Page 98 of The Lost Prophecy

“So it appears,” he confirmed.

Mrs Hurst joined them and examined the glowing rim, then placed herself where her skirts concealed Fletcher’s hands from the nearest guests.

“The final clause,” she murmured. “Is it there?”

Darcy gave her no response. He had encountered fragments of that clause in three manuscripts and rejected all of them. One promised salvation through sacrifice, another described an exchange of natures, while the oldest suggested that the vessel itself was a part of the rite. None was complete. Each had been copied from an earlier source by authors who either misunderstood the language or feared committing its meaning to paper.

The bowl in Fletcher’s hands was not a copy.

Miss Elizabeth watched the silent exchange among them and drew herself upright. “When I agreed to assist you, Mr Darcy, you promised there would be no further concealment of facts which concerned me. Unless the bowl has chosen this moment to comment on the weather, I believe that promise applies.”

“It concerns the binding ritual.”

“Then it concerns me directly.”

The knowledge written in the silver offered Darcy everything he had desired through more than three centuries, and it placed the price within the power of the one woman from whom he could never bear to demand it. He had survived hunger, loss, solitude, and the long corruption of time because endurance required only persistence. Hope was more dangerous. Hope invited a man to imagine happiness and then discover what he might become in reaching for it.

Miss Elizabeth waited, neither pleading nor retreating. That steadiness had awakened the bowl. She had entered Wickham’s trap by her own choice, trusted Darcy’s promise, refused to surrender her judgement, and protected him by forcing her own heart to calmness, even when death advanced on her. Darcy had rejected the ordinary fulfilment of the prophecy because it would purchase his humanity through her conversion, and the vessel had responded not to blood, but to refusal.

It had recognised consent before any of them understood what it required.

“Very well.” Darcy placed one hand under the rim, and it grew warmer against his palm. “The first passage describes the True Blood, the immortal master, and the free offering which no command may obtain. Those words agree with the accounts I have already studied.”

Miss Elizabeth inclined her head to the remaining characters. “And the part which none of you wishes to explain?”

Fletcher rotated the bowl. A narrow shape appeared among the inscription, unmistakably the outline of the small ceremonial knife which had once travelled disguised as a fruit knife to Miss Elizabeth’s chamber door without invitation.

Darcy translated slowly, because each word destroyed a certainty he had carried for centuries. “When the True Blood freely yields one drop through the vessel’s blade during the rite of binding, the immortal shall return to mortal life. The True Blood shall remain unchanged, and their union shall stand before blood, law, and time.”

Miss Elizabeth’s fingers closed around her fan. “Unchanged?”

“Yes.”

“She does not become a vampire?”

“No.”

“And the immortal becomes wholly human?”

“This is what the inscription states,” he confirmed.

Miss Elizabeth considered the bowl, whose glow had settled into a quiet radiance. “The knife it brought to my room was not intended to murder me, nor to protect me. It was attempting to provide instructions.”

Fletcher lowered his face, though Darcy suspected he was concealing a response unworthy of a family valet. Miss Bingley made no such attempt.

“The creature has dragged itself through half the house, assaulted an officer, and destroyed thirty-eight glasses,” she murmured. “Naturally, its final occupation is offering literature.”

Miss Elizabeth ignored her. “One drop of my blood, freely given into the bowl during this binding ritual, would restore you to human life while leaving me as I am.”

“Yes.”

“And the binding itself?”

Darcy forced himself to meet her steady regard. “It is not an arrangement entered for convenience and dissolved when its purpose has been served. Under our law it is marriage, absolute and permanent. The words concerning blood, law, and time recognise the pair as bound before every member of our world.”

“But we would both be human afterwards.”

“The law would continue to recognise the union even if neither of us were subject to its other provisions.”