Chapter 28
With four rooms echoing between her and Asherton, Magdala spent the night in restless wakefulness. She’d grown accustomed to his breathing, the sound of his blankets rustling, and Anton curled against her side. She felt safe with Asherton an arm’s length away.
In the darkness, his words under the influence of the amenite haunted her.
Did you come to torment me with your cunning smiles and that wit that makes me want to kiss you more than I want to breathe? Did you come here to torture me with your powerful, beautiful body that lights me up whenever you move?
He thought she was beautiful. No one had ever said she was beautiful before. Powerful, intimidating, impressive, but never beautiful.
But Asherton had called her lovely the first day she met him.
What if the assassin got into his room and slit his throat while he slept? With the window broken, he might manage to unlatch it and slip inside. What if, when she woke, she found Asherton dead in a puddle of blood?
Anxiety boiling in her stomach, Magdala threw the covers aside and got up. Gathering her pillow and blanket, she tiptoed down the hall to Asherton’s door and lay down at the threshold.
She lay there a long time, listening under the door for rustling sheets, for footsteps, for anything.
But sleep evaded her, and Asherton’s room was silent.
She slept fitfully and only awoke in the darkest hours, sweating in the tight corridor.
What difference did it make sleeping here?
The door was locked. If someone did burst in, she could only listen helplessly.
Miserable, Magdala returned to the spare room. As she stepped inside, something clicked, and she thought she saw the door of the armoire move.
Magdala stood frozen in the doorway, half expecting the horrible ghoul of her girlhood imaginings to run at her with long, bony fingers. Her blood whistling in her temples, Magdala crept to the armoire and threw the door open.
It was empty, except for the blood-stained jacket Asherton had been sent her first day at Elegy. Magdala knelt and pulled it out.
In the days since she’d come to Elegy, Asherton had carried his grief quietly, like an old scar.
But she saw flashes of it sometimes. At night, hidden by darkness, she would hear him sniffle.
Sometimes he fell suddenly quiet or stared at the same page of a book for too long, and she knew he was thinking about his lost brother.
If someone washed the blood away from the wool, she wondered if he would wear the coat. If its weight would comfort him.
Only a day ago, she’d imagined reaching across a ravine and Asherton reaching back. They’d brushed fingers, and she thought they might hold onto one another, like friends. She’d peered into his heart for an ephemeral beat, and then he’d closed the door against her and thrown away the key.
Now, she sat literally and metaphorically out in the hall, and the pang surprised her.
With all his mess and moods and shifting tempers, she’d gotten so used to him that she didn’t know how to be alone anymore.
He had hovered ghost-like in her peripheral every moment of the day, and she missed his haunting.
She wanted him back. And she was going to win his trust, even if she had to yell at him to wipe up his muddy footprints for the rest of both their most likely very short lives.
The full moon was up, bathing the grounds and forest in icy silver light. If she slipped outside, it would be easy to find her way without a lantern. She could watch Asherton’s window from down there better than she could in this musty room.
She gathered the jacket, took a bar of soap from the spare washroom, and tiptoed down the corridor. She paused in front of Zephyr’s door, listening for snores, but the immortal must have been sleeping heavily, because not a breath stirred.
Magdala hurried down to the kitchen and gathered baking soda, vinegar, and salt. Thus armed, she made for the woods. She followed the babble of water to a broad, shallow stream. From here, she could still see the light in Asherton’s window through the trees, and the back of the house.
Taking off her boots, Magdala waded into the cold current and settled on the smooth surface of a rock. Dipping the jacket in the water, she scrubbed soap on the stained collar.
The blood was stubborn. It chipped off the wool in a brown powder that turned her stomach. It was a grisly epitaph, the stains deep. Doubt rose. Who would want to wear the coat their loved one died wearing?
But it felt so good to scrub out her self-loathing and cleanse away her regrets. She bit her bottom lip and lathered and scoured the coat until sweat beaded on her brow, until her shoulders and elbows burned.
She paused. If she didn’t calm down, she was going to rub the wool bare.
To calm her pumping heart, Magdala sang an old Russuli tune her mother used to sing as she churned butter or labored over a pile of bones at her worktable.
Why are you mourning, my springtime, my lily?
Why are you weeping, my lavender love?
Your tears bring the snowdrops;
Your sighs call the crocus
Why are you weeping, my willow tree love?
As her voice rose clear and loud in the night, her hands moved in rhythm with the music.
Why did you leave me, my cedar, my oak tree?
Where did you go to, my green forest love?
Your blood bloomed the willow,
It watered the barrens.
But why did you leave me, my oak forest love?
She imagined herself running over the heath, her patchwork dress billowing, her hair blowing in the wind.
Behind her ran her oak forest love, the autumn breeze in his hair.
She turned to look at him and let out a startled cry.
The soap slipped out of her hand, and she scrabbled for it in the current.
Because it was Asherton’s face in her imagination.
It was his honey-green eyes sparkling at her, his calloused hand gripping hers.
She giggled like a schoolgirl. She couldn’t stand Asherton on his best days, wanted to strangle him on his worst. So why did the image fit so well in her mind?
Why did she lean toward it instead of pull away?
The final verse tremored, melancholy and soft in the summer night:
When are you coming, my sunrise, my moonrise?
When are you coming, my stellar light love?
My arms ache to hold you,
My body to claim you
Say, when are you coming, my blue starlight love?
She pictured them stopping under a crimson tree, the leaves tangling in their hair.
He hooked his finger in the binds of her corset and pulled her toward him, then he pressed his lips to hers, and she could imagine their warmth—the tickle of his breath as he laughed against her mouth, his arms tight around her waist …
“What are you doing out here?”
Magdala jumped, guilty as a child caught with their hand in the biscuit jar.
Asherton was standing over her, his hair tangled over his brow and his shirt untucked. He wasn’t looking at her; his eyes darted between the shadowy trees.
“What are you doing here?” she retorted. “You’re supposed to be asleep in a locked room.”
“I woke up and you were gone, so I got worried.” Magdala raised her eyebrows and he rolled his eyes. “That you were hiding behind the curtains with a knife,” he amended moodily.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to take a walk.”
He reached out, beckoning. “We need to go. You can’t be near the water at night.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not safe. Come on.”
He stepped forward and gripped her shoulder, tugging her away from the stream. Off-balance, she knocked the salt cellar into the current.
“No!” Asherton cried, lunging after it, but it slipped away. Something splashed in an eddy downstream, and Asherton tensed. “We need to go. Now. Come on!”
But before he could pull her from the stream, a slimy hand shot out of the water. It curled around Magdala’s ankle, as cold and slick as an eel. She shrieked and kicked, but bony green fingers dug into her skin, pulling her down the bank, into the dark stream.
Asherton dove on her, wrapping his arm around her chest. “His eyes!” he shouted, pointing. Two luminous eyes glowed near her foot. She kicked at them, her heel slipping off their slick surface, and the fingers released her.
Asherton hauled Magdala to the bank, then dragged her to her feet.
“What was that?” Magdala gasped, but Asherton clutched her hand and took off through the trees. Magdala could only stumble behind him, trying to keep her feet. She dropped the jacket, but when she turned back for it, Asherton refused to let her go.
“Come on, Mags!” he urged, gripping her arm.
Behind them, the stream swelled, and a bioluminescent green figure burst out.
It was the strangest, most arrestingly horrible creature Magdala had ever seen.
It stood as tall as a man, with webbed toes and fingers, and a large dorsal fin, like a fish, ran down its back.
Fixing its bulbous eyes on them, it opened its mouth and let out a warbling cry.
Its jaws were lined with sharp, conical teeth.
Magdala slowed in horrified astonishment, and Asherton accidentally yanked her off her feet. She slid in the leaves. Asherton grabbed her around her waist and she staggered up.
The creature bounded after them, its webbed feet squelching on the detritus. Magdala sprinted, passing Asherton, then, in the habit of following him, she fell back. He pushed her in front of him.
“Quick!” Asherton panted. His hand was tight in hers, crushing her fingers. The forest ended abruptly, and the ground gave way to a rocky decline. Waves grumbled against rocks, and the great shimmering sea spread before them. Shuddering, Magdala dropped Asherton’s hand.
Running ahead, Asherton ordered, “Into the water!”
“But if he’s aquatic …” she objected.
He turned, his arms extended, beckoning. “He won’t touch salt water! Come on!”
She hesitated.
“MAGDALA! This is not the time for …”
She screwed her eyes shut and blurted, “I can’t swim!”
The creature broke from the trees and barreled toward them.
With no other choice, Magdala ran toward Asherton, but her foot slipped and she fell.
Asherton sprinted back toward her, but he wasn’t fast enough.
Before she could stand, the creature was upon her, its slick fingers digging into her hair.
She tried to scream, but water filled her mouth.
It streamed out of her nose, choking her.
Asherton screamed her name as she scrabbled in the sand, gripping her throat. Her lungs were heavy, her mouth and nose pouring. She could not inhale, or she would drown. She was already drowning.
Panicking, she reached for her shotfire, but before she could raise it, Asherton dove on the creature.
It let out a wet shriek as they rolled down the embankment.
It writhed, its arms and legs flailing, and then it twisted, grabbed Asherton by the throat, lifted him, and slammed him into the ground.
Magdala’s lungs cleared. Her sinuses burning and her eyes streaming, Magdala drew her knife, but Asherton rasped, “Don’t! ”
She hesitated, and in that instant, Asherton jabbed his fist into his attacker’s eye.
Magdala darted forward, snatched up a rock, and cracked it on the creature’s bald blue head.
It staggered, and she lunged at Asherton, but he was already on his feet.
They collided, Asherton’s hands closed on Magdala’s waist, and he flung her down the beach toward the water.
The creature was up in a blink, and as she ran toward the waves, she could hear its feet sliding in the sand and its breath whistling through feathery gills.
Her feet slowed as she waded into the warm sea. She splashed deeper, deeper. The waves crashed over her, the moon shimmering on their glassy swells. Water closed over her shoulders.