Chapter 31
Magdala sat on the bank of the pond, chewing a piece of pond grass and watching Asherton as he stood waist-deep in the brown water, his arm down the throat of a giant yellow iris.
Dragonflies buzzed around his head and a salamander sat on his shoulder.
Magdala was content, all dreams of ancient birthrights forgotten.
She had abandoned her professional guard attire when a heat wave struck them three weeks ago, just after their incident with Algie.
Now, she let the sun freckle her shoulders and her cedar-scented ringlets frame her face.
She’d spent so much time in the sun in the months since she arrived at Elegy, her face was a constellation of freckles, which Asherton told her he was determined to memorize, like a map of the sky.
Once Magdala realized that Asherton responded well to routine, she began writing a list of daily tasks and setting it on his nightstand every morning.
Asherton carried out the chores to perfection, without complaint.
If he was a complex code, Magdala was the first person ever to crack it—and she marveled that no one had realized before that structure helped him remember ordinary tasks amid the tumult of creativity and ideas in his ever-active mind.
He wasn’t messy or stupid or undisciplined; he was distractible because there was always something more interesting to think about or do than the laundry or the dishes.
And Asherton’s mind moved so fast, it made Magdala dizzy.
Even the eggs made sense to her now. If he ate the same thing every day, he didn’t have to make a decision about what to eat.
As Asherton had predicted, Magdala had stopped wearing shoes.
She’d also learned how to feed the carnivorous plants in the greenhouse and how to call the ducks in from the pond by quacking loudly.
Asherton watched her practicing this skill with a wide grin, and she wondered if he was playing games with her as revenge for all the spiders she’d made him kill when they cleaned out her mother’s old shed in the woods.
It was, as she’d expected, full of animal bones (and a few human ones as well).
She assured Asherton they were for her mother’s magic, but he just wrinkled his nose and squashed another wolf spider.
Asherton liked making bread (he said he enjoyed working on it, then waiting until it was ready, then working on it again).
Zephyr was only good with fish. When the strawberries ripened, all three of them labored for three days in the kitchen, their fingers stained red, as they capped and diced, reduced and canned the fruit.
Peaches came next. Zephyr made dandelion wine, and Asherton learned to slow-smoke meat, and Magdala kept her bread lame sharp so she could cut designs into the sourdough loaves.
The kitchen was clean, the laundry line full, the floors swept. Magdala sent money home to her father with brief, vague messages. Now that he could afford medicine, his chest had eased and Magdala’s guilt with it.
Magdala was learning to swim. Asherton was a patient teacher and, haunted by the slip in the cave, they both kept their hands to themselves.
Magdala sparred with Asherton in the ballroom.
He was deadly with a knife, and they were evenly matched.
With a sword, he outmatched her, which annoyed her immensely, and she took to practicing alone on the long, humming evenings.
Anton was almost as tall as Asherton now, and no less terrifying.
Even though Magdala weeded the vegetable garden, Elegy was still wild. As it was meant to be.
“Hold his jaws open,” Asherton said to Zephyr.
The old man struggled to pry the iris’s jaws wider. “Come, Miss Devney,” he said. “All hands on deck.”
Magdala stood and brushed off her pants, then waded into the water. Asherton smiled at her and said, “Reinforcements look promising.”
The sun shone on his bare chest, his biceps were tight, and he was the sunlight dappled on the water, he was the warmth of summer, he was the wind that whistled over the heath.
Her heart rose to him, and in so doing, it broke again. Every day, when she awoke and he smiled at her from his bed, her heart cracked, and as she muddled through from dawn to dusk, she endured a thousand breaks and fissures.
Sometimes, when she addressed him, she found the Russuli word ‘MoCrida’ on the tip of her tongue, and she would bite it back like bile.
Gripping the iris’s slippery, toothless gums, she dragged its mouth open. Asherton turned his body and jammed his head and shoulders down its throat.
“Be careful!” she urged.
But he only smiled in that particular way that sent a tingle from her head to her toes.
Oh, how could she ever leave him? When the coronation was over and he was king, she would buy another house for her father, and then she would return to Asherton, guarding him forever, watching from corners and doorways, quipping and sparring, sleeping in his room and insisting he wear shoes when he wandered into the rain.
Even at a distance, she would be with him.
Even in his mess and the shifting winds of his temper—she could ride them like a dragon on a gale, happy that she was allowed the thrill of his storm.
Sweat beaded on Magdala’s brow and Asherton strained, reaching down the plant’s throat.
“Hurry,” Magdala grunted.
“He’s going to get swallowed,” Zephyr grumbled.
“That will please the multitudes,” Asherton’s voice echoed back.
“Be careful, Ash!” Magdala shouted. “I do not want to go in there after you.”
Asherton slid a few inches and Magdala wanted to reach out and grab his belt to yank him out, but she couldn’t release the iris’s jaws.
“Got it!” Asherton shouted and, at the same moment, a messenger dragon landed on Magdala’s shoulder.
The iris started, jerking its head out of Magdala’s hands and clamping down on Asherton’s torso.
Magdala grappled along its slick, wet lips, trying to pry its mouth open.
It thrashed, and she sailed through the air, cracked against the surface of the pond, and sank in a swirl of green water, bubbles, and tangled duckweed.
Magdala oriented herself and struck out for the surface, emerging wet and disheveled, with pond weed in her hair.
Zephyr had managed to subdue the angry iris, and Asherton was sliding free, clutching a bullfrog.
He was laughing, covered in sludge and unperturbed by Zephyr’s shouting.
He held up the bullfrog and Zephyr’s face softened.
“These always disarm you,” Asherton said. “Even in your worst moods.”
A water-strider clinging to her hair, Magdala swam awkwardly to the bank and splashed over to the patient little dragon.
It sniffed her fingers as she drew the folded paper from its pouch. She watched it flap away before she settled on the bank and opened the letter.
Attn: Magdala Devney
Elegy house, Elegy Island
Miss Devney,
I thought we had an agreement, but I see you have not held to your half of it. I do not believe you when you say the prince is innocent, and I will be looking into the matter further.
Also, Queen-Regent Madelaine received your request for a double guard for the upcoming coronation.
I am afraid that I deem it both unnecessary and impossible.
I have detached all my men to guard the streets, and I don’t imagine the prince will be in need of an escort.
After the coronation, we can discuss this further.
Yours,
Huxley Davenport
Magdala hurled the letter into the pond, where it was promptly eaten by a large-mouth glassfish.
“What’s wrong?” Asherton asked.
“Nothing,” Magdala replied, forcing a smile. “I’m going to stroll around and check the grounds.”
“Be careful,” Asherton said as the iris sucked his arm down its throat.
She waved in acknowledgment and marched toward the woods. This foolish, pointless passion for Asherton was clouding her judgment. She needed to clear her head and ask herself what she would do to protect him if he wasn’t the object of her every desire and affection.
She needed to distance herself from him. Clear space in her head. Pretend he was just another charge, like Angelonia.
Drawing her knife, Magdala slashed at the briars tangled over the path.
The coronation loomed, a monster on a bridge, and she could not work out how they could pass it unscathed.
Surely, with Asherton so close to the throne, her father and Huxley would have plans.
And Huxley suspected her shift in loyalties.
And then there was the curse.
In the three weeks since she kissed him in the cavern, Magdala had been plagued with dreams of a strange purple tree. She heard her own voice screaming, wild with grief. Held a bleeding body in her arms. Felt for a pulse that wouldn’t beat.
Water closed over her head.
And then, always just before she woke, she saw Asherton lying dead on dark grass.
Sometimes he was dripping wet, drowned. Sometimes he was cradled in Zephyr’s arms. Most of the time, though, he was lying on a set of green stairs, his blood dripping step by step to a pool at the base.
She awoke sweating, often weeping, and wondered if it was anxiety or that strange second sight her mother said she had.
Magdala paced until the sun began to dip behind the trees and her mind was rushing around and around—a dragon chasing its tail.
She should never have kissed him, never have allowed herself to fall for him, because even as she lay awake at night, sick over his safety, she could hear his rapid breathing just two paces away, and she knew he was worrying about her as well.
What if he wouldn’t let her protect him?
Threw himself in the way of a shotfire ball?
Hired an assassin to kill him quietly while she was using the washroom so she wouldn’t be hurt?
“Mags!” Asherton’s voice woke her from her reverie. She flinched. Every time she looked at him, he grew more precious to her.