Chapter 27
Asherton crossed his room and tossed Magdala onto the bed. She bounced gracelessly and sprawled on the pillows as Asherton backed away from her, his cheeks flushed and a muscle in his cheek ticking.
“How utterly stupid do you think I am?” he demanded.
Magdala started. “What?”
“You didn’t want to kill me, you wanted to force me to abdicate so you can take my house. Well, listen to me now, Magdala Slorus-Devney: I am never going to give you this house. When I die, the house goes to Zephyr. It’s in my will, and you can’t get it.”
Magdala stared at him, speechless, until her anger caught up and she cried, “I told you I don’t want the house! But regardless of how I feel, my ancestor did build it! With his own hands!”
“First, that’s ridiculous,” Asherton said with a scornful laugh. “No noble builds anything with his own hands! He had a band of servants do it for him, so don’t tell me stories of your ancestor’s broken fingernails and calloused palms.”
Magdala fumed. “He had the house built for his children and grandchildren, one of which is ME!”
“On land that already belonged to Zephyr!”
“The land was empty! There was no house here!”
“No, but Zephyr lived here nonetheless!”
“How could he live here if there was no house?”
Asherton looked suddenly discomforted, like he’d been caught giving up a secret. “It doesn’t matter. This land is Zeph’s, and when I die, the house goes to him. So, whatever Huxley told you, he lied—and he set you up so he wouldn’t have to dirty his hands with killing me.”
Her pride badly bruised, Magdala sat up and hugged her knees against her chest. Huxley had tricked her, and the fact that, had she succeeded, the house still wouldn’t have come to her was salt on the wound.
“I told you, I don’t care about the house,” she said, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve, “which is why I risked my own neck to save you just now. But as a matter of principle, this house does belong to me. These grounds which you have so badly neglected …”
“Neglected?” Asherton cried. “Your father butchered this island with his constant pruning and cutting and manicuring! The frog population was nearly extinct, he introduced non-native flowers that crowded out the indigenous flowers, he put koi fish in the ponds. Koi fish. They eat everything, and they’re death to the life system of the island. ”
Magdala’s body trembled with adrenaline. The last brick of her preconceptions teetered on the edge of her crumbled foundation. “My father loved this place. He made it beautiful.”
“Oh, come off it, Mags,” Asherton snapped, closing the space between them. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t honestly think that this island is better off now than it was when you were a child.”
“It was cared for!”
“It’s cared for now!” He leaned over her, his eyes bright with passion. “It’s allowed to be wild instead of combed and brushed and stuffed into a mould of beauty it was never meant to inhabit!”
His words struck the breath from her lungs and she pressed her back against the headboard. “My father preferred it that way,” she whispered.
“Who bloody cares how your father preferred it? It’s not how it was meant to be.”
“Who are you to tell me how it was meant to be? It doesn’t belong to you.”
Asherton braced his arm on the headboard beside her head. “It doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s wild. I just wanted to love it, tend it, make sure it was safe.”
Magdala lost herself in his expression. The world shrank around her, and she was so ashamed of herself, she wanted to run out the door, through the forest, all the way to the sea. Ducking under his arm, she slid off the bed and retreated across the room.
Asherton sat on the edge of the mattress and spread his hands. “So all along, you meant to humiliate me?”
She started to shake her head, but changed to a nod. “Yes,” she mouthed. Her voice failed her.
“Because of Huxley?”
Again, she could only nod.
“Why not just kill me?”
“I never wanted to kill you,” she said quickly. “I just wanted the house. And he promised me the house.”
“And last night?” His eyes were daggers.
“I meant everything I said last night,” she pleaded. “You’re not who they said you would be. And I don’t want to humiliate you now …”
“Then why do this?”
“Because I’m scared! You’re not ready to be king! The people aren’t ready for you to be king! I’m afraid of what will happen to you at the coronation, and I want you to abdicate so we can just stay here, where it’s safe.”
Almost imperceptibly, Asherton’s face softened, so it stung worse when he said, “I don’t know if I trust you anymore, Magdala.”
“I did it to protect you. I swear I did. I swear it, please, Asherton …” She walked toward him, her hands out, but he shook his head and his expression clouded.
“I think you need to go home,” he said.
“No!” Magdala reached for him, but he stood and strode toward the fire, ruffling the hair at the back of his head with his hand.
“You lied to me.”
“I know I did, but you know I’m not trying to hurt you. Please, at least tell me you know that.”
“How the hell do I know that?” he exclaimed. He gestured to his shirt, sticking to his bloodied side.
“Because I went and found Zephyr instead of fleeing the island! Because I risked my own neck to save you!”
Asherton ran his thumb over his lips, and then he tilted his head in reluctant assent.
“If you send me away,” Magdala continued, desperate to reach him, “then Huxley will just send someone you don’t know in my place. We know now that Huxley wants you dead, and with the coronation coming so soon, he’ll be more bold, more desperate.”
The muscle at the hinge of his jaw working, Asherton hissed through his teeth. “I think I’ll risk it.”
Magdala wasn’t expecting this. She blinked in shock and then cried, “What?”
“I can’t trust you.”
“You can. I swear you can. I’m sorry about the amenite. I did it to protect you.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Please, please, Ash, don’t send me away.
” She darted out and grabbed his arm. “I would go if I thought there was anyone else you could trust, but there isn’t anyone.
The whole guard …” He turned away from her and started across the room, but she chased after him, her panic rising.
“The whole guard is under Huxley’s thumb.
Whoever you hire will try to kill you. Don’t make me go—I’m the only person you know doesn’t want to hurt you. ”
He spun on her. “Magdala, I do not trust you!”
Magdala lifted her chin. “You have to. You don’t have a choice.”
He passed his hand over his mouth and groaned. “Alright then. Alright. But only until the coronation is over and all this nonsense about curses is behind us.”
Magdala dropped into one of the chairs by the fire and let out a tremulous breath.
They stared at each other in tense silence. At length, Magdala asked, “What do we do about Zeph?”
Asherton shrugged. He crossed to her cot, gathered her blankets in his arms, and tossed them on his bed.
Magdala's brow pinched. “What are you doing?”
Lifting the cot, Asherton started toward the door.
“Asherton?”
“You’re moving,” he said.
“Ash!” she shouted after him. “I have to be near you if I’m going to protect you!”
“I’ll be fine,” he called over his shoulder. She followed him out into the corridor, then down a long line of doors to a room at the far end of the hall. Kicking the door open, he strode inside and dropped the cot in the center of the unfurnished bedroom.
Magdala stood in the doorway, her arms hanging at her sides. “This is ridiculous.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“And what about Anton?” Magdala asked. “Which room does he stay in?”
Crossing his arms, Asherton leaned against the wall. “My room every other weekend and on holidays.”
Magdala huffed. “This is a lot of caution from someone who, only yesterday, was trying to get shot.”
“Someone has to raise Anton, and you’re not a fit mother.”
“You can be such a …”
“YOU TRIED TO MURDER ME!”
“IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!”
“THEN YOU TRIED TO HUMILATE ME!”
“TO PROTECT YOU!”
Asherton held up his hands and pushed past her, into the corridor.
“Where are you going!” She followed him, but he reached his room first, tossed her blankets into the hall, and slammed the door in her face. She pounded it with her fist. “Let me in!”
No reply.
Magdala pummeled the door until the paneling shook. “I’ll break the lock!”
Still nothing. Shaking with rage, Magdala stormed down to the first floor and out the front door. She rounded the house and stopped under his window. Casting around in the overgrown garden bed, Magdala found a rock and hurled it at the window. The glass shattered, followed by an angry exclamation.
A red haze clouded Magdala’s vision as she gripped the drainpipe and shimmied up. The casement opened and Asherton stuck his head out. “Magdala Devney, what is wrong with you?”
Magdala glared at him. Her hands burned, but she pulled herself up.
“You’re going to break your stupid neck!”
“Shut up!” she hissed. “I’m concentrating.”
She reached the windowsill and gripped it with her fingertips. Asherton’s lips twitched. “You are reckless.”
With that, he turned back into the room … and shut the window.
Magdala gasped. “HEY!”
The rock had left a jagged hole in the window, but not enough for her to climb through. She hung a moment, unable now to get her body onto the shallow windowsill.
Her hands itched to throttle him, the stubborn, stupid, conceited … how dare he lock her out when she’d put up with his constant talking and cooked for him and mothered his man-eating plant? Not to mention the three assassination attempts she’d foiled.
Grunting, her arms burning, Magdala scooted back to the drainpipe and slid to the ground.