Elizabeth curled up in a ball, against the rubble of the collapsed tunnel. Her heart raced and she shivered. She had used too much power upon the walls. Now their escape was gone.
Think.
Fast.
Elizabeth needed to get them out quickly — how could she tunnel to the surface? Gentlemen occasionally rapidly tunneled through the ground to surprise their enemies in battle. So she must be able to do it now.
How?
Elizabeth's thoughts skittered. Her dress was torn with the bottom quarter gone and the rest dusty and ripped. Jane would be able to fix such a problem with a wave of her hands.
Faith! Her dress mattered not at all!
Think. How to tunnel to the surface?
Elizabeth brought in deep long breaths. Panic would not help. She was fated to rescue this man, and to care for him. Her intuition still told her they would succeed.
She could use magical pressure to force her way through the dirt and rocks, compacting them to make way for her as she rose. She had enough power in her that it might work, but it would be incredibly inefficient. That was not how a trained gentleman would act during a battle, but she must do what she could.
The man groaned. He groaned.
Elizabeth's eyes shot to his form.
She needed to take care of him. Digging through the earth to get to the surface must wait.
His body looked terrible. Burns across his face, his giant scraggly beard had been ripped from half his face. Dried blood matted his chin and had run down his chest in a rivulet that crustily stained his skin. Blood trickled from his hands. But the skin around his eyes was untouched. He had beautiful eyelashes and thick eyebrows.
She needed to wrap his bleeding hands and do something to stop the pain he would feel once he awoke. Elizabeth tried to stand, but her legs were shaky.
She crawled to him. The skin and muscles of her injured hand had completely closed and reformed in a matter of twenty minutes. Almost miraculous.
But no miracle had happened: The tendons of her right hand had not healed, and she could not open or close it.
So much power flowed in her. Once they escaped, the glow of their magic would lead their enemy inevitably to any hiding place.
Later. Panic and solve that later.
She needed to care for him. She sat next to him. He was so injured.
First, tear a strip from her dress. She could not use the working to fully clean her dress. But she knew a working that would remove all the debris from the fabric, including the blue dye that colored the thin cotton. She would have a bleached white bandage.
Elizabeth instinctively grabbed her dress to tear with her right hand, but the fingers barely twitched. A scary strange sensation. This was no permanent injury, but the wrong feeling of her hand not responding to her mind's commands unsettled her.
He groaned once more. His eyes snapped open.
They bored into her. Elizabeth's entire life had pointed towards this moment. She was pulled to touch him, to place her uninjured left palm against the skin of his uninjured cheek.
She did.
The world fell into place with a thud. It was like the dam of the stream to a watermill had been opened from a trickle to a flood, allowing the wheel to run at its full speed. Something that had not been there before was now present.
The two of them were almost one person. Her hand stayed against his cheek, and the magic she'd pulled from the well flowed into him, filling him up. It was mixed with her own essence, mixing them together. They were mixing together.
Her hand on his cheek, and the veins of magic in his face glowed as the rush of power overfilled her and flooded into him. Yet they were both now overfull, for he could no more support the vast stored power than she could.
His eyes held her, not speaking. His eyes swallowed her, she could see that his soul was touched as hers was.
It was like what Jane described when Elizabeth begged her to explain the conjugal act after she married Mr. Bingley. A mixing of essences. Deep. This was deep. Elizabeth cried, tears flowing down her face. She was not unhappy, nor happy. The magic was beyond emotion.
Magic coursed out her hands and into him. He sighed, both in relief and pain, and she placed her other hand over his naked chest. It glowed as well, as did his ribs and heart.
Slowly the glow faded as the imbalance of magic in the two was redressed. Elizabeth knew something had changed. The connection between the two was more than it had been before. She was changed as well as he.
Touch mattered.
He opened his lips. "Thank you."
The words were barely sounded, and his voice was rough, harsh, and unpracticed. He had not spoken for more than five years.
Startled, Elizabeth pulled away her hands in embarrassment. But the mixing of their essences, of their inner power, that did not cease. They were tightly bound together. She placed her hands back.
She had found him. At last she had found him.
He whispered, in a crusty voice, after a long time, "Come. You would come. Always I knew. You."
"Sooner. I should have come sooner — my father bound me. We are trapped. I collapsed the roof. I must find some plan. You are injured—"
He stroked her cheek. His arm shook. It strained as he lifted it. Elizabeth took his hand and held the palm against her cheek. The blood from where he still bled smeared onto her cheeks.
"Do not…" The flesh around his lips was cracked and burnt. He smiled. "You have come. Other matters will resolve themselves."
"I do not know why I am crying. I am happy. I cannot stop. I have never cried like this."
He smiled at her. His body was beginning to heal, as the magic flowed through him. The red burn on his face faded into a healthy tan, and the ripped skin on his face closed as the skin on her hand had.
"No time." The desperation built in Elizabeth again. That premonition which had led her here came again, saying that speed was needed. "I must pull us both up to the surface."
Filled with a new strength, she stood and tried to help him to his feet. But he could not stand. His muscles were entirely atrophied, and when he tried to push himself up with his arm, the limb collapsed beneath him, and he cried out in pain.
"Oh! Do not try." Elizabeth took a deep breath. "You are yet under my care. I can do everything."
He relaxed and stopped struggling to stand. He said in his raw whisper — but it was smoother than his first words — "I shall never mind your help. I have not moved for many years, and all my potentia was bled from me. Though I ought have been, I was not cognizant that I would be so weak, so helpless — when you triggered that trap. That was a torture — fear you would die."
Elizabeth shaped a working, binding it so that any excess power would bleed off into the air. She had learned that lesson now. In response to her will, his body rose in a heap from the floor. There was no resistance from him to her working. She could levitate him as easily as she could levitate herself, for their magic and their souls were connected, as though they were one person.
Something was wrong. There was resistance, not from him, but from the very dome they were trapped within. A force pressed against her magic, like the wardings in the square mile of the City of London that prevented the use of great magics against the will of the merchants who dominated the city.
It was only because she could work upon his body as easily as her own that she could effortlessly use the levitation working.
She needed to force her way through the rocks that had collapsed the entrance. She could not let this warding stop her.
Elizabeth's legs were only half jellied now, and she drunkenly stumbled to the pile of rocks that had fallen in, completely blocking the entrance. He floated behind her and Elizabeth tried to use her magic to pull the rocks into the room to create a space so she could enter into the collapsed tunnel. The warding would not be there, and she could then use magic to explosively force them to the surface.
Nothing happened.
She felt the working, but her desired action required too much concentrated power. There was a block, and her power could not coalesce.
Hurry.
The intuition deep within spoke: Hurry!
She could not fail when so close. He was helpless, and she needed to save him. She would have no hope to defeat such a man as would come.
Elizabeth gathered all of the force in her will, and she struck the rocks, to smash them aside.
Nothing happened.
Elizabeth desperately gathered her magic once more, trying to use everything in her being, all of the massive flowing power, hoping to overpower the wardings, even though she knew that would not work, as they were anchored into a ley line. She had no hope to dig the rocks away by hand in time.
A shaky hand touched her shoulder from behind, and he used his will to harmlessly disperse her effort to gather her power.
"Such will not succeed," he croaked.
"We must. We are trapped, like mice. He comes!"
Elizabeth's shaky legs made her sit again. She felt exhausted and full of sweat, and by some mutual use of will to control the levitation, he dropped next to her.
She looked him in the eyes. "I feel it. He comes fast."
"I believe you."
What to do? What to do?
When she tried to force her way through it, she felt that the ward covered the entire area of this room. Why could the runes that focused it not have been burnt away by the fireball?
The man who built this prison must not have been so confident that he could control his prisoner by draining him. Even had he maintained sufficient power to use a working, he still could not have escaped due to the warding.
He touched her cheek again, and everything felt right somehow, even though Elizabeth cried in frustration.
He was as unembarrassed as Adam with Eve by his nakedness. There was no fear in his words. "I never felt so scared, so pained as when you tripped the trap. I trust you. Even though we have never spoken in advance of today, we have a bond tighter than any siblings." He smiled at the rubble in front of the collapsed tunnel. "I trust you, and we shall escape."
She looked into his compelling eyes, and the certainty of their escape remained, along with the need to hurry. And as he spoke, she felt a release. This was not solely her burden. She was not alone.
She cried, now safe to say it aloud. "If only I had been less impetuous. I should not have collapsed the tunnel. I was stupid. I knew better — I panicked, and—"
"Shhhhh." He smiled.
She smiled back at him. The anxiety in her stomach was no match for his smile. "How can you be so calm, so unscared?" The hand she had held against her cheek before was completely healed, with just a mark for the scar. The other one still bled, and Elizabeth took that hand in her hand, and pressed his palm against her cheek. She felt his blood smear again against her face. And she felt the magic flow between them. The magic of their impossible bond — of the proof that they were connected, that their souls belonged next to each other, filled her.
"I always felt you. I have had no other sensation beyond pain but our bond to attend to. I know you in a deeper way than I know myself. Now that we are together, anything is possible."
He tried to draw in his magic for a minor working that would not be blocked by the wardings upon the chamber. She felt his effort through their connection. But while his core continued to produce magic, the gateways which allowed a gentleman to shape his potentia were as atrophied as his muscles.
The power spasmed away, leaving pain. He hurt, and Elizabeth felt his hurt. Sweat beaded again on his forehead. The deep ache stayed where he had strained the magical gates. Elizabeth could feel that.
The rocks she sat on were hard, and the glare of the glowing ball of light she'd brought to the center of the room was painfully bright. Dust hung on the air, and she used a soft magic to filter it from the air so she could breathe without choking.
"I can rescue us." She whispered, "If you believe in me."
"It goes against my grain to leave a gentlewoman to perform the part of the knight errant while I am her burden." He whispered softly, "I fear me, that you shall need to carry me."
She looked helplessly into his eyes. But despite the beauty of his presence, she felt the building need to act. To escape.
"I have a thought." He frowned and began to gather his will again.
"Do not hurt yourself!"
"This working uses different portae." Elizabeth felt him draw in his magic and release it through his eyes. He activated mage sight, and as he did so Elizabeth realized that magic would flow through his eyes constantly, before being drained through the pathways in his limbs, so those gates still were healthy. There was something very different about his mage sight than her own.
He looked first at Elizabeth, tilting his head. His voice filled with wide wonder. "So much potentia."
"Your magic. What flowed from you. A reservoir. Demons must have fed upon you — you have been drained to feed a demon."
He stared at her, as though in awe. "Can you see it? How our power is mixed and merged and become the same? Such beauty."
Half consciously, Elizabeth activated her own mage sight once more. She saw the tendrils and strands again. She saw how their linked hands produced a flow that went up her arm and made her tingle. As though they were near one person.
There were tears in his eyes as well as in hers. He squeezed her hand, intimately. "Every suffering I endured was worth experiencing this."
"I have not yet rescued you! In the ceiling. What do you see? A weakness?"
"Whilst we are together, and bound in this way, every difficulty will be overcome. I do not worry. Do not worry."
He looked up at the ceiling with his eyes. He studied. Elizabeth would have panicked, except she could sense his confidence did not shake.
"As I suspected. The wards have clear flaws which we can exploit. This prison was constructed by a clever amateur, who could not seek help from another more versed in such matters, lest his crime be discovered. We could overpower these wards if we struck together in the right place, but a better way can be found, as that would not be quickly accomplished, and would leave you and I in a state of exhaustion."
He slightly squeezed her hand that gripped his. "I require your aid. Invalid as I am, I cannot accomplish this working alone. You must shape the potentia with your will."
"I cannot learn a new working fast enough."
"We are bound together — do you feel that?" She felt how at his willing the power in her responded, shaping itself into a tiny working that sparked in the air.
"Oh!" Almost unsettling, to feel her own magic, her inner being, shaped by another will. But as he trusted her, she trusted him. "More than passing strange."
"I ought have explained first. Yet I feel as though—"
"Shhhh." The reality of this man was more perfect than she had imagined when she schemed to rescue him. "Use me as you wish."
He screwed his face into a concentrated expression as he lay upon the ground beside her, naked.
He pulled on the magic inside her again. He whispered out words in Latin, and then a spell was shaped by her power. She followed his lead, pressing her power into the working whose shape he controlled. They infused the ceiling with a thin stream of magic, too weak for the wardings to respond.
He was clever. Not just powerful. She had no idea there was so much to understand about the nature of rocks. The spell's energy filled the ground, mixing magic into the twenty feet of dirt and stones above them and then into the living grass of the sunny meadow. The spell let them feel the sun and see the waving grass.
He sighed, in happiness. "So beautiful…"
The spell revealed a dozen peasants on the surface, looking curiously at the blackened hole where the well had been, and at the line of collapsed dirt where the tunnel used to be.
He said, "We cannot let them see us as we leave."
"I am very good with invisibility spells. I think I am. I learned all I could, so that I could rescue you safely. I can make us both invisible, at least against commoners — but how shall we escape?"
"You can? That is fortunate…my trainings were not focused on hiding. So much potentia is betwixt us that we shall never hide from our enemy, but we can flee faster than he can follow, at the first at least. You gained understanding of the structure of the stones? Through my working."
"That spell was a work of genius!" Elizabeth clapped enthusiastically. "No spell I have used informed me of so many particulars!"
"I cannot remember… you must act for me, as I am yet weak. First, cloak us both with invisibility, we must not leave knowledge behind which can be disguised. Invisibility is an internal working, the warding will not bring it to naught."
Elizabeth pulled on their combined magic without letting his will guide hers. It had become an instinctive thing, not a matter of chanting, for her to hide herself. The process was different with the far vaster power, and Elizabeth paused, contemplating how to keep a gentleman watching from being able to see them.
They burned like a great torch flaming magic.
Then an intuitive idea came to her, born of her years of hiding under her father's nose. She expelled yet more magic out from them, but pulled it into them in the same way. The image cancelled out. If a mage was not too close, they would appear like the background flows of magic. At Elizabeth's will the power shaped itself. "I believe we cannot be seen now, even by our enemy."
"I as well. That was astonishing — a genius for such spells!"
A part of Elizabeth would have danced happily. His praise meant much to her. But she remained focused. "Now, what must I do?"
"My other hand. Take it. Let us grip each other by both hands."
They did.
"You feel it, can you not? I can feel your potentia. You can feel mine."
"You are like Papa, too educated to call it magic."
"Will it to be shaped, not touching us, but a hardened mass all around us, carrying air and freedom. Can you feel the way my potentia wishes it to be shaped?"
"I can feel. I can feel you."
"Transform its shape. Impose your mind and structure the potentia. Then speak the words following me."
Elizabeth nodded.
He spoke the Latin spell, after each word he paused, letting her repeat after him. She had not been taught — Latin was a matter for gentlemen. After Papa had her bled, Elizabeth tried to learn it from Papa's dictionaries and old grammar books, but she had learned little as she needed to hide. Through the bond she had with him, she felt the exact accents and tones with which he spoke. Elizabeth spoke with his same accent.
The hardening snapped about them. Any physical object could strike them, and so long as they still had magical energy, the pressure could not hurt them. Once Elizabeth knew she could hold the spell with her will permanently, she looked at him. "And now?"
"There is no shaped working for this. It is a matter of will — I can only guide you, the will must be yours. Do you feel those rocks and the pouch of air where the dirt was worn away by flows of water, above the roof of our prison? A boulder stands three feet above the bricks of the roof with only air beneath it. Pull on the rock with all the potentia we have seeped out into the ground, it shall crack through the roof of the dome, and destroy the warding with the roof. Once you do so, follow my lead so we can reach the surface safely — my portae will not shape the spell needed, but you can."
Elizabeth nodded, wide eyed. New fear flooded her body bringing her fully to alertness. This would collapse the whole roof upon them. Then she would need to follow his lead to force their way through twenty feet of dirt with the magic, and if she lost control of the hardening of their skin, they would die. And if she lost control of the invisibility they would be seen.
If she did not bring enough force down upon the rock, it would not crack the roof, and they would remain trapped.
Fast. Do it fast. She felt deep inside time was running out.
She took deep breaths and closed her eyes.
"You shall succeed at this, as you have at all else." His voice sharpened. "Now. The time is now."
Elizabeth brought all the potentia that had seeped down to the roof onto the boulder pulling it. But instead of falling as one big rock, her grasp was uneven, and the boulder split.
For a terrified second she thought she had failed, and the force would not break through the dome of the roof.
Crack!
The ball of light which she'd cast earlier let her see the terrifying rupture as a massive rock broke through the roof and fell to bounce and shatter on the ground a yard from them, spraying them with unfelt granite splinters. The bricks fell in a widening circle as the whole roof dissolved.
Elizabeth's brain almost refused to accept what she saw — roofs did not do such things — the light was gone, buried under debris.
The rocks and dirt collapsed upon them, and the defensive working protected their bodies, even though in a seeming instant they were so buried that she could not breathe in and out.
His will moved her potentia so it could displace the rocks pressing down upon them, and then allow them to reform under them. She followed his lead to place a levitation upon them both that propelled them towards the surface. Gripping his hand, Elizabeth called upon her power to do as he was willing her.
Nothing happened.
He squeezed her hand, even though they could not talk.
She had only done half of the working. She needed to link the displacement above them to the release beneath them a moment later when they had traveled above the rocks.
There was no time to calm again. Elizabeth needed to activate the working correctly this time.
His hand was squeezing hers, and his confidence in her radiated into Elizabeth.
She gripped with their joint potentia the rocks around them, and then she pushed the rock and dirt beneath them as they levitated into the suddenly empty space. First slow, and then faster, and faster, flying upwards like a cannonball.
All was completely dark. Then they crunched through the ground with a roaring muted by the protective spell.
Her stomach flipped at the sensation of the extremely fast movement.
Then in the sky. The ground dwindled at an incredible pace, becoming more and more distant. The peasants gathered in confusion around the ruins of the well and tunnel.
Him!
A gentleman flew towards the well at a furious pace. He skimmed above the oak treetops, his own working of invisibility upon him, but the power in them both let them perceive him through it. He was too small and far beneath them for the details of his appearance to be seen. They felt his power, which was bright, and mixed with the stolen power of his former captive. He had the sulfur taint of a demon's presence.
Elizabeth felt terror. He would see through the magic which hid them.
But her deepest sense promised success. She felt in her heart that he could not track them.
The man landed in front of the burnt entrance to the well and he disappeared into it.
They were far above, flying higher and higher, undetected. It seemed a bare moment until they were thousands of feet above the trees.
Each tree became smaller and smaller until they blended into a vast forest. They were higher than the hilltops, and Elizabeth could see all the mountains of the Peak District. They rose above the very mountains, looking down on the landscape of Derbyshire from an incredible height.
He laughed with exhilaration, and Elizabeth laughed with him.
"Slow down, stop — we are at a great enough height." He laughed again. "We already can only breathe because of the protective workings about us. I never have flown so high! The potentia flooded into us from that reservoir. So high. We are at least several miles."
Elizabeth giddily exclaimed, "'Tis perfect. And we are free. I feel completely safe. I know we are safe — you saw him? We escaped barely in time."
"Some anger sits upon me. It begs me to return, to fight him. But I would suffer a defeat within my present state. One day, I will find him once more. I shall learn all secrets from him, and strike him dead."
This pronouncement chilled Elizabeth. "No, do not seek vengeance. He defeated you once."
"Mayhap, he did. Yet, I deep in me feel certain he did by stratagem and trick, not through fair combat."
"He will trick you again — war is between him and us, and in war all is fair. Do not pretend a defeat through stratagem is less a defeat."
William was silent.
"Be happy you are free."
"Aye! And you and I are hand in hand, side by side. Bound. You have more significance to me than all. Even than vengeance."
Elizabeth embraced him compulsively, and though his arms were weak, he embraced her in turn. He was yet naked, but like Eve with Adam, it was right that they be there together. The potentia in them both kept oxygen and warmth around them despite the height. They looked out over all England.
A glorious view. The sun, the great dome of the sky, the flocks of birds flying above the thin white clouds, black specks like ground black pepper. Far out Elizabeth saw a hint of blue sea.
Her breath slowed, her fear and the energy that had let her succeed slowly drained away leaving her weak, though she was yet filled with power, but now that she was so closely linked to him, it was not too much power, but the correct sum.
"What is your name?" Elizabeth spoke softly. "I always have wondered."
"I know not."
"What?"
"I am possessed with no knowledge… no memory of before I was imprisoned." He seemed remarkably unbothered by this declaration, just as he was unbothered by his continuing nakedness and weakness. "However… William. Call me William."
AN:
So here we go! The Missing Prince is finally publishing here.
It was one of my favorite stories to write, though the Regency with magic setting does make it considerably less Pride and Prejudicy than most of my novels. I hope you all love reading it as it comes out.
If you want to support the writer/ find out what happened now instead of waiting, the book is available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple books. Just search for the title and my name "Timothy Underwood". And the way I uploaded this book to ff net stripped out most of the italics, so you actually would get a slightly superior reading experience if you buy the book...
Anyway, I was experimenting with having each scene be a separate chapter when I divided up this book, and I didn't bother to bunch them up again when I uploaded them. So later on in the book mostly, I'm going to occasionally publish two or even three chapters together on the same day to make sure you get a decent amount of stuff to read with each update.
Enjoy!