Between The Night And The Morrow — Austen Fanfic

Look here for the beginning of this story:
VI

Oberon’s private chambers were vast and glimmering.  Silver columns supported a distant shimmering ceiling, deep blue like the summer sky and sprinkled with golden stars.  Here and there, near the ceiling there was movement of golden winged fairies and around the silver columns, the sparkling furniture, other movement showed where other elves and fairies lurked, ready to attend to the king’s needs.

But Oberon opened his mouth, and bellowed, in the tone that made the thunder halt mid clap and brought frozen rain onto the most brilliant summer sky, “Out.  Out, everyone of you.”

For a moment, for just a moment, nothing happened, then, from every nook and cranny of the room, from behind furniture and column, from up the ceiling and walls, fairies came pouring, running in mindless terror towards the door of the room.

It seemed to Prince Darcy that the wind of their passage left him chilled and he retained no more than a vague impression of wing, of fleet foot, of golden hair.  One elf dropped a small gold harp, which tinkled to the floor in discordant tones.  He dove for it and got it just as the throng of his fellows was past, but this was enough to earn him another , “Out!” from Oberon, and the elf was gone so fast it seemed a miracle his golden hair didn’t catch fire.

Oberon stalked after them and slammed the door himself, leaving his chamberers on the other side.  Then he turned on Darcy, “That you should presume,” he said.  “That you should presume to question me, and in my throne room, too, in my assembly, that you should question me about mine and your grandmother’s private affairs.  That you dare confront me.  Do you think, then, Darcy, that you have the power to face me, should I choose to crush you.”

Darcy should have been – perhaps was expected to be – as frightened as those elves who had gone skittering out the door.  But he was not.

He could feel the not inconsiderable magic that his grandfather poured fourth with his speech, of course, in an attempt to make everyone in his path cower.  But Darcy had enough magic of his own to block that, and instead to hear to the king’s speech as words, and to look into Oberon’s eyes and see there…  What?  Fright surely, and something else, a sense of horrible loss, Darcy thought.  But loss at what?
“You will speak to me,” Darcy said.  “Because I must know.  That you told me, in all the storied years of your existence, you had one child only, my mother, and my mother died in childbirth, one of the few deaths that can blight our kind.  And therefore I am your heir and Georgiana after me.  I know you’ve had other children both of you, separately,” he said, as Oberon started to open his mouth.  “I am not so foolish as to think you hold to human fidelity.  Not when you live nearly forever.  BUT in those years, you had only one child the two of you.

“You told me so and so I believed.  But now I come across a woman who is descended from both of you.  So, unless my mother had a child before she died, a child with a mortal man…”  He paused.  “But I understood she never lived that long, and this young lady is descended from one of your descendants centuries ago.”  He looked up and saw that the pain was stronger than ever in the king’s eyes.  “I will not be fobbed off,” he said.  “I will not be condescended to.  I know one does not shout at kings, and yet I did.  I know one does not question kings and yet I must.  Can’t you see, grandfather, that if I must fight the traitor in the world, I must know as much as the traitor knows and more.  And it is clear to me the traitor knows more.  He said…  He gave as one of his reasons for deserting that fairykind was overtaken with half-bloods.  Grandfather,” he said.  And in his mind was those memories that had assailed him while dancing with the Bennet girl.  Till now he hadn’t thought of it in words, but now he realized what it must mean.  “Grandfather, it was not just Carolus Bingley he spoke of was it?”

The king’s lips compressed tight.  The king growled a half barked, “No,” and then added, “That he would dare, the impudent pup, as though he had it in him to comment on what his betters–”

“He dares, grandfather.  And I must know.  What does he speak of?”

Now Oberon stopped and looked at him.  “It will hurt you.  I would go a long way not to hurt you.”

And Titania clasped Oberon’s arm, and said, “And yet, I think we must tell him.  And also telling him, perhaps, my lord, will help prevent the same from happening yet again.”

“The same?” Darcy asked.

Oberon sighed.  He started pacing the room, his hands clasped behind his back.  “You know we’ve lived for millennia.”

“Yes Grandfather.”

“We are not as fertile as the mortals, and it stands to reason,” Oberon said.  “Since compared to us they’re like the mayfly, born only to die before the day is through.  If they had children only when we do, then their entire race would have died aborning.”  He sighed.  “But we do have children, and over the centuries, your grandmother and I have had six children.  Six princes and princesses of fairyland.”

“Six?!”
“And yet we have no heir.  Because lo, every time one of them comes of age, he comes in contact with human kind.”  Again Oberon sighed.  “I cannot tell you that I never felt the attraction of the mortal.  They live shortened lives, and therefore are they full of fire and passion, which we lack.  But they are not of us, and I do not understand why all of our children have chosen mortal love over immortality.  Leaving me without an heir.”

“Leaving us without descendants.  In fairyland.”

Darcy felt as though his legs had suddenly turned to water.  One thing was to think, another to know.  And he’d only thought vaguely and at the edge of his mind that perhaps his father was a mortal, while for years, for his whole life – the memory of being a child in the mortal world intruded and he amended – near his whole life, he’d known he was a pure blood.  A prince of fairyland spun of air and magic.  Now he found he too had coarse mortal stuff in him.  He backed onto a dainty chair, and dropped into it, heavily, as his legs gave out.  And hoping against hope, he asked, “My mother?”

“Your mother fell in love with George Darcy, a gentleman of private means who owned a property in what the mortals call Derbyshire.  Nothing to compare to my estates, nothing…  I don’t know what she saw in him, but she started haunting his lands when he was no more than a lad, and by the by she gave up her estate and her powers to marry him.  And she had two children.  And she died of birthing Georgiana.”  He took a deep breath.  “We’ve gone through this in the past and seen our beloved children go out into the world of mortals and die, and have children that die.  We could not bear it.  And so, we sent our agents to collect you and Georgiana and bring you home to us, where you could be brought up as your own kind and where you could still learn to use your magic, while young.”

Darcy sat a long time, as he absorbed this relation.  His head hurt, an unaccustomed weakness.  Didn’t only mortals heads hurt?  Was it his mortal half that hurt?  He felt tears prickle at his eyes and elves didn’t cry.  Not really.  He felt cold and hot by degrees, and totally unlike himself, only he could not remember what himself was.

From his lips, in a voice that was not like his own at all, came strangled words.  “Alas.  My entire life has been a lie.”