Chapter 21
Magdala attacked the first-level floors like she held a personal vendetta against the carpets. She scrubbed until the sun was high overhead and her shirt stuck to her back.
With each scrape of her brush, she tried to forget about purple Magdala flowers left in old books.
She tried to shake the dream of her parents shouting, “Lie down and we will cross over on your back,” from her mind.
She scrubbed away the memory of Asherton’s autumn-forest gaze, warm with a kinship she did not invite.
When her arms threatened to give out, she dumped the dirty water in the garden and returned to the second story to check on Asherton.
He was already coming down the hall, his hands in his pockets. He looked grave. When he saw her, a shadow crossed his face.
“Did you finish …” she began, but he cut her off.
“I have a question for you, actually,” he said.
Magdala raised her eyebrows, but her heart stilled and she tried to remember where she’d stowed the amenite. What if he’d found it? What if he knew?
Her conscience struck her. The magic from the Magdala flower still tickled her palm.
Asherton led the way back to the bedroom and pointed out one of the chairs by the fireplace. Magdala sat, her stomach in knots.
The room was very clean. Magdala was impressed—she hadn’t been optimistic about its fate. Asherton crossed to his bedside table and took a glass jar from the drawer.
“I found this,” he said.
Magdala let out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the amenite.
“It’s Lucent Pine sap,” he said flatly. “Now, how did that find its way into your bag?”
Magdala’s jaw dropped. “What are you doing in my bag?”
“Answer me, please. Or I will call Zephyr.”
“Obviously someone wants you to think it’s mine,” Magdala protested. “But it isn’t. Why would I bait the plant and then save you from it?”
Asherton sat on her cot and gazed at her for a long time. “What is your game, Devney?”
“I’m not trying to assassinate you! If I was, why haven’t I done it?”
“That’s what I’m wondering, too.”
Magdala fought back her guilt by reminding herself, again, that Asherton murdered Julian and displaced her family.
But, he hadn’t really murdered Julian, had he? If Julian attacked him first …
“Explain this.” He held up the jar again.
Magdala sighed. “I didn’t do that. Someone must have put it in my bag.”
“If I tell Zeph about this ...”
“No.” Magdala gulped. “Zephyr is fiercely protective of you. He’ll claim I’m the assassin and send me home in shackles.”
“Are you the assassin, Mags?”
“Of course not!” Here she was again, between Asherton and a noose. She wished she had given him the amenite on the first day. Her compassion had been her undoing. “Please, Your Highness … Asherton … I didn’t put the sap on your clothes. I think I’ve proven that.”
Asherton turned the bottle between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re right about Zeph. But Magdala, how could an assassin get this into your bag? How could they even get into the house? It’s impossible.”
Magdala remembered the ghost, the footsteps in the walls, the wailing on the grounds. “Secret passageways?”
Asherton rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”
“I have proven myself,” she argued. “Twice now. I have saved your life twice.”
“Really? Or are you playing cat and mouse with me? I was just beginning to trust you, and now this.”
Magdala bit her lip. “I’m not playing games.” She realized too late that she’d shown her tell.
Asherton’s expression closed. He strode out of the room.
“Wait!” Magdala ran after him. “I didn’t do it! Why would I?”
His jaw set, Asherton said, “We’re at an impasse. I can’t make Zephyr fire you because he’ll want to know the reason, and I don’t want you to hang—no matter how rude you’ve been to me …”
“I have not been rude to you!”
“No? Your Highness, you’re filthy. Your Highness, clean up after yourself. You’re an idiot. Wear a shirt … as if any woman wants me to wear a shirt. Ridiculous.”
A flush crept up Magdala’s neck. “I recognize that I’ve been a little brusque …”
“Brusque?” Asherton let out a ringing laugh. “I don’t know what to do with you. We’re caught in a corner and we can’t get out, but regardless, I’ve done my half of our deal. Our room is clean now, so it’s your turn to help me with my chores.”
Magdala’s heart sank. She remembered the times she’d hinted that she was out to kill him—the hesitation in the hedge maze, the little smiles and jokes. She’d whittled away at his trust, and now she was paying for it. “What chores?”
He grinned. “You’ll see.”
“Your Highness, I don’t want anything to do with this.
” Magdala set Anton down on a table and followed Asherton to a vulture violet in the corner of the greenhouse.
It was a violent shade of purple, its hard, dinner plate-sized petals lined with sharp teeth.
It was snapping at the soil in his glazed pot, shredding its own stalk.
Rain pattered on the glass greenhouse roof and dripped in rivulets down the walls.
“Here.” Asherton handed her a wooden bat. “If it tries to bite off one of my ears, rap it on the head. And don’t imagine you can let it eat me, because it won’t. It’ll just bite me. Then you’ll have to sew my ear back on, and is that how you want to spend your evening?”
Magdala took the bat and braced.
Bending over the pot, Asherton dug his hands up to his elbows in the soil.
The violet went for his ear, so Magdala imagined the plant was Asherton and slammed the bat on the creature’s petal-head.
It reared back, aghast—or she assumed it was aghast. It was hard to tell how flowers felt. Even vicious ones.
From the table behind her, Anton picked up a stick and let out whoops of joy as he beat a little flytrap.
“Almost got it …” Asherton said through his teeth. “I’ve almost ...”
“Anton! Stop that!” Magdala cried—the tiny fly trap was sobbing softly. “That’s not nice! Stop!” She wrenched the stick from Anton’s leaves, ignoring his angry growls.
“Ouch! Mags!” Asherton called.
Asherton bunched his shoulders as the violet nipped at the back of his neck. “Oh, so you are going to let it bite me!”
“Maybe I will!” Magdala exclaimed, hitting the creature again. It snarled and snapped at her.
“You are the worst bodyguard I have ever had!” Asherton cried.
“You’ve never had a bodyguard before!”
“If I had, you would be the worst.”
The violet snarled at Magdala and then lunged at her. His teeth scraped her blouse, popping off a button. She cracked the bat against its jaw. “Will you hurry!”
“Careful with Rufus!” Asherton shouted.
“RUFUS SHOULD LEARN TO BE CAREFUL WITH ME!”
Anton began to cry.
“There! See!” Magdala yelled, pointing at him. “You’re frightening Anton!”
Shaking his head, Asherton pulled his hands from the dirt.
“GOT IT!” he exclaimed, triumphant. His face alight with joy and curiosity, his fingernails black with soil, Asherton held out a little naked pink mole.
He smiled and Magdala’s anger fled, her renegade heart reaching out to his wildness again, envious and yearning.
She caught her breath, stunned, and stepped away from him. There was no air in the greenhouse. No air on this whole cursed island, because why was Asherton beginning to remind her of the breeze on the Wildlands?
The mole scraped at his palm with scoop-shaped paws and snuffled at the cracks between his fingers. It reminded Magdala of a golden raisin. “What is that?” she asked, flustered.
“A rooter,” Asherton replied. “They eat roots, and it's been chewing its way through Rufus here for a few days.”
A duchess would be revolted, and a royal guard indifferent, but maybe Asherton was right and she wasn’t either of those things.
“Touch it, Mags. Its skin is like velvet.”
Gingerly, Magdala ran her finger down the mole’s back. Its skin was like velvet, and a knot in her chest eased. She looked up at Asherton in alarm.
He smiled. “It gives off a calming pheromone. I should give you six or seven of these to carry in your pockets at all times.”
Magdala furrowed her brow. “I’m surprised people don’t hunt them.”
“Oh, they do,” he said, slipping the mole into his chest pocket. “And they press them and eat them.”
Magdala wrinkled her nose. “Do you?”
“Oh, yes,” Asherton replied. “Live, actually. I just pop them in my mouth and chew them up, bones and all.”
Magdala rolled her eyes. “You don’t even use proper mouse traps in the house.”
“And how do you catch mice, Mags?” he asked. “Do you drizzle them in honey and let the cat chase them? Is it more fun for you, watching them run for their lives?”
“Stars above,” Magdala groaned. “You’re relentless.”
A warm rain dappled her shoulders as Magdala followed Asherton out of the greenhouse and across the lawn. Anton skipped behind her, spider-like. Thunder rumbled over the sea.
Zephyr was waist-deep in the nearest pond, and Asherton joined him, splashing in without a thought for his trousers. Magdala opened her mouth to object, but shut it on a groan.
The prince and the immortal bent over a carpet of water clover and discussed some species of dragonfly nymph. Magdala settled under a weeping willow and let Anton climb into her lap. Raindrops bloomed across the surface of the water.
“Should we reintroduce bloombudders?” Zephyr asked Asherton quietly. “They thrived in the other pond, but not here. I wondered if we tried to plant some alicious algae, it would give them something to feed on.”
Asherton glanced at a heron wading in the shallows not an arm’s length away. “Or maybe someone is having them for lunch. Is that it, Wendell?” He turned toward the bird, who looked faintly guilty. “Are you snacking on our bloombudder frogs?”
“He doesn’t eat them in the other pond,” Zephyr muttered.
“No, but this is Wendell’s favorite restaurant. He’s loyal. One doesn’t just hop over to a rival cafe, you know. Besides, Wendell is a proper gentleman, and the other pond is distinctly in the bad part of the island. He would never be seen there; what would Matilda think?”
“Matilda is a heron as well, and so I doubt she cares.”
“Matilda is a proper lady,” Asherton said, and he shot Magdala a cunning look. “She would never keep terrible secrets and play games with men who have been so very polite to her.”
Magdala chuffed. “Oh, please …”
“If Matilda wanted to shoot Wendell, she would just do it! To his face, instead of sneaking about and playing games.”
Zephyr cocked an eyebrow at Asherton, but the prince was busy lifting a turtle from the mud. It was the size of his hand, with a shell that resembled stained glass. “Want to see, Mags?” he called.
“No, thank you,” she lied. She did very much want to see the turtle, but she didn’t want to be close to Asherton. She didn’t like the warmth her heart traitorously spread through her when he smiled.
“The last tenant at Elegy ruined these ponds,” Asherton said over his shoulder to Magdala. She stiffened. “He desecrated the native wildlife and introduced invasive species. Fortunately, Wendell here has been helping us cleanse out the invaders and get the rightful inhabitants home again.”
Magdala almost laughed at the irony, but she composed herself.
Something moved in the trees and Magdala jumped to her feet, her hand at her shotfire.
But it was just a little messenger dragon.
It hovered at Asherton’s shoulder, so he reached into its pack and pulled out a letter.
Asherton glanced at it. His jaw tensed. “It’s for you,” he said.
His expression had changed suddenly—all the brightness faded from his eyes.
Taking the letter, Magdala sat down on the damp grass and opened it.
Magdala Slorus ℅ Huxley Davenport
A jolt ran through Magdala, and she darted a look at Asherton. Had he noticed her surname on the letter? Did he know who she was? Curse her father and his confusion about surnames.
Beloved and most faithful daughter,
I’ve taken ill. It’s damp here, and I fear I have not the funds to buy medicine. I’ve taken to coughing, but when I breathe, it rattles in my chest.
Magdala’s own chest froze at this.
The doctor has been to see me, and he wrote me a letter to take to the apothecary, who is a dear friend and a faithful royalist, but I fear I can’t afford the medicine. I feel that if I were out of this dank room, I would be better. I miss the fresh air of Elegy.
Magdala touched her throat. She was breathing the fresh air of Elegy, making friends with her father’s sworn enemy, cradling a vicious plant while her father was ill. Guilt stung her.
“Alright, Mags?” Asherton called.
Nodding, she thought about the invasive fish in the pond killing off the native species.
She turned back to the letter.
I hope to see you soon, my little hen. I miss you terribly.
Your own father,
Seamus Slorus.
Magdala crunched the letter in her fist and tossed it into the pond.
Asherton released the turtle, waded out of the pond, and strode back toward the house, his sodden trousers slapping his ankles. Suddenly tired, her stomach sour, Magdala followed him. The front door was open, and Asherton walked inside, leaving prints on the newly scrubbed floors.
“Wipe your feet!” she scolded. “I just cleaned these floors.”
“It’s my house,” he barked back.