Chapter 29
“Ican’t swim!” she spluttered. “I can’t swim, Ash!”
“It’s alright! Come to me.” He reached out and she clung to him.
Warm, frothing water closed over her head. She wrapped her arms around Asherton’s neck, kicking frantically.
“I’m drowning,” she gurgled.
“Calm down,” Asherton said firmly. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
Magdala forced herself to relax as Asherton pulled her arm around his shoulders.
“Slide to my back and let the water lift you,” he said. “And relax a little—you’re strangling me.”
She tried to relax, but the breakers crashed over them. She was terrified that she would be swept away and drowned. And then, suddenly, the waves quieted, and they were beyond the breakers, bobbing with the gentle swells.
Asherton struck out through the calm water as Magdala held onto his shoulders. “Was that the nix?”
“Yes,” Asherton replied. “I call him Algie. He’s been here forever.”
“So that thing is just swimming around in the creek every night?”
“He swims around in all the freshwater on the island,” Asherton said.
Magdala glanced over her shoulder at the shore. Algie was pacing back and forth at the water’s edge, watching them.
“How do we get home?” Magdala asked. Already, her arms were cramping, and she could feel Asherton tiring beneath her.
“I know a place,” Asherton said. “Your clothes are weighing me down. Take them off.”
“Very funny.”
“I mean it. It’s not as though we haven’t seen one another in our underclothes before.”
Rolling her eyes, Magdala kicked off her pants and then slipped one arm out of her blouse, then the other, until she was only wearing her black undershorts and sleeveless undershirt.
Asherton struggled with his trousers.
“We can’t both be undressed,” she said.
“Like I said, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
Magdala groaned. The surge of terror-fueled energy had left her tired and shaky. “How much further?” she asked.
Asherton nodded toward a shadowy outcropping of rock in the distance.
“Can’t we swim back to shore and …”
She glanced at the beach, but Algie was keeping pace with them, his eyes like beacons.
“Oh, stars above,” she groaned. “I’m going to drown.”
“I’m a strong swimmer. I go out every morning.”
“No, you don’t!”
“I used to before I had a bodyguard ordering me around. There, that’s what we need.” He pointed to a piece of driftwood. Magdala reached for it gratefully and clung to it, but it bobbed, threatening to slip from her grasp.
“Hold it across your stomach,” Asherton said. “Float on your back.”
She obeyed. It wasn’t broad enough for both of them side by side, so Asherton turned on his back behind her, holding on to the driftwood with one arm and the other looped across her chest.
“Relax,” Asherton said, his breath warm on the shell of her ear. “Look at the stars.”
With an effort, Magdala relaxed, melting into him, and turned her eyes to the stars. They spangled the sky like a distant, magic city.
“There is the queen of spring,” he said, pointing to a constellation sparkling overhead.
“And there is the baron of winter. On the other side of the moon. When I was at school with my brother, we would steal the school’s dragons and run away on dark nights.
He taught me how to handle a dragon and how to fight, and I taught him the constellations.
He was curious about them. He was interested in everything. ”
“You haven’t mentioned him in a while,” Madgala said.
“No one wants to hear me mourn day and night.”
Magdala turned her head, and her nose brushed his scratchy cheek. “You’re allowed to take up space,” she said. “You’re allowed to inconvenience people.”
He let out a short huff. “You’re right about me. I can’t be king. If it weren’t for all the promises I made to my brother, I would fake my own death and run away to the Wildlands and hide.”
“Zephyr and I will help you rule. Maybe you’re exactly what Allagesh needs.”
“That’s what he always said.”
As they watched for shooting stars, Magdala could have apologized for the amenite, and the lies, and the hundred little ways she’d failed in the days past, and perhaps she should have.
But Asherton’s arm tightened around her, he touched his cheek to hers, and they floated together for a long time without a word.
And whatever gash had torn between them mended in silence.
The rock hulked nearer, and Asherton said softly, “There’s a passage in the rock, just below the surface. We have to dive under. I need you to trust me.”
Magdala stiffened. “I can’t swim.”
“Trust me.”
“What if you drown and then I drown!”
He snorted. “I’m not going to drown. I can swim. All you have to do is hang on to me.”
Magdala nodded. She was a royal guard, rigorously trained. She could stay calm for a few seconds. Or, at least, she hoped she could. But from the frantic beating of her heart, she wasn’t sure.
Magdala slipped her hands to his shoulders and kicked her feet, hoping she was helping and not hindering, as they swam down into the pressing dark under the jagged rock.
Asherton was stronger than she’d realized, easily pulling her weight through the tunnel.
She fought back the overwhelming urge to fight her way out of the narrow space.
Just when she thought her lungs would burst, Asherton’s body angled up and light shone down on his hair. A moment later, they burst into cold, damp air.
Magdala gasped.
They had surfaced in the center of a colossal cavern. Stalactites hung from the cathedral ceiling, some as long and wide as oak trees. They glowed a brilliant reef blue, and their light slicked the dripping walls.
A crystal waterfall fell from such a dizzying height, it turned to mist before it reached the pool.
Magdala’s feet touched stone. She released Asherton, her hands burning, and scrambled up the sloping bank. When she’d reached shallow water, she dropped onto her back. Asherton flopped beside her.
“Can he reach us here?” she asked.
Asherton shook his head. Then he laughed.
She splashed him. “What are you laughing about?”
“That was fun.”
“No, it wasn’t!” she cried, indignant.
But he laughed and laughed until it caught like a cough, and Magdala found she was laughing, too, her eyes streaming. It wasn’t funny. She didn’t understand what had come over her, but she was giddy with adrenaline and relief and the joy of being close to him again.
When they’d wrung themselves out, Asherton sat up. “I’ve never seen you like this. You’re not even scowling.”
Magdala fought her mouth into a frown.
“Don’t hurt yourself.” He smiled.
Shaking her head, Magdala got up and waded into the center of the pool. The water closed over her shoulders—warm and silky. She should have been terrified, but this cavern was alive with magic, and Asherton was so painfully beautiful. More than ever before.
“Come on,” she said, waving for him to join her.
Asherton’s smile faded, and his eyes slid over her body, resting on her face.
He gazed at her for a long, intense moment, sending her heart battering against her ribs.
Slowly, he stood and waded toward her. Magdala stepped back, away from him and the devouring depth of his green-gold eyes.
Her foot sank in the deep water, and her head dunked under.
“Whoa!” Asherton cried. He wrapped his arms around her and hoisted her up. She blushed and, laughing softly, rested her arms on his shoulders.
Asherton’s expression was drunk with longing and a fire that sucked her into its heat.
Until that moment, she’d never seen him without his facade of wry smiles and clever retorts.
In the vibrant, unearthly light, Asherton was surreal, and as she looked into his eyes, she felt as though she’d trekked for a hundred years in the wilderness and finally reached home.
With a swell of joy and terror, Magdala realized that she might love him.
Gently, he lifted his hand and laid it against her cheek, his thumb caressing her cheekbone.
The world shifted. The house and her father and her anger toward him, all of which had been fading day by day, finally melted like salt in water, and all she wanted was to bundle his broken, rejected heart in her arms and shield it from every balled fist and harsh word.
To be his sanctuary. To find her sanctuary in him.
Reckless and mindless, she pressed her lips to his neck. He dropped his head back and sighed as she trailed kisses up to his jaw.
What are you doing? What are you doing? Stop, stop, stop! screamed a voice in her head, but she couldn’t stop, and she didn’t want to.
Cradling his face in her hands, Magdala gave in to insanity and touched her lips to his.
It was a soft kiss, cautious. He responded with a gentle movement of his lips, nipping at her, and then he cupped his hand on the back of her head.
Magdala tipped into him, and they pressed into a deep, consuming, hungry kiss.
This was madness. She could not have him, but she loved him. It was all she could think, over and over. I cannot have him, but I love him.
She slipped her tongue between his teeth, and his arms tightened around her, and then her hands were in his hair and his were on her back. He broke away and kissed her shoulders, her neck, up and up until their lips met again in a frantic flurry of passion.
Stop, stop, stop!
As if they both heeded the sensible voices at the same instant, they gasped, their eyes flew open, and they splashed apart.
“I’m sorry,” Asherton said, his chest heaving. “I didn’t …”
“I started it,” she said, bashful and flushed. “It’s just the energy from the chase. We’re all worked up.”
“Yes.” He drifted away from her, and she longed to catch him back and kiss him again. “Yes, that’s it.”
But that wasn’t it, and she could see that he knew it as well as she did.
She turned and returned to shore, then slipped onto the smooth bank. “That didn’t happen. We lost our minds for a moment, because we’re excited and tired and we’ve had a fight, but that didn’t happen. Besides, we don’t even like one another.”
Asherton’s eyes sparkled. “That’s not entirely true.”
“It doesn’t matter either way,” she bit back. “This never happened. And this will never happen again.”
He ran his hand through his wet hair, and Magdala’s fingers flexed, remembering the coil of his curls under her fingers. A few strands still wrapped around her pointer finger, and she plucked them off and tossed them aside.
Asherton sniffed, his jaw worked, and Magdala was foolishly startled at how well she could read him. How well she knew him. He was subduing a deep urge to kiss her again. And her paper wall of resolve was all that held him back.
“The tide is going out, so the moon is setting. We can probably head home,” he said at length.
Magdala nodded. “I’m sorry, Ash.”
He offered her a melancholy smile. “It was bound to happen eventually. At least Zephyr didn’t see us.”
Magdala laughed. “Thank the Only for that.”