Chapter 6
Magdala stared at the knife still clutched in her hand, glimmering in the pale pink light from the stained-glass window. One heartbeat, one twitch, one slight tension of her wrist, and she could have gone to bed that night a murderer. Sweat trickled down the back of Magdala’s neck, her hands shook.
If the prince had fought back, resisted her, she would have done it.
She would have slashed his throat, then told herself in the endless stretch of sleepless nights that followed, that she did it in self-defense.
Magdala dropped the knife as if it were a spider and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.
She really was losing her mind, morphing into a zealot worse than the madmen in her father’s cottage who had tried to cave in her ribs at the riot.
Pushing away from the wall, Magdala started up the stairs, but before she reached the crest, Julian appeared above her, descending two steps at a time. His cheeks were white, his brow sweaty. He was holding a small shotfire in his hand, but he shoved it into his belt as he reached her.
“What are you doing out here?” he demanded, catching her arm.
“This grabby habit of yours is going to lose you a finger,” Magdala snarled.
“Was that the prince with you just now?”
Magdala’s eyes slipped to the shotfire in his belt. An instant ago, she’d very nearly severed Prince Asherton’s carotid, so she didn’t know why she replied, “No.”
“Yes, it was, you little minx. Now tell me where he went, or I’ll tell Huxley it was you who broke into the prince’s coach.”
“Go ahead,” Magdala said coolly. “And I’ll be sure to mention your little slip at the riot on my way out the door.”
Julian’s fingers tightened on her arm and, before she could react, he shoved her.
With a shriek of anger and horror, Magdala lurched backward over the sharp steps.
On instinct, she twisted her body and curled her arms over her head as she slammed down.
The stone bit into her shoulder, her arm, her hip and thigh as she rolled, then sprawled on the gravel path.
The wind knocked from her lungs, Magdala could only lie on her back, gasping.
Her mouth tasted of copper, and her body ached.
“How …” she stammered, easing onto her knees. She knew she should be afraid, but she was so angry, her fear dissolved like snow on a stovetop. “How dare you, you little skat-brained son of a …”
“Don’t cross me, Magdala,” Julian said. His hands trembled, his lips so tight he could barely speak. “Don’t ever cross me again.”
Magdala staggered to her feet. Her trouser leg stuck to her knee, blood soaking through the torn cotton.
She could barely lift her left arm. Her hair had come loose and blew around her in a tempest of curls.
“You do not frighten me,” she said. “And if you ever touch me again, I will kill you, Julian. I will snap your neck with my bare hands.”
“You wouldn’t dare …”
“TRY ME!” she screamed. “Come here and try me!”
She started up the steps toward him, her arms outstretched, and Julian backed away. His lip wrinkled in disgust. “What happened to you?”
“What happened to me?” She let out a disbelieving laugh. “What happened to you? You used to be a nice boy, you used to be my friend, and now you’re just a brute."
Shaking his head, Julian turned away and jogged up the stairs.
Magdala forced herself to stand tall until he was out of sight, then she slumped against the wall with a quavering sob. Her body throbbed—she feared her legs wouldn’t support her. How could she return to the ball bloody and bruised without an explanation?
The sickly-sweet smell of roses wafted across the garden, and Magdala doubled over and was sick on the roots of a trimmed azalea.
Music swelled, and Magdala bit down on her hand to muffle a scream.
Her body shook, but the more she tensed against the shivering, the worse it grew.
She needed something to steady her before someone caught her with her emotions scattered about like petals in a flower garden after a windstorm.
Guilty as a child caught stealing cookies, she stood and slunk around the palace until she found a little table and chairs tucked under a shadowy pergola, surrounded by blood-red snapdragons and yellow tansy.
A statue of a faerie woman in a gauzy dress watched her from the bushes, its eyes glowing eerily.
Magdala stared at it a moment, discomfited.
A half-drunk flute of fizzlewine stood on the table, and Magdala eased into the chair and drank the wine in one gulp.
It burned down her throat, but her head cleared and her shaking settled.
For a long time, Magdala sat in the dark, her mind circling a drain of despair.
It was as though she and Julian sat across from one another at the table, a knife lying equidistant between them.
If either of them made a move toward the knife, the other would reach for it as well.
And then, it would be a battle of strength and wit to see who won.
Deep down, Magdala knew Julian would win.
Because he was Huxley’s brother, because he was Angelonia’s betrothed, because he was going to be the duke of Monkwood and she was not the duchess of Elegy.
And since she had been too much of a coward to kill the prince, she never would be the duchess of anything.
Stomach roiling, Magdala stood and brushed the dust from her clothes.
Her hip and arm stung, but she could walk without limping now.
She tugged her hair away from her face and coiled it into a brutally tight knot, then started around the palace.
An open set of double glass doors led into a dark bedroom and Magdala snuck through them.
If she could find a washroom, she could scrub the blood and dirt from her clothes before Angelonia or Huxley saw her.
As Magdala stepped over the threshold, she stumbled over something and pitched forward, landing painfully on her hands and knees.
She swore. Turning to investigate, her gaze rested on a body stretched out on the shining mahogany floor.
At first, she assumed it was a drunken earl or duke, but as she crept closer, the moonlight shone on a pair of blank, staring eyes.
The world seemed to hush. Magdala shifted so her shadow slid across the dead man’s features, and she made out his face.
Magdala clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling a scream.
Lying on the floor with a knife in his chest was Julian Davenport.
Her first instinct was to run, to get out of this room and away from the blank face and blue lips, but before she could escape, a shadow in the corner shifted, and clothing rustled.
“Who’s there?” she cried, her skin prickling.
The shadow moved, making for the doors, but Magdala darted ahead and slammed them shut. The man drew up short and glared down at her. The moonlight limned his features, and Magdala let out a yelp.
Before her, spattered in blood, stood Prince Asherton Ageric.
“Did you … he’s dead and you … why …” Magdala stammered.
Asherton backed away, his hands raised. “I didn’t,” he panted. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Then why are you covered in his blood?”
Asherton swallowed. “It’s not his blood, it’s mine.”
Magdala looked down at Julian. The prince was right—there wasn’t much blood on Julian’s clothes; even the spot around the knife was only lightly rimmed with crimson.
The prince’s nose was bleeding, his lip cracked, and his left eye swollen shut.
He listed to the left, like he was fighting gravity and losing.
“We need to get out of here,” Asherton said, leaning against the wall.
“We?” she demanded. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Except threaten to murder him a quarter hour ago.”
Magdala’s throat went desert-sand dry. “I didn’t …”
“I heard you,” Asherton said. “You're lucky the whole assembly didn’t hear you.”
“But I’m not bloody like you are. You were obviously fighting someone,” Magdala objected, breathless and shrill. “Look at you!”
“Exactly. That's why both of us need to get out of this room.”
He was right, but something in Magdala believed that staying with the body, reporting the crime, would make her appear innocent.
Asherton must have read this on her face because he said, “Don’t imagine you will get some special mercy if you run out and report the murder. Huxley will want someone to blame, and I’m about to run as far from here as I can, so it’ll be you and not me.”
With that, he shoved her aside and staggered through the door, vanishing into the shadows. Magdala turned to follow him, but a scream shook the window glass, and Magdala turned to find Angelonia in the doorway. She was so pale, she looked almost as dead as Julian.
Huxley appeared behind her. “What’s wrong? What …” His gaze fell to the body. “NO!” he cried and ran forward, skidding to his knees on the floor. He shook his brother, and when Julian only flopped limply, he felt for a pulse under his jaw.
“Julian!” he croaked. “No! No, Julian!” His eyes locked on the knife, and he let out a sob of rage that startled Magdala. “What happened?” he demanded.
“I … I went searching for him,” Magdala said. “And I found him here, like this.”
She thanked the Only for the darkness hiding her bruises and her disheveled clothes. A lump of panic rose in her throat, and her eyes stung. Instinctively, she choked the tears back before realizing that crying was her best show of innocence.
“I don’t know what happened,” she sobbed, leaning into hysteria. “He was just lying there with a knife in his chest and I ran…I ran after the killer, but he pushed me down and got away.”
There, and now she could explain away the bruises. She congratulated herself on her cleverness.
“He’s dead,” Huxley breathed. “He’s … he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Angelonia repeated, her voice rough and low. She stumbled toward the body, but Huxley jumped up and caught her in his arms, restraining her.
With an elegant little sob, Angelonia turned her face into Huxley’s chest, her delicate shoulders rising and falling in a graceful rhythm.
She didn’t make a scene, but grieved with perfect, pathetic dignity.
Magdala furrowed her brow. If someone murdered a man Magdala loved, she’d be screaming his name, begging him to stay, cursing him, plotting vengeance.
She would certainly not be elegantly weeping on another man’s shoulder.
“Did you see the killer’s face?” Huxley asked.
She did see his face. And it was the face of the man who lived in her house, slept in her bedroom.
Suddenly, Magdala felt like a thief who had the crown jewels laid on a table before her.
She could get revenge on the man who ruined her life without raising a finger.
The Only was rewarding her act of mercy.
“Yes,” she said. “It was the prince. The killer is Prince Asherton Ageric.”