Chapter 4
“Magdala!”
Magdala squeezed her eyes shut and stopped, her boots scraping on the pea gravel. Without turning her head, she said, “What, Julian?”
Julian ran up beside her, offering an impossibly white smile. “Are you coming to the ball tonight?”
“Yes. I’m on duty.”
“You’re not going to tell Huxley, are you?” he asked, falling into step beside her.
Magdala hurried, trying to outpace him. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“It was an accident,” Julian keened, jogging to keep up. “Forget what I said about letting the townspeople get at the prince; I didn’t mean it.”
But Magdala was no fool and, unlike Julian, not so easily convinced to believe lies. Pushing his pleas aside, she marched into the house.
Magdala’s charge, Angelonia, was a willowy half-pixie woman with ice-blonde hair, jutting shoulder blades, and a pair of iridescent wings hanging down her back like a cicada.
She sat at the vanity in her confectionery-like room, draped in a translucent pink dressing gown that left very little of her perfect, petite body to the imagination.
A maid stood behind Angelonia, pulling her hair severely back from her forehead, which lent her the strange illusion of having no hair at all.
This suited Angelonia. Everything suited Angelonia. She was half pixie, after all.
“That, there, see?” Angelonia said, pointing to Magdala. “I want my skin powdered until it is as fair as hers, but without the freckles. Freckles are not fashionable.”
Magdala smiled tightly and held her tongue, as she was trained to do, but she thought, I wonder if being an insufferable little tyrant is fashionable?
Stationing herself by the door, her hands folded in front of her, Magdala was an ornate vase—present but insignificant.
Angelonia chatted lazily to the maid, but Magdala suspected that the maid was thinking about other things like, perhaps, an entire evening to herself while Magdala was toiling at the ball, protecting a woman no one would ever dream of harming.
Magdala had seen enough of the gentry to determine they were lazy, fastidious creatures without two brain cells to share amongst them.
Last year, the fashion had been blue silk dresses with high waistlines, and so every ball she attended was an ocean of identical blue silk, until the duchess of somewhere or other wore a red dropped waist gown that showed the tops of her breasts, the skirt slashed to her knee, and then the whole assembly morphed into a rose garden of heaving bosoms and knobby knees.
The men wore black or blue coats—turning the smoking room into a giant bruise—shaved their jawlines, and smiled ivory smiles while plotting what to have for dinner or what duchess they might seduce - if they could tell any of the duchesses apart, which Magdala doubted.
Sometimes, Magdala wondered darkly if a war would be good for these people, shake them out of their manor houses and force them to pick up swords and use their minds, or whatever was left of their minds.
A faint knock on the door caught Magdala’s attention. The maid’s hands were full of her mistress’s hair, and so Angelonia said, “Get it, Devney.”
Bodyguards were not supposed to answer doors, but she crossed the room anyway and did as she was ordered. Julian entered with a bunch of pink roses in his hands.
“Hello, Miss Devney. May I come in?” he asked, smiling his most dashing smile. It only annoyed Magdala.
“No,” she said shortly, but Angelonia called, “Oh, Julian, my beloved, I want your opinion on something.”
Smug as a cockerel in a henhouse, Julian pushed past Magdala. “What is it, my precious?”
Angelonia held her slender hands out to him. “Must I bring Devney tonight? It’s not as though I’m in any danger.”
“Of course you must.” Julian shot Magdala a mischievous grin. "What will people think if you attend unaccompanied? Devney knows how to purport herself.”
Angelonia’s eyes drifted languidly over Magdala’s body. “She is so bulky and she gets in the way.”
Magdala’s cheeks warmed.
None of that, she reminded herself. No anger allowed, no fear, no joy.
A royal guard was a tree, emotionless. She had no feelings to hurt.
That is what Huxley had taught her. She was not Magdala today, she was just ‘Devney,’ the composed bodyguard who was born higher in rank than any of them.
But she knew how to do her job and earn her pay.
“You can send her off once we’re there, but you must at least arrive with her, or else the queen-regent will be displeased.”
“Can’t we get her to wear anything other than black?” Angelonia complained. “It’s so dour.”
When I am mistress of Elegy, I will wear black gowns until they’re the fashion, Magdala thought, staring straight ahead. And then I will wear pink just to spite them. I will wear peacock feathers in my armpits and laugh when they all do the same and look ridiculous.
“No, my beloved, you know how it is,” Julian said with fond condescension. “The guards must wear ugly clothes to make you look more splendid.”
“I’m not much worried about her dimming my splendor,” Angelonia muttered. She shook out her wings. They rustled like paper.
“She is imposing, though, is she not?” Julian said, grinning at Magdala.
Why do I always have to be imposing? Why can’t I be lovely or witty or bright?
“Do you know who else will be at the ball tonight?” he asked.
Magdala stifled a groan. Everyone, probably. Everyone and their mother and their mother’s cousin. So many people that the dance floor would pulse and swarm like a battlefield and the drink table would be as barren as a desert.
“The prince, Asherton Ageric.”
Magdala’s stomach rose, and for an instant she was plunging again, through open air into dark water.
“I went to school with him, you know,” Julian continued.
Magdala resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Of course she knew. He mentioned it every chance he got.
“Military school. Asherton and his older brother, Tiernan’s legitimate son.
They’re both quite unhinged. He used to wander about at night, in the rain, and come back covered in mud.
He used to eat poisonous mushrooms for sport.
He had violent tempers. He broke my nose once. ”
Well, that was no crime. Magdala had dreamt of breaking Julian’s nose ever since the Largotian river closed over her head.
“Oh, he’s very strange,” Angelonia said. “Very inappropriate. The queen is ashamed of him, that’s why she keeps him hidden away on that island in the middle of the sea.”
“Or maybe he hides on that island because he’s got a shameful secret,” Julian said with a sparkling smile. “And of course, there’s the curse.”
“I do worry about the curse,” Angelonia said, dabbing blood-red stain on her lips. “Do you believe in them, Devney?”
Magdala’s mind had wandered, and she snapped back with a jolt. “What? Oh, no.”
“You should,” Angelonia said, grim. “They’re real. If he so much as brushes the throne with his fingers, he’ll drop dead. That’s the prophecy, isn’t it? That all Tiernan’s children die young?”
“Now, Asherton is interesting enough, but the real puzzle is the valet.” A shadow passed over Juian’s face. “His valet is even stranger than he is. A handsome man, but my grandfather knew him when he was young, and he was older than my grandfather in those days.”
“Zephyr?” Angelonia asked. “But he can’t be over thirty-five.”
“He’s at least eighty,” Julian said.
Angelonia ran her hands over her slicked hair. “Your grandfather was mistaken. Perhaps he knew Zephyr’s father. Anyway, I shall be ready soon. I’d like to be early so I can get a few drinks to steady me before the dancing starts. Miss Devney, go and change. You look sweaty.”
Julian winked at her, and Magdala moved noiselessly from the room. Boots pounded on the tiles as she made for the front door. Before she stepped through it, Julian caught up to her and grabbed her wrist.
“Are you going to tell Huxley?” he whispered.
Magdala tried to wrench her hand from his grip, but he held, his fingernails biting. “No, I haven’t told anyone.”
“But you’re going to.”
“Let me go.”
“I’ll lose my position, and Angelonia’s father could force us to break off the betrothal.”
“You should have thought of that before you let the crowd break through the line. Before I was nearly trampled.”
Julian yanked her closer. “Huxley cannot know. Please, Magdala. I am begging …”
“Why all this panic?” Magdala asked sharply, sliding her arm free. His nails left white scratches on her skin. “Huxley doesn’t care.”
“A villager broke into the prince’s carriage and tried to assassinate him,” Julian admitted. “Huxley might lose his promotion; if he discovers it was my fault …” Magdala bit her lip, and a slow smile spread over Julian’s face. “You wouldn’t happen to know who that villager was, would you?”
Magdala’s mind went blank. She opened her mouth, hoping a convincing lie would tumble out on its own, but instead she blurted, “How would I know?”
“I saw you clamber into the coach,” he said.
Magdala lashed out, clutched a handful of his shirt, and pulled him so close their noses nearly touched. “I was trying to get away from the crowd. I was trying to find somewhere safe to hide. Because you are a fool. Because you nearly got. Me. Killed.”
Julian shrugged. “The queen-regent is angry. She doesn’t care much for her illegitimate son, but someone still has to be punished, to teach the people not to riot.”
“This is your fault,” Magdala hissed. “If you try to blame me for it, then I will just blame you in return. Who do you think Huxley will believe?”
“Huxley may believe you, but he will choose me. He benefits from my marriage to Angelonia, too. Remember, the promotion. He wants to oversee the queen’s personal guard.”
Choking on rage, Magdala shoved him away. He stumbled, regained his balance, and laughed.
“This is not the way to win my loyalty,” Magdala gritted.
“Don’t tell Huxley that I let the crowd through, and I won’t tell him it was you that broke into the prince’s coach.”
“Fine.” Magdala spun on her heel and practically ran to the servants’ quarters to change. She could feel Julian’s eyes on her all the way.