Chapter 38
Ahigh whine shrilled in Magdala’s ears. Her forehead pounded like someone was cracking a sledgehammer into her skull.
She couldn’t remember where she was, or why her head hurt, but she knew that she had lost something very precious and desperately needed to drag her body up and go searching for it. Whatever it was. She couldn’t remember.
Magdala was being shifted onto a hard mattress.
Something warm and wet dripped over her eyes.
She lifted her hand to her forehead, and when she glanced at her fingers, they were smeared with blood.
Magdala let out a cry of alarm and struggled against the hands holding her, lurching off the mattress and onto the floor.
“Where is the prince?” she rasped.
She was in the servants’ quarters, near the kitchen. A woman in a white apron stood over her. “They took him to his apartment. You’re injured …”
The memory of the dais and the explosion washed over Magdala like a drowning wave, and she stumbled to her feet, reeled, and reached out to steady herself. Her hand closed on the back of a chair, and she paused, clinging to it, until her vision steadied.
Her voice came out as a raw scratch. “Was he killed?”
“He was taken to his room,” a woman replied. “It’s only been half an hour.”
Half an hour? It felt like years. Magdala made out the door and staggered drunkenly toward it. “The curse is real,” she muttered. “It was real this whole time.”
“Please lie down so I can see to your head …” the woman said.
“I need to go to him,” Magdala panted. She reached the door, but, her knees weak, she sagged against the frame.
“The physicians will take care of him. You’re not needed.” The woman wrapped her arms around Magdala, but she lunged against her, panic rising like bile.
“I’m his bodyguard!” Magdala shouted. “I go wherever he does! Let go of me!”
“You must stay here.”
“LET ME GO!”
Rage sliced through her, and Magdala brought back her elbow, striking the woman in the jaw. She stumbled away, swearing, and Magdala charged up the stairs.
She ran unsteadily through the palace, bumping into walls, leaving drops of blood on sky-blue carpets and handprints on gold-leaf wallpaper.
Her head ached like it was pressed in a vise, but she ignored the pain, blinking back the crowding dark.
She couldn’t balance on the stairs, so she dropped onto her knees and dragged herself up, hand over hand.
Her mind fixed on Asherton, dead or dying, alone and surrounded by enemies. She’d promised him she wouldn’t leave him. She’d promised him they would bleed together.
She should have shot Huxley when she had the chance. She should at least have threatened him, hired mercenary guards, held Asherton down and refused to let him up those stairs.
Finally reaching the second floor, Magdala staggered to her feet again.
Angry voices echoed down the corridor, and before she could reach Asherton’s room, the door burst open and he stumbled out, clutching his left arm against his stomach.
His shirt was open, and his body was shiny with sweat and blood.
She had never seen him like this—his face dark with rage, his eyes burning.
“Where is she?” he was shouting. “Bring her to me now!”
Magdala’s relief was so potent, her knees buckled. She leaned against the wall and slid to the carpet. He was alive—that was all that mattered.
“Ash,” she called to him.
When he saw her, his face crumpled. “Mags!” he cried, his voice breaking. He ran to her, reaching out his right arm. His left arm was the wrong shape, bent at a sickening angle, the skin a watercolor mottle of magenta and blue.
Attendants tumbled after him, catching his shoulders and trying to pull him back into the room. He shook them off, his face pale, his nostrils flaring.
“You’re hurt,” Magdala panted, but he dropped to his knees in front of her and dragged her into a crushing, one-armed embrace, his hand tangling in her matted hair. Magdala sank into him, clung to him so tightly she tore the seams of his shirt.
“I thought you were dead,” he croaked into her neck. “You wouldn’t wake up. I screamed at you and you wouldn’t wake up.”
She remembered a voice shouting her name. Pleading. She pressed her face into his shoulder and let him squeeze her until she couldn’t breathe.
She sat back so she could inspect him. Blood dripped into her eyes, but she wiped it away. “Ash, you’re hurt.”
“I didn’t know where they took you …” he continued, frantic and disoriented, like he couldn’t hear her. “They wouldn’t tell me where you were …”
“I’m right here, Ash.” She laid her palm against his cheek, closing her other hand over the back of his neck. “I’m here with you, like I said I would be. Where you go, I go, and I’m right here.”
An attendant gripped her arms and tried to pull her away.
“No!” she cried, clinging to him. She would not leave him again. Never. They couldn’t make her.
“GET OFF HER!” Asherton bellowed. He shoved the attendant aside and then helped Magdala to her feet with one arm.
Leaning on one another, they stumbled back to the bedroom and sank onto Asherton’s bed.
The world spun, and Magdala worried she might vomit.
She turned her face into Asherton’s chest, and he laid his open hand on the side of her head, pressing her against him.
“Ash.” Zephyr appeared out of the mist, the physician’s head bobbing anxiously over his shoulder. “You need to be attended to …”
Asherton’s voice sounded far away. “Her first.”
“We must see to you first,” the physician said nervously. “It’s the royal protocol.”
“To hell with the royal protocol! You will see to her first!”
“But Your Majesty …”
“Have you all forgotten who I am? I am the king of Allagesh, and I will not be ignored! HER. FIRST.”
“No, Ash,” Magdala moaned. With a rush of dread, she remembered stories of soldiers mortally wounded in battle who held onto life until their wives or lovers came to them, and then they gave up and died.
Was she certain he hadn’t been shot or punctured a lung?
What if a shard of shrapnel pierced him and he was silently bleeding inside?
The curse. It was the curse.
“Ash,” she choked. Someone prodded the sore spot on her head. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine,” he said. But his face was a terrifying shade of gray, his eyes too bright.
“It’s the curse,” she mumbled. Someone was pressing a cloth against her face. It smelled of wet leaves and made her sleepy. She pushed it aside. “It’s the curse. It’s the curse … don’t die, Ash. Please, please don’t die.”
He leaned over her, smoothing her hair. “I’m fine. I’ve only broken my arm. People do not die from broken arms.”
“But they will try again.” A hand fumbled with the cloth on her nose and she shrieked, “Get that away from me!”
“Leave her alone,” Asherton snapped.
“The drowserjaw will calm her,” said a voice that sounded miles away.
“No!” Magdala tried to sit up. “I can’t … I need to be awake!”
Firm hands pressed her shoulders into the mattress.
“Relax, Mags.” Asherton’s voice wafted to her through thick mist. “It’s alright. I’m safe. You’re safe. I’m right here with you.”
A needle pricked her forehead, but she hardly noticed. “They’re going to try again.”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“We need to leave here. I want to get you out of here. I want to take you home.”
“I will take you home, and we’ll never leave Elegy as long as we both live.”
“I just want to go home with you,” she said, and tears soaked the bloody sheets. “But the curse …”
He hushed her, stroking her cheek. She had to make him understand—to take her seriously. He wasn’t listening.
“Please don’t die,” she pleaded. She was acting crazy—the blood loss and the hammer in her head were muddling her brain, but she believed that, if she fell asleep again, she would wake up and find that the assassins had found him. “Please don’t die.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Please …” It was as though she sat on a dragon’s back, mounting into the sky, as Asherton and the attendants and the whole room faded away. She tried to fight, but her strength ebbed.
At last, Magdala collapsed into a deep sleep.