Page 160 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
The guards that had held him were gone. Wickham was gone.
Where Wickham had stood, three parallel gouges were torn through the grass and earth. I recognized the pattern. Those same claw marks had decorated my collarbone after our drake landed on my shoulder. But this claw spanned the better part of two yards.
A matching set of three cuts tore the ground where the guards holding my husband had stood. A hat remained, and a broken belt with a sword, and a sleeve with a flesh-colored glove. No, it was a hand.
Wickham’s boot lay on the ground at my feet. The heavy leather was sheared off ankle-high, as if by a huge razor. The boot was not empty.
Heat was scorching my forehead. I looked up.
The meadow beyond, which had held twenty armed men, was scoured to burning bedrock that glowed like coals. The brook had vanished. Water burbled over a rim of smoking turf then hissed into violent plumes of steam. Where the wagon had stood, a smoking puddle of golden liquid flowed lazily over slumping rock.
“What happened?” I asked.
Lydia pushed to her feet, not far from where Wickham had stood. Her ferretworm dangled from one hand like a child’s toy, squealing in protest.
Lydia’s face turned to the sky. “Oh. I feel him. He is beautiful.”
The silver thread had drawn my eyes upward. The clouds were swirling—burning away like steam vanishing from a kettle. The blue sky opened.
Higher than clouds, scarlet wings soared in a slow curve. The silhouette was delicate and long winged, more like a drake than the muscular solidness of a wyvern. But so far above us. So large.
“A dragon,” I said. The myths were true after all.
Child.
The voice was gentler now. The sense of wisdom and age was overwhelming, but it was not loud in the mundane, human sense of the word.
I choose you. Loch bairn. The Child of the Lake.
The cool silver of binding flooded my heart and filled the hollows of my chest. And it passed through me. The cord stretched from me to where my husband knelt.
Behind me, a flurry of gunshots rang out.
Some of Wickham’s false militia were pointing at the sky. Others were shooting into the forest. From the foliage, the Britons’ muskets spat puffs of sooty orange as they fired back.
The monster crawler was running on rippling legs toward the forest. Other large crawlers had emerged from rocky areas and were racing behind it. Sent by Lydia to attack the Britons.
A hand touched my shoulder. I turned to Lydia.
“Give him to me!” Her eyes were ecstatic, her mouth grinning. I had not seen her so happy since she was three years old and learned she could unwrap gifts by herself.
Below the joyful smile, the skin of her chin hung in sickly jowls. Her lips had cracked. Dark purple blood stained her teeth. Her gaze wandered across the features of my face, skittering past my eyes.
“He cannot be given,” I said. “Or taken.”
“Ican take him!” She cried. “I can be stronger. I will be Empress!”
She raised her ferretworm high and stabbed her knife deep into his neck. She dragged the blade down, yanking inch by inch to cut the body open. The dying creature’s curdling yellow blood soaked her hand. She lifted the twitching remains, steaming flesh dangling, and let the blood fall into her open mouth and over her chin.
“Lydia, stop.” I forced the words through horror and revulsion. “It is over.” Her power was growing, bloated with the false strength of hurt and death,astonishing and violent while it attacked the binding that pierced my chest. But it was a wisp against the strength of the being who bound me.
Lydia lifted her yellow-stained hands to the sky. “Come to me!”
Far above, the dragon had finished his turn and was gliding toward us. Around us, the earth broke as small foul crawlers wriggled out and crawled toward me.
“Iam the strongest sister!” she cried. “Iwill be Empress!Iwill burn everyone!I—oh.”
Her voice stopped with an arrested gasp. She turned to me, eyes wide.
