Chapter 13
For the rest of the afternoon, Asherton busied himself with reading every book he could find on carnivorous plants.
He didn’t sit while he read, but paced around the room, occasionally darting to a slate mounted on the wall and adding to a diagram of Anton he’d sketched, then pacing again.
For hours, Magdala stood by the door, watching him with mounting interest and trying to decide if he was a genius or touched in the head.
As the sun went down, the door burst open and Zephyr stomped in, a large wooden box in his arms. He set it on the bedside table, shooing Anton away as the plant snapped at his elbow. “This arrived by dragon,” he said.
Asherton looked up from his book, blinking like he’d emerged from a dark room. “Gracious, what time is it?”
“Late,” Zephyr replied.
“I must have lost track of time.”
“He gets like this,” Zephyr said in an undertone to Magdala. “You have to remind him to eat, or he’ll forget. And sometimes I have to shove him into his bed, or he’ll stay up all night. Either he can’t focus on a single thing, or he can’t break away for days on end. It’s very tiresome.”
“Indeed,” Magdala replied. It nettled her when Zephyr called the prince tiresome.
She didn’t know why. He was tiresome—exhausting, even.
But it wasn’t as though his frenetic energy and scientific curiosity were anyone else’s business.
If he wanted to whittle the day away studying Anton’s anatomy, he was a grown man. He could do as he pleased.
“Eat something,” Zephyr said to Asherton, pointing to the tea tray Magdala had brought up hours ago. She’d covered it to keep the bread and cheese from spoiling.
“What’s in the box?” Asherton asked, inspecting the food. He reached for the cheese, but Zephyr grabbed his wrist.
“Your bodyguard should taste your food before you eat it,” he said.
Magdala’s eyes widened. It would be difficult to slip him amenite powder if she had to taste his food first. “Oh, that’s not necessary …”
“It is absolutely necessary,” Zephyr said firmly.
Asherton tossed Magdala an apple. “Zeph has a point. Isn’t that how they get the princess in fairytales? With a poisoned apple? That would be a cliche way to go.”
Magdala bit the apple, then sampled the stale bread and sweating cheese.
Zephyr peered over his spectacles at her. When Magdala finished, he nodded and said brightly, “Excellent. Now we just have to wait and see if she dies.”
“At this rate, I’ll starve to death first,” Asherton complained. “So I think I’ll risk it.”
“The crown prince of Allagesh is too important …” Zephyr began, with practiced polish.
Asherton cut him off. “The crown bastard of Allagesh, you mean.”
Zephyr flinched. “Don’t call yourself that. I’ve never called you that.”
“And I’ve never called you old, but that doesn’t mean you’re not.”
“You call me old all the time.”
“My point stands.”
“Your point is in shambles on the ground, gasping,” Zephyr grumbled as he left the room. It seemed his habit to arrive suddenly and unannounced and then leave in the same manner. Very inconvenient when one is trying to slip amenite into someone’s drink.
Magdala reached for the box, assuming that if she was expected to taste the prince’s food, she was also expected to check his packages.
“I don’t mind you eating my food, but I draw the line at opening my mail,” Asherton said, snatching the box from her.
“Why?” Magdala asked with an impish grin. “Is it from a lady?”
Asherton carried the box to the bed. “Oh yes, every high-born lady wants to be queen to a cursed king. All of Allagesh thinks I’ll either abdicate or die before I’m crowned.”
“And will you, Your Highness?’ Magdala asked.
“Die? That’s up to you, I suppose.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I meant, will you abdicate?”
“I can’t. There’s no law for abdication. Wherever I am on my twenty-first birthday, I am king.” Asherton pried open the box’s lid. “But even if I could abdicate, I wouldn’t do it. I promised my brother I would save the dragons.” He glanced inside the box and froze, his lips slightly parted.
This was her moment. The prince was distracted, and she could slip the amenite into his drink.
Trying to appear casual, Magdala returned to the tea tray, angled her body so she blocked his view of the table, poured a glass of water, and sipped it loudly.
Then she took the amenite from her pocket and uncapped the vial.
One sip and it would be over. He would blurt out that he’d killed Julian, then he would be exiled, and Huxley would restore her house and title. Her father would sleep in his own bed again, with a full belly and a proud heart.
“Oh, oh no …” Asherton moaned.
Magdala glanced over her shoulder. He reached into the box and lifted out a well-worn shearling-lined leather jacket.
A prickle ran up Magdala’s spine. The wool on the collar and cuffs was stained dark burgundy, as if they had been soaked in blood.
Magdala hesitated, her hand suspended over the glass. A dusting of blue powder dropped from the vial onto the surface of the water. Immediately, the dust dissolved, invisible.
Asherton held up the jacket, his jaw tense. He ran his thumb over the stiff wool, and a fine russet powder dusted his hand.
Gripping the glass, Magdala approached Asherton, but as she reached him, he dropped the jacket onto his knees, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed.
Magdala stiffened. She would have been less surprised if he had leaped onto the bed and danced a jig.
“Are you … are you alright, Your Highness?” she asked awkwardly.
“Look at this,” he said, picking up the jacket and opening it. The inside was stained, front and back. “All the blood … Only have mercy, there’s so much.”
Magdala’s palm fogged the glass. “Whose is it?”
Asherton turned the jacket over and inspected a cut in the back. “Oh, that’s where the sword must … must have …”
Gripping his stomach, Asherton vaulted up from the bed, raced into the washroom, and vomited in the sink.
Magdala stood wide-eyed with shock, squeezing the glass so tightly that her fingers squeaked on its surface.
The door to the washroom stood open, so Magdala peered in. Asherton sat on the floor next to the sink, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. He scrubbed his hands down his face and exhaled slowly.
“Should I go and fetch Zephyr?” she asked. This had not been covered in her royal guard training.
Asherton shook his head. “I’m alright.”
“Would you like some water?”
He nodded. “If you don’t mind.”
Magdala ran her tongue over her lips. Her elbow was locked. She couldn’t give him the amenite. Not now. He was vulnerable, grieving. She would wait until tomorrow—there was no hurry. It was weeks until the coronation. She would find a better time.
Swiftly, Magdala shut the washroom door and searched for somewhere to dump the tainted water. She ran to the window and threw the whole cup out. As the glass shattered on the grass below, the door flew open and Zephyr skidded into the room.
“Don’t let him open the box!” he ordered.
Magdala grimaced. “Too late.”
Zephyr noticed the soiled jacket. His cheeks washed plaster white. “Stuff that horrid thing in the bottom of the armoire. Don’t let him see it again. Is he ill?”
Magdala took the jacket and folded it, her stomach lurching when her fingers brushed the stiff wool. “He’s in the washroom.”
Zephyr turned into the washroom. “I didn’t realize until it was too late,” he said, stern as ever.
“I’m alright,” Asherton choked. “It was a shock, that’s all.”
A silence followed. Magdala shoved the jacket deep in the armoire. As she passed the washroom, she glimpsed Zephyr sitting on the floor, and Asherton across from him, quietly wiping his cheek with his sleeve.
Magdala’s world tilted. The prince was supposed to be a murderer, a traitor, and an interloper, and if all that wasn’t enough, he was irritating and strange. She had no time for pity, and Asherton wouldn’t want it anyway.
Anxious for something to do, Magdala tidied the books beside the bed until Zephyr returned, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders stiff. He knelt at the hearth. “Bring me the matches. They’re in the bedside table.”
Magdala found them and brought them to him. “The jacket …” she began, but Zephyr cut her off. “It was his half-brother’s,” he whispered. “Tiernan’s son. Ashkendoric, but Ash was very fond of him.”
Magdala’s mood lifted. She’d heard hair-raising stories of the atrocities Ashkendoric men committed in war. Asherton was grieving a murderer, a war criminal. It made sense, since the prince was a murderer himself.
“Did the curse catch up to his brother?” she asked.
Zephyr humphed.
“So you don’t believe in it?”
“It’s self-fulfilling,” Zephyr said. “Marwenna feels threatened by Asherton’s claim to her crown.
So, she brings down this dire curse on him, knowing it will frighten the people so badly that they’ll never let him survive to ascend the throne.
Curse or no curse, your job is to keep him alive until we can prove to these superstitious idiots that there’s nothing to fear. ”
Zephyr struck a match and lit the kindling. “When I was young, magic was everywhere. All around us, in the blood of almost every child. But because men and women with magic are valuable on the battlefield, the old wars from my youth nearly wiped it from our bloodlines.”
This was news to Magdala. “Oh?”
“Marwenna took the throne when Asherton’s father was killed, and she is very wicked.
I would like to see her defeated, and I would like to see Asherton end the war.
That is where the danger lies, in the threat he poses to the power structure of the three kingdoms and Marwenna’s thirst for victory. Don’t let talk of curses distract you.”
“Can’t Marwenna revive the dead?” Magdala asked. She’d heard legends and rumors of the evil queen with dark magic.
“Maybe. I don’t know,” Zephyr murmured. “Once, a long time ago, she could use her botanical magic to revive the dead. But her magic grows darker by the day, and so I doubt she has the power to revive anyone. But do not mention it to Asherton. He grieves quietly but deeply, and we wouldn’t want to give him some mad hope that Marwenna revived his brother. ”
Asherton emerged from the washroom and walked to the window, where he stood in silence, staring down into the garden.
A tear dripped down his cheek and he turned away, looking unnervingly soft and human and not in the least like someone who deserved to be humiliated and exiled and disinherited, curse him.
“What is this?” he asked. He pointed to a small cot under the second window near his bed. It had been there all along, but Magdala hadn’t paid it any mind, and apparently Asherton hadn’t noticed it either.
“That’s where Miss Devney will sleep,” Zephyr said.
Asherton glanced back and forth from the cot to his bed only a stride away. “No, she gets her own room,” he said.
“What’s the good in that?” Zephyr laughed. “Bodyguards share their charge’s room. I expect her to be with you every moment, waking or sleeping.”
“Wonderful.” Asherton rubbed his jaw, then rolled his head to one side, like he was working a twitch out of his shoulder.
Zephyr rose. “I’ll make hot chocolate,” he said.
“Drink some. You’ll feel better after …” He cast a nervous glance at the armoire, as if the bloody jacket would emerge like a wraith and haunt them.
Shaking his head, Zephyr patted Asherton’s shoulder in an unhelpfully masculine gesture, took the jacket from the armoire, and slipped out of the room.
Asherton turned back to the window and watched the garden for a long time, his face set.
Rain drummed against the dark window. With a pang, Magdala remembered curling up in the big bed under warm covers, listening to thunder growling over the distant sea.
She imagined that, any moment, her father would come in with a cup of warm milk and a book, and he would sit and read to her until she nodded off, cozy and content, her belly full, her heart at peace.
Her sympathy for the prince fled. Even if she put aside the fact that he was living in her house, he had tossed her off a bridge. If she hadn’t been wearing her cork vest, she would be decomposing at the bottom of the Largotia River this very moment.
Magdala rummaged in her bag for her sleeping clothes—a pair of simple black pants and a loose button-down shirt—and undressed.
Under her clothes, she wore a pair of tight black shorts and a brazier.
It was designed to support an active lifestyle, so it left most of her well-endowed chest to the imagination. Still, Asherton glanced away.
“Don’t be shy,” she said. “I’m not.”
“I’m a gentleman,” he said, taking a book from the nightstand and opening it upside down.
Magdala pulled on her shirt and pants and sat on her cot, watching Asherton as he pretended to read. She caught him casting furtive glances at her.
“Don’t you have anything to do?” he asked sharply. “Inspect the windows or sharpen knives or concoct a poison or something?”
Magdala climbed into her bed. “I’ll be right here,” she said in a silky smooth voice. “All night, watching you.”
Asherton stared at her, the book in his hands still upside down.
“Heavens, Your Highness.” Magdala smiled. “What’s wrong with you?”
He only scowled at her.
With a shrug, she reached for the lamp beside the bed. “You should sleep, Your Highness. “
“I prefer to sleep with the lights on.”
Magdala bit her lip. “That’s better, actually. That way I can keep an eye on you as you sleep.”
He swallowed.
Magdala lay back on her pillows. “Goodnight.”
Asherton sat in silence for a long time, his brow shiny with sweat.
She smiled innocently at him. “Are you sure you don’t want me to snuff out the light?”
“I am very sure,” he said.
Five minutes passed before Asherton muttered a swear and turned down the lamp, plunging them into darkness. Apparently, he thought his chances were better in the dark.
Magdala pressed her face into her pillow and laughed.
Near midnight, Magdala awoke to frog song and footsteps.
Something scraped behind the wall. Memories of her childhood ghost reared up, and Magdala sat up, the hair on her arms standing on end.
She wanted to cuddle under the covers as she had as a child and wish the ghost away, but she remembered that she was a bodyguard now, and she had a duty to perform.
Clutching her shotfire in one hand and her knife in the other, Magdala tiptoed across the room to the door, but the corridor was silent but for creaking beams and scuttling mice.
Before returning to her bed, Magdala locked the door and pushed a chair under the knob for good measure.