’s nose. The drake fell on her side, convulsing and shaking.
The French wyfe screamed and reached for her drake, but Lydia cried, “Keep her back!” One of the guards dragged her away.
I had to stop this obscenity. I closed my eyes, and the power grinding at the back of my skull became visible, a black hurricane around the tenuous silver thread between the drake and the French wyfe. The drake’s awareness was a dimmed, frantic spark, fluttering and shaking from the venom.
I pressed at the blackness and was thrown back. When I helped the Longbourn drake repel Lydia’s attack, I had held Mamma’s hand, and her bond had given me a path to channel power. Here, I was too far from the Frenchwoman to touch her.
But the storm was weakening. The atmosphere warmed. Vile blackness washed away like mud in a mountain stream. The drake’s awareness settled, powerful and golden, even brighter than was usual.
Beside me, Miss Darcy’s moan was a hum—a tune dancing through flickers of melody. The song filled my mind, each note a shimmering sheet of color that nurtured the drake, and me as well. The purity was glorious, art and mathematical precision merged. My thoughts became exact, a fugue where each note was the inevitable product of what has come before.
The bond between the drake and the Frenchwoman was singing like a plucked string, resonating with memories and emotions. And with crystal clarity, I saw something new. The bond reached from the drake to the wyfe. Its strength was from the drake. It was part of the drake.
And, I understood.
“It is not working!” Lydia shouted. Her tone was furious.
I was unnecessary—Miss Darcy was blocking Lydia without me—so I opened my eyes. The glow of Miss Darcy’s power still filled me. I sensed Lydia’s dark strength fluttering, trying to survive in the colorful radiance.
Lydia’s jabbing finger accused the Frenchwoman. “I cannot break the bond. She is doing something. Make her stop!” The guard shook the Frenchwoman’s shoulders. Her head snapped back and forth, and she began crying. Lydia screamed, “Wickie! I need this drake!”
Wickham swore. An atrophied, lady-ish part of me stiffened, preparing to admonish him for improper language, even as he drew his pistol and fired.
The blast blew a palm-sized hole in the cloth of the Frenchwoman’s dress. I saw the curved inner sides of her small breasts, and a ragged red tunnel punched in her bare skin. Then it was blood.
The horror vanished as the silver crack of the broken bond overwhelmed my senses. Miss Darcy screamed, and her song stopped. Flaring silver fragmented into sparks that were swallowed by the blackness of Lydia’s power.
Darkness swirled into a whip and struck like a serpent. The firedrake gave one abbreviated cry.
Lord Wellington and Mr. Darcy were shouting. My vision cleared. The guard holding the Frenchwoman pushed her lifeless body to the ground, then cursed and wiped at the blood spattered on his legs.
But Lydia was smiling. She crooked a finger at the drake. Whining piteously, the creature crawled toward her, pushing across the ground with the elbows of her wings.
I sensed what Lydia had done. The whip had become a writhing linkage between her and the drake. It radiated fear, like a chain fashioned of cruelty and threats.
“You are bound now,” Lydia crooned. “My own firedrake.”
“She is not yours,” I said. The clarity from Miss Darcy’s song still held. I judged the atrocity I had witnessed. Distilled it into precise fury.
Lydia spun to me. “What do you know!”
“She chose her binding. That is gone. Now, she is only captive.” I was assembling the truth. “Have you never wondered why draca bind? Why such glorious creatures attach themselves to plodding humans for a lifetime? They treasure understanding. We are so strange to them that we make them curious. They collect memories of us across centuries. Across lives.”
That was the meaning of the crest on our family’s journal: the wyvern holding an empty chest. Marriage gold meant nothing. Bindings were not bartered, or purchased, or forced. Draca sought us out. But they were more considerate than humans would be. They chose only those who were willing.
