Chapter 18
After selecting two heavy books from the bookshelf—one on the history of faerie stones, and one on poisons and potents—Magdala curled up on her cot and laid the books on the windowsill beside her long dragon bone shotfire.
The casement stood open, and a humid breeze, heavy with wildflower perfume, cooled her brow.
The first book proved dull, waxing eloquent about legends of a string of faerie stone statues that connected the three kingdoms. Bored, Magdala opened the second book and flipped to the page on amenite. It read:
Commonly known as amenite, or truth tandy, this innocent mushroom can be ground into a powder and poured into a drink.
When ingested, amenite forces its ingester to tell nothing but pure truths for one full minute.
It can also be mixed with water to form a paste and administered into the bloodstream via a cut or puncture.
After a full minute, however, amenite turns…
A movement caught Magdala’s eye and, glancing down, she saw Asherton emerge from the greenhouse.
Magdala studied him, trying to picture him in a month—a barefooted king with his crown jammed over disordered curls, his clothing stained with potting soil.
But the thought of Asherton dressed in clean velvet, his hair waxed and his jaw cleanly shaven, filled her with inexplicable sadness.
Behind he prince, a shadow stirred in the greenhouse doorway—something too large to be Zephyr.
Magdala’s chest tightened. Could it be the assassin? Yesterday, she might have hesitated, but she needed her paycheck, and if an assassin slashed the prince’s throat, Magdala would find herself perched atop the mountain of furniture right next to her father.
She didn’t dare shout and warn him; she might startle the shadow. Smooth and even, she lifted her shotfire and set the arm-length white barrel on the windowsill.
Asherton glanced up at her. A look of surprise crossed his face, and then his jaw tightened and his gold-green eyes locked on her with dark intensity.
Magdala tried to line up the shot, but Asherton blocked her view.
Catching his eyes, she jerked her head, hoping he would step aside. He furrowed his brow and then, slowly, turned. The shadow moved into the light, and the blood drained from Magdala’s face.
Lewis, the giant gawper tuber Asherton had assured her would never escape his copper pot, swayed in the doorway, balancing on a tangle of brown roots.
He was ugly, like a gnarled, worm-eaten tree, with a scabrous, vulture-like head, a sharp, curved beak, and vines winding out from his body like woody arms.
Asherton whirled around and shouted up at Magdala, “Do not shoot him!” then he an. Lewis trundled after him. Magdala aimed her shotfire again, but they disappeared around the corner of the greenhouse before she could squeeze the trigger.
“SKAT!” Magdala screamed. Slinging her shotfire on her back, Magdala launched off her cot and charged all the way down to the kitchen.
Zephyr was standing over the stove, cracking eggs into a cast iron pan. “What’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed.
“Lewis is after Asherton!” Magdala cried as she crashed out the door.
Magdala ran like she’d never run in her life, because if the prince was devoured, it was all over. Elegy might be hers, but she was still as poor as the day she’d left it.
Without the faintest idea how to fight a giant carnivorous plant, Magdala reached the greenhouse and skidded around the corner just as Lewis caught up to Asherton. A rough, bark-encrusted vine wound around his ankle. Lewis flung him to the ground like a dog would with a rabbit.
Magdala dropped to one knee and swung her shotfire from her back. Shutting one eye, she lined up a shot at Lewis’s head.
“Don’t shoot him!” Asherton cried, spitting dirt.
“He’s an endangered …” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Lewis swung him into the greenhouse wall – he struck it hard, glass spiderwebbing around his body.
Rearing back, Lewis released a guttural roar.
Magdala matched it with a battlefield scream as she charged him, cracking the stock of her shotfire against his scabby head.
The creature turned toward her, slowly, as if it was insulted by the blow.
Magdala didn’t quail, and she didn’t hesitate.
She slammed the shotfire into Lewis’s head over and over and over.
He screeched, strands of saliva clinging to his curved, yellow teeth, but she beat him down.
His jaw thudded into the dirt, and Asherton jumped up and launched onto the plant's head.
“Run!” Asherton ordered. Magdala threw herself on his back. Their combined weight sank the tuber’s beak into the soil.
“I told you to run,” Asherton grunted.
Magdala reached around him and braced her hands on the creature’s head. “I’m your bodyguard,” she hissed. “I’m supposed to be protecting you.”
Asherton shot an exasperated look at her over his shoulder. “You’re not helping.”
“I bloody well am!” Magdala cried.
Lewis thrashed, forcing Asherton to lean his full weight on the tuber, his fingers hooked in the hinge of its jaw. Magdala’s head rested on Asherton’s back, her legs straddling Lewis’s thick, woody stem.
“What do we do?” she panted. Asherton’s shirt was damp with sweat against her cheek.
“There’s a glass jar in the greenhouse full of …” Lewis writhed, and Asherton inhaled sharply, tensing beneath her “… full of glowing green caterpillars. Bring it to me.”
“You can’t hold him alone.”
“Stop talking and go!”
She hesitated. Asherton was already trembling with the effort of restraining Lewis. Without her extra weight, she doubted he would hold him long. “I’ll stay. You go,” she said.
“Devney, if you haven’t noticed, I am in the center of this pile. Which means that I can’t get up until you do. So you have to go because I cannot!”
“I’ll twist to the side and you can slide out.”
Asherton groaned in exasperation.
“I’m stronger than you!” Magdala argued.
“You’re … what? You are not!”
“Go! Before it eats us both!”
“Devney.” Asherton’s eyes sparked, and she imagined, could he have freed his hands, he would have shaken her. “You are terminally stubborn! GO!”
“I’m the bodyguard, so I stay and you …”
But before they could finish the argument, footsteps pounded on the grass and glass shattered beside them.
Dozens of wriggling green caterpillars crawled over Lewis’s stem.
He hissed and curled in on himself, hiding his vulturous beak under his vines like a bird sleeping with its head under its wing.
Asherton slid off Lewis and lay panting in the grass. Magdala flopped beside him.
“How did he get out?” Zephyr demanded, rolling a wheelbarrow past her. He hefted Lewis into it and trundled back into the greenhouse, muttering to himself.
Anger simmered behind Magdala’s breastbone; she wanted to jump up, grab Asherton by both arms, and shake him, but her legs were steady as jelly; she couldn’t find the energy to stand.
“You absolute …” Asherton tremored.
“Oh, shut up,” Magdala snapped.
“We could have been eaten because you wouldn’t listen to me and just …”
“We were almost eaten,” she interrupted sharply, "because you keep man-eating plants in the greenhouse! That’s the only reason.”
“He’s never attacked me before. Lucky he did, though, since I saw you in the window with the shotfire.”
Magdala dropped her arm over her eyes. “Yes, Your Highness, I was about to shoot you but decided I’d spare a minute to save your life first.”
“Ah, but you don’t get paid if a plant eats me, do you?”
“Are you trying to convince me to assassinate you? Because I didn’t intend to when I got here, but I’m beginning to change my mind.”
Magdala considered rolling over and punching him in the nose, but something stung her shoulder. Her fingers brushed over a soft bulge under her shirt.
“One of your blasted worms is stuck to me!” She clawed at it, but it clung to her like a leech, its green light pulsing through her black blouse. “It is hurting me! It stings.”
Asherton sat up and caught her wrist. “Don’t tear at it! The venom will release faster.”
“Venom?” she gasped, jumping to her feet. “Are you serious?”
Asherton gripped her arm. “Don’t move!”
Magdala’s head spun. She took one step and her knees buckled.
“Skat!” Asherton caught her as she sank to the grass. Magdala’s chest squeezed, the world spinning like a top.
As her eyes drifted closed, she murmured, “I hate you.”