Chapter 26
Magdala gasped. She’d barely scraped him. He was faking, messing with her head.
But Asherton struggled to his hands and knees and then sat back on his heels, his breath coming quick and shallow. His face was flour-white, sheened with sweat.
“Ash?” She walked to him, half expecting him to jump up with some secret dagger, proclaiming he’d won. “Ash, what’s wrong?”
She’d only scraped him, hadn’t she? Had her addled brain miscalculated?
Dropping to her knees in front of him, Magdala fumbled with his shirt. The cut was shallow, barely bleeding.
“Why, you vixen,” he said, voice breathy with shock. “The blade … you poisoned it.”
“No!” she cried. “No, I didn’t.”
“All this time, and with everything last night … you did mean to kill me all along.”
“No! No, it’s not poison. It’s just amenite, a truth potion. It was just meant to make you admit …”
“Amenite?” His eyebrows drew together. “Magdala! Amenite is highly poisonous.”
“It’s a truth potion!” she protested.
“Yes,” he said. “And then after you tell the truth, it kills you. Why do you think they don’t use it in courtrooms?”
It was as though Magdala stood on thin ice and someone had brought a sledgehammer down between her feet. The earth seemed to shatter. “No. No, that’s not what I meant to do.”
“What the hell did you mean to do?” he demanded.
“There’s an antidote, isn’t there? There has to be!”
Asherton curled forward, drawing up one leg and resting his forehead on his knee. His shoulders rose and fell with each labored breath. “You need to get rid of the knife.”
“But what about the antidote …” Magdala’s head spun; the walls seemed to warp inward. “Surely, Zephyr will know what to do …”
He shook his head. “Get rid of the knife. If Zeph catches you with it ...”
“I can be quick …”
“MAGS!” he cried, looking up at her desperately. His lips were brushed with blue. “There’s not enough time! You’re holding the tainted weapon in your hand!”
She stared at him blankly, uncomprehending.
“If you don’t get rid of that knife, Zeph will see to it you hang! Do you understand? You have murdered the crown prince of Allagesh and you will hang!”
With a gasp, Magdala dropped the knife like it was a snake.
“Run, now, go!” Asherton picked it up and handed it to her. “Go to the sea and throw it in …”
“But Ash …”
“Then give yourself a wound of some kind and find Zephyr. Be sure he’s with you when you discover my body here …”
“Ash, I can’t …”
“Say an assassin did it. They’ll never notice this little scratch, and they won’t be able to trace it back to you.”
“Ash!” she cried. “I can’t just leave you here!”
“GO! NOW!” He pushed her.
“I’m not leaving you to die!”
“Go!” he shouted. “NOW!”
He was right—she would hang. It was her knife, covered in poison. Zephyr would see her hang in the Largotian town square.
Terror overcame her, and she took the knife and ran. But as she tore down the front steps and made for the trees, she glimpsed Zephyr in the greenhouse, his shadow moving behind the glass. If she reached him, maybe he knew of an antidote. Maybe he could save Asherton.
Swearing, Magdala sprinted back toward the greenhouse. She burst through the door, skidding on the damp floor.
Zephyr looked up. “What is it?” he demanded, dropping a tray of mushrooms.
“Amenite,” she blurted. “I didn’t know it was poisonous.”
“Orally or in his blood?”
She held out the knife, and he snatched it from her and ran his finger over the flat of the blade.
“Bleed him,” he said. “I have an antidote somewhere, I think. Maybe. Dear Only above, I hope I have it. Now go! Bleed him or he’ll die!”
Magdala charged back to the house, her chest tight. Her throat constricted as she slid into the ballroom. Asherton sat where she had left him, with his forehead resting on his knee. She called to him as she ran across the slippery floor. “Ash! Speak to me!”
He lifted his head, annoyed. “I told you to run.”
She slid to her knees beside him and pushed up his shirt. “I don’t like to do what I’m told.”
“Yes, it’s very annoying,” he rasped.
Taking his discarded knife, she carefully sliced the scratch in his side. He inhaled sharply.
“What are you doing?” he asked, bleary.
“Zeph said to bleed you,” she replied.
“Magdala, why would you tell Zeph?” he moaned. “He’ll have you …”
The front door slammed and Zephyr pounded into the room. His jaw was set like granite, but Magdala read panic in his eyes. “Well?” he barked.
“He’s conscious," Magdala said.
“How do you get yourself into these scrapes, child?” he scolded, but his voice broke and he pressed his lips together. He dropped heavily to his knees and produced a little bag of dried leaves which he poured them into Asherton’s hand. Asherton chewed them slowly, then swallowed.
“I was experimenting,” Asherton panted, “with the amenite.”
Apparently the truth serum had worn off.
“I’m sure you were,” Zeph said, casting a cold look at Magdala.
He laid his big hand on Asherton’s forehead, then pulled up his eyelid with his thumb.
“It’s working.” He sighed. Sitting back on his heels, Zephyr pressed two fingers under Asherton’s jaw.
“You’ll feel strange the rest of the day, no doubt, but I think the antidote is overcoming the poison. ”
Magdala let out a sob and covered her face with her hands.
His nostrils flaring and his spectacles sliding down his nose, Zephyr looped his arm around Asherton’s shoulders and helped him to his feet. Magdala followed them to Asherton’s room and watched in tense silence as Zephyr sat him on the bed.
“I’m alright,” Asherton said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Just a headache.”
“You rest.” Zephyr turned and clamped his hand on Magdala’s wrist. “Miss Devney and I need to talk.”
“Leave her be, Zeph,” Asherton said. He reached for them, but he stumbled and was forced to sit down.
Too stunned and frightened to understand what was happening, Magdala let Zephyr lead her out of the room, down the corridor, and into the large master bedroom.
The walls were paneled in dark wood, the bed a huge four-poster cedar with a black velvet coverlet.
The fireplace was so large, Magdala could have stood up in it, but it had been long abandoned, nothing now but a yawning black chasm.
Magdala shivered. She knew this room—it had been her father’s. She was born in this room. Her grandfather had died here.
Zephyr shoved her into a black leather armchair by the fireplace. “I should have known. From the moment you arrived, I should have known you were a scheming little …”
“I’m not …” Magdala panted. Her throat was dry as sand, her tongue heavy. She wanted to run. He was going to turn her over to the queen and have her hanged.
“Who hired you to kill him?”
“I didn’t know …”
“WHO?”
Magdala leaned back in the chair. She had turned into the villain of this story and Zephyr the righteous arbiter of justice. She didn’t know how to defend herself. She couldn’t defend herself.
Whose fault was this? Huxley’s? Her father’s? Was this somehow Asherton’s fault?
“I didn’t want to kill him,” Magdala said. “I was supposed to …”
“So someone did hire you?”
Magdala set her teeth. She wasn’t going to cower and spill the truth to him. He couldn’t prove anything she didn’t admit to. “I didn’t try to kill the prince. That is all I will say about it.”
Zephyr’s face darkened. “Don’t play games with me, child. I will get the truth from you, one way or another.”
Magdala slunk lower in the chair, her heart pounding.
“Do you think you’ll hang?” Zephyr asked, his voice low and threatening. “Oh, you won’t hang.” He turned away from her and walked to a shelf by the window lined with an array of glass bottles. The glass chinked softly as he sifted through them, then he held one up and turned toward her.
His eyes glinted, and she recognized the light in them—she’d seen it in the eyes of villagers at the picket line. Her stomach dropped. Her greatest mistake had been underestimating this immortal’s love for his ward.
“I have some amenite, too,” Zephyr said darkly.
“How convenient. Yes, I think I’ll give you some of this so you will tell me exactly who is after the prince, and then you will die right there in that chair, and once you’re dead, I will simply sink your body in the pond and no one will ever know what happened to you. ”
Magdala could see it—her body slumped over and her eyes blank and staring. Asherton gazing down at her with vague regret and disappointment. She was never going to restore her father’s fortunes or dance with her mother or have her revenge on Huxley or kiss Asherton …
And what about Anton? She imagined him lying on her cot tonight, sad and confused. Tears gushed down her cheeks. “I didn’t know that amenite was deadly.”
“Are you really that stupid?” Zephyr scoffed.
“Yes,” Magdala sobbed. “I am that stupid. I am the stupidest woman alive, but I’m not a killer.”
Her mind flashed back to the hesitation in the maze. Such a little thing, but she had meant for the assassin to kill Asherton. Was a passive killer any better than an assassin? Perhaps this the Only’s justice. Or perhaps it was the curse rebounding on her.
Magdala’s perception of herself — a dutiful daughter, a loyal guard, a skilled and wise and clever and witty and good person — crumbled like a dam under floodwaters. Her father’s bitterness had eaten away at her integrity, and his rage was the knife in her chest.
Zephyr wetted a knife and poured the amenite over the blade. She choked on a sob—she didn’t want to die like a pathetic child. She deserved this, and she would take it like a woman.
She didn’t fight him when he took her arm and laid the blade against her palm.
“One last time. Who hired you?”
She almost told him. She didn’t care to protect Huxley, but what if Huxley shifted blame to her father?
Surely Huxley knew, when he sent her here, that amenite was deadly.
And if he had meant to use her as a scapegoat, no one was safe.
Her father would hang for the conspiracy, and she would have to stand by and watch.
She dropped her head, shut her eyes, and waited for the blade to sting her skin, but a pounding at the door interrupted them.
“Go and rest!” Zephyr barked.
“Zeph!” Asherton’s voice was muffled through the thick wood. “Leave her alone!”
Zephyr’s lips tightened.
Asherton beat the door until the floor shook. “Zephyr, don’t you dare touch her! Let me in!”
“Go to bed and rest!” Zephyr roared.
“LET ME IN!” Asherton shouted.
“GO!”
Frantic, Magdala dove for the door, trying to reach the latch before Zephyr could stop her. Her fingers brushed the brass, but Zephyr caught her by the shoulders and hurled her to the ground.
“ZEPH!” Asherton’s voice was angry and strained. “What are you doing? Leave her alone!”
He shook the lock and then, to Magdala’s shock, the door shuddered and the lock snapped, shearing half the jamb off with it.
“That door is hundreds of years old!” Zephyr protested.
Asherton ignored him. His face shadowed with rage, he marched across the room to Magdala and knelt in front of her.
She couldn’t look at him. She was so ashamed.
She wished he would shout at her, swear at her, tell her she was scum and he hated her.
But he didn’t. Trembling, he lifted her roughly in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I really, really …”
Asherton didn’t reply as he strode out the broken door.
“Don’t trust her!” Zephyr growled. “She’ll cut your throat!”
“Enough, Zeph,” Asherton said.
“That woman will be the death of you!”
“ENOUGH!” Asherton spun on Zephyr, and Magdala could feel the anger tremor through him. “Can no one remember that I am the future king, and until I am dead, this is my house! I will not allow you to murder the help, however justified it may be, and I will not have you or anyone else defy me!”
Zephyr let out a tremulous, disbelieving laugh. “I raised you from a child, boy.”
“Yes, thank you, Zephyr. But Miss Devney and I need to talk. Alone.”
Zephyr reached for him as he passed through the door, but Asherton shrugged his hand off and bore Magdala back to his room.