Chapter 37
As they left the palace, rainwater ran down the front steps, the sky overhead an undulating sheet of gray. Thunder clattered between lightning flashes.
Magdala fell into step beside Zephyr and he leaned toward her.
“Take no risks,” he said. “Ride close to him, blocking any potential shotfire balls. Do not fall behind. A sniper could be in any window, any door, among the crowd. In the rain, the powder will get wet, so perhaps they’ll have to be under cover. ”
“I can’t go up the stairs with him,” Magdala whispered. “They won’t let me.”
Zephyr turned to her, his face set like stone. “There is only one thing I like about you, Miss Devney. You know your own mind and you don’t do what you’re told.”
Magdala let out a soft laugh. “That’s the only thing you like about me?”
“Make him a difficult target.”
A crush of guards bore them forward to three eager stallions. They mounted. The queen rode behind in a closed coach, with the baby prince in her arms. She held him awkwardly, and Magdala suspected this was a rare occurrence of maternal attention.
Spurring her horse forward, Magdala rode on Asherton’s right. On Asherton’s left, Zephyr’s shoulders were so tight Magdala feared he might snap like dried clay. Asherton stared ahead, his eyes fixed on the shining street, and he refused to look at Magdala.
The rain soaked their clothes, dripped from their hoods, sheened the horse’s coats. Magdala shivered, but Asherton could have been etched from marble, he sat so straight and still.
As they passed through the city, Magdala watched every twitching villager, every batted eyelash in the crowd. She was so on edge, she feared if someone sneezed, she might lose her nerve and shoot them. Something struck Magdala’s shoulder. She gasped, and Asherton whirled on her.
“It’s a tomato,” Zephyr said quickly. “Only a tomato.”
“Savages,” Asherton murmured.
A set of wrought iron gates arched over the path, and they rode beneath them into the royal gardens.
Hemmed in by flowering shrubs and a low, stone wall, the way was too narrow for three of them to ride abreast, so they fell into a line with Madgala in the front, Asherton behind her, and Zephyr in the rear.
The crowd followed in grim procession, like a funeral march.
The rain puddled around sunken fountains; stone angels wept raindrops down round glistening cheeks, their sightless eyes turned away.
Asherton’s horse pranced impatiently, gnawing at the bit.
“Blast you, Magdala,” Asherton hissed. “You’re going too slowly. Just get it over with.”
Magdala’s spine prickled. Ahead, the raised dais presided in state over the garden—a square of deep green marble engraved with a broad, shining staircase. At the top stood an oxidized copper bowl, swirling with oil.
And Magdala’s heart turned to ice because she knew these stairs. On the night she met Asherton, she’d imagined his blood running down the marble. Night after night for weeks, she’d seen him dead here.
Perhaps curses were real.
A metallic click caught Magdala’s attention and she jerked her head up, but it was just Asherton’s horse gnawing the bit.
Magdala’s panic rose like a smothering fog. The gun could be anywhere—concealed in a window, behind an onlooker, under a bush.
They reached the base of the dais. It was twelve steps up, just high enough that Magdala would not be able to reach him when he stood at the top.
Asherton dismounted as a woman in white approached with a guttering torch.
Magdala recognized her as Justice from the courtroom.
She held out the torch and Asherton gazed at it, his throat bobbing, and then he snatched it and started to ascend the stairs.
Magdala climbed out of the saddle and followed him.
He turned, his gaze wandering toward the castle and its many dark windows.
“Stay,” he said.
Magdala’s jaw set. “No.”
“Yes,” Asherton replied sternly. “You will stay here and I will go up alone. That is how it’s done.”
“Where you go, I go,” she whispered.
“Not today. Not here. This is the tradition.”
Magdala gripped his wrist. “To hell with your tradition. I am going with you.”
Huxley moved from the crowd, his eyes fixed darkly on Asherton.
“You are making a scene,” Asherton said, wrenching his hand from her. “Stay at the bottom of the steps or I will have Huxley arrest you.”
“If you’d let me come with you, we’d be done already to could get out of this blasted rain!”
“I will not be defied, Magdala.”
“If you’re trying to protect me, I don’t have the patience for it today.”
Asherton turned to Huxley. “Please restrain Miss Devney.”
Huxley grabbed Magdala’s arms and pulled her back.
“I thought we were doing this together!” she cried, straining against Huxley as his fingers dug into her arms. “I thought our blood spilled together!"
Asherton cast her one last longing glance and turned away. Slowly, he mounted the steps.
Magdala’s blood boiled. “Alright, alright,” she snapped, yanking her arms from Huxley.
She moved along the side of the staircase, looking up at Asherton as he ascended.
This was madness. He was on display, like an actor on a stage, his body exposed to the crowd below, to the rows of shrubbery and the palace and the lake.
But she had disabled the shotfire, hadn’t she?
She pictured it, leaning against the wall in her father’s cottage. Then the powder spilling into the garden—strange and clumped, unusual. Like soil.
The barrel was as thick as a man’s arm; what kind of shotfire ball could fire from such a thing? Where had the money come from to purchase it?
Unless, all along, that powder had been dirt from the garden, that barrel just a hollow dragon bone stolen from the dracorium. Unless she was meant to be on her guard against a shotfire instead of something else.
Magdala’s mind whirred, frantic and tilting. Asherton had reached the top of the steps and was turning to face the crowd. Everyone hushed—the only sound was the rain ticking on leaves and rattling on marble. He held the torch over the basin of oil.
And Magdala’s lungs emptied of air.
The basin.
“Don’t!” she screamed. She launched onto the steps and ran toward him.
The torch slipped from his grasp and plunged down, down, into the glimmering oil.
A pillar of flame burst up and then blossomed out in a blast so powerful, it shuddered in Magdala’s chest. She tackled him, and both she and Asherton toppled over the side of the dais.
As they plunged down through open air, Asherton twisted, pulling her against his chest. Magdala curled around him, forcing his head against her shoulder, trying to shield him.
Heat and debris pattered her back, burned through her shirt, and then Asherton’s body slammed into the ground and Magdala crashed on top of him.
Her forehead cracked on the muddy earth.
Magdala’s vision snapped out like a snuffed candle. Voices grated and shrilled, boots splashed on puddled stone. Hands grasped her shoulders, but she arched her body over Asherton, refusing to be pulled away. Cold hands cupped her face. Someone was screaming her name.
Her eyelids fluttered. Someone was shaking her, their voice a frantic shriek. “MAGDALA! LOOK AT ME!”
But her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds, her head cycloned. She sagged back into a heavy darkness.