Chapter 40
Amass of shining, angry faces crowded behind Huxley. Arms reached into the carriage, grasping Magdala’s clothes, her hair, anything they could reach. “Run, Ash!” she screamed as they dragged her out the door. “Go out the window and run!”
Magdala’s knees scraped on packed dirt, a cloth covered her eyes, and cold, scratchy metal closed over her wrists. She didn’t struggle, but she refused to stand, and someone had to pull her roughly to her feet and then bear her down the road, her toes leaving furrows in the dirt.
“Ash!” she cried, her ears pricking for the familiar cadence of his breathing, the rhythm of his footsteps. She would know him anywhere, even in the dark.
“I’m here,” his voice scratched, just ahead of her.
“Don’t fight them,” she said. “Do whatever they ask you to do.”
He made a sound faintly like a laugh.
Her captor bore her down a steep incline, and she was forced to use her feet or plunge headfirst into an unknown depth. Her boots squelched in mud. She stumbled over stones. Then the ground leveled, the mud deepened, and she was pushed to her knees.
“Huxley!” Madgala shouted. “Where are you, you coward?”
A low chuckle tickled her ear and her shoulders bunched.
“Let us go.” It was the vain bargaining of a desperate woman. “We’ll go back to Elegy and Asherton will find a way to abdicate, just like you wanted. There’s nothing to be gained by …”
Sharp, stunning pain cracked through her jaw. She fell into the mud, her mouth tasting of copper.
“Mags!” Asherton cried. Chains rattled. “Touch her again, Huxley, and I swear I’ll cut your throat.”
Spitting blood, Magdala gained her knees. “There’s nothing to be gained from this, Huxley,” she lisped. “Asherton will abdicate. Somehow. We’ll find a way …”
The blindfold whipped off and Magdala blinked in dim torchlight.
She was kneeling in the muddy riverbed, under a crumbling bridge. An iron cuff chafed her wrist, chaining her to a wooden piling.
“Mags?” Asherton sat beside her. He was chained to the piling as well. Blood trickled from a cut above his eye.
“I’m alright,” she said. “You?”
He craned his neck, taking in the riverbed and the bank. “Where is Zeph? Mags, where is Zeph?”
“I’m here,” Zephyr grumbled. “For my sins.”
Zephyr wasn’t chained, but he leaned against the piling behind Asherton. Huxley was aiming his shotfire at his chest.
From the riverbank above them, the royalists watched in agitation, the torches casting their faces in ghoulish glow and shadow.
“Oh, just shoot me and get it over with,” Asherton gritted. “Why the games?”
Magdala gasped. “Ash, shut up!”
Huxley knelt in front of Magdala. “Because I want to know who killed my brother.”
Magdala enunciated every word as though Huxley were a child. “Asherton didn’t do it.”
“Perhaps you did, then.”
Magdala blinked. “Me? Why would I …”
“Because he threw you down the stairs. Because you told him you wanted to kill him and then, mere minutes later, he had water in his lungs and a knife in his chest.”
“How did you know …”
“I’ve always known. And I know you lied at the inquest. And I meant for you to give the prince the amenite and hang for murder to eliminate you both.
But, somehow, you evaded me.” He stood, casting his eyes up the dry riverbed toward the bulk of the distant dam.
“The gun in your father’s cottage was a decoy, as you know.
Meant to distract you. Your father believed it was real, of course, but he’s a fool.
The oil was a gamble. If it didn’t kill you, I knew it would flush you out of the palace.
I couldn’t very well kill the new king there, even if he is unpopular, and I want answers first. So here is what I will do.
The dam is set to release at any minute.
When it does, water will crash through this riverbed, and you will be drowned.
So, tell me who killed Julian and the rest of you get to live. ”
Without a second’s hesitation, Asherton said, “I did.”
“No, he didn’t!” Magdala blurted. “He didn’t! I gave him the amenite, and he said that he didn’t do it!”
“Ash.” Zephyr leaned around the piling and whispered, “Tell them the truth. The water won’t hurt me.”
“They’ll shoot you.”
They fell into a rapid, hissing argument, but Magdala couldn’t make it out. She wondered now where her father was, if his hatred for Asherton had overgrown even his love for her, but the faces in the crowd glowed inhuman, almost demonic. This, she thought, was what Hell must be like.
Huxley prodded the shotfire in Zephyr’s ribs. “Come with me.”
“No,” Zephyr said flatly. “I won’t leave Asherton here.”
“I will shoot you.”
“Please do.”
“I did it!” Asherton persisted. “Why is this difficult for you to understand? I hated Julian because he was cruel to me at school. It’s that simple.”
Huxley rubbed his chin. “Let’s play a game.” He turned the shotfire on Asherton. “Zephyr, if you don’t come with me, I will shoot him and have it over with. I don’t really think he did it anyway. It was one of you two, but which one? Which one?”
“Please, Ash,” Zephyr begged. “I’ll be fine, you know I will, but … but I am your father in every sense that matters. I am meant to protect you. Let me do this or condemn me to a life of sorrow.”
“You may tell him who,” Asherton assented. “Not how.”
Zephyr was on his feet in a blink, his hands fisted. Huxley pushed him to the river’s edge, and they scrambled up the steep bank. Once safe on higher ground, Huxley drew two keys from his pocket and held them up.
“This key”—he held up the key in his left hand—“goes to the king’s shackle, and this one”—he held up the other—“goes to Magdala’s. Tell me who killed Julian and I will give you one key. You may rescue whoever you choose. Tell me how he was killed, and I will give you the second.”
Zephyr met Asherton’s eyes.
“I did it,” Zephyr said. “I killed Julian in a fit of rage because he meant to kill Asherton.”
Huxley smiled. “As I thought. You may have the first key.”
Zephyr reached for Asherton’s key. Magdala let out an involuntary sob.
“NO!” Asherton shouted. “Release Magdala first!”
She straightened. “No, it’s alright, Zeph. Asherton first.”
Because, of course, he should save Asherton first. That’s what she wanted. That was her duty, to protect him, and the only thing she could imagine worse than drowning would be watching Asherton drown.
She squared her shoulders and calmed her breathing, but she saw Asherton’s cheek ticking.
“It’s alright,” she said. “You’re more important than I am.”
“Not to me.”
“I’ll be alright. I’ll hold my breath.”
Shaking his head, he looked at Zephyr and said with measured command, “Magdala first, Zeph.”
The light went out of Zephyr’s eyes. He seemed to shrivel, to cave in on himself. “Ash, please …”
A thunderous cracking shook the earth. Silver piles of frothing water crashed through the dam and tumbled toward them. Magdala’s mind washed blank with terror.
Zephyr lifted Asherton’s key.
“Koirian, I forbid it!" Asherton cried.
Zephyr’s hand froze and he looked at Asherton, his face pale with horror. “Don’t do this to me.”
Magdala knew Asherton—a dreadnought dragon could not turn him from his resolve. For the second time that day, he said two words that shook Magdala to her very foundation.
“Her. First.”
“No! Please, don’t do this!” Magdala pleaded. He refused to look at her, his eyes on the water as it crashed around the bend, bearing down on them like a team of horses plunging at their bit and harness. “You are more important!”
Asherton refused to answer her.
“PLEASE!” she screamed. It was her duty to protect him. Her responsibility. Her life stretched out before her, a desert of regret and loneliness. To live without him, knowing she had failed, wasn’t worth a few extra years’ air in her lungs.
Finally, Asherton turned toward her. She noted the shape of his brows, the line of his nose, the way his lips tilted on one side, higher than the other—every detail dearer than her own soul.
“I love you,” he said.
She wanted to shake him. To slap him. To make him understand that this was a selfish sacrifice that she did not want.
“DON’T DO THIS TO ME …” she sobbed.
The wave struck her like a fist, pummeling her into the piling. She lost sight of Asherton, of everything, in the scratching cloud of muddy water and cutting debris. She clawed for the surface, but the current whipped her to the end of her shackle, and she lurched painfully.
The river sucked at her legs, at her waist. Her chest was caving in. She bit down on her tongue and fought the urge to inhale. And then the shackle fell away from her arm and someone tugged on her shirt. Her head burst above the surface, and she dragged in a desperate breath of muggy air.
“Did you save him?” She coughed, clinging to Zephyr’s arm as he pulled her toward the bank.
He shook his head.
“Go back now! Go!” She shook him off and scrambled onto the rocky shore. Huxley’s boots loomed over her, spattered in mud. He bent down, spinning Asherton’s key around his finger. His upper lip twitched into a crooked smile. “Now, tell me how you killed my brother,” Huxley said.
Zephyr’s body shook. “I found Julian standing over Asherton. He was going to shoot him, and so I pressed his head into the water until he drowned. I plunged the knife into him just to be sure.”
“Stop lying to me!” Huxley gripped the front of Zephyr’s shirt. “His clothes weren’t wet!”
Opaque water flowed over the piling.
“Give him the key!” Magdala shouted.
Huxley closed his hand over the key. “No,” he said. “I think I won’t. You still haven’t explained how his clothes were dry.”
Magdala stared at Zephyr in horror. “Tell him!”
“I …” Zephyr clamped his eyes shut. Tears shone on his cheeks. “I can’t. He forbade me, and I can’t go against him.”
Magdala didn’t understand. A roaring filled her ears. At this moment, Asherton was dying. His lungs filling with water. If Zephyr wanted to save his own neck, then that was his shame, but she was done playing Huxley’s games.
Magala meant to get her hands around Huxley’s throat—to strangle him until he opened his hand and gave her the key—but as she lunged, Zephyr let out a horrible, ear-rending shriek.
His eyes bulged out of their sockets, and a shudder racked him from his crown to his heels.
Glowing, close-fitted blue scales slicked his arms, his neck, his cheeks.
A sharp dorsal fin cracked out of his back.
In the space of a heartbeat, Magdala was face-to-face with Algie, the beautiful horror who chased her and Asherton into the sea.
“Zeph?” Magdala breathed.
He turned his luminous eyes on Huxley and raised his webbed hand. Huxley coughed, then gurgled, then clutched at his throat, vomiting water.
The crowd collapsed into chaos. Some surged forward, only to fall to their knees, water pouring from their mouths and noses. Others fled into the trees.
Magdala dove on Huxley and pried the key from his hand, then she plunged into the swirling river.