Chapter 41
Sand and mud scratched Magdala’s eyes, blinding her.
Angling herself with awkward, imprecise strokes, Magdala slammed into the piling and wrapped her arms and legs around it.
Too slowly, every passing like a nail in a coffin, she slid down it, feeling for the chain attached to Asherton’s arm.
Wood splinters stung her fingers as she groped down and down, but she could not find the chain.
Her own lungs pleaded for air, and Asherton had been down for minutes. She promised herself that he was strong, that he could hold on. But she knew the grim truth—it had been too long.
But if the chain was gone, maybe he had broken free somehow.
Magdala struck out for the surface, breaking it as the angry water pulled her downstream.
Asherton’s swimming lessons were not enough, and she struggled to keep her chin from dipping under.
Flailing, spluttering, she scanned the banks and the tangle of trees lining the shore, desperately hoping he’d escaped and swum to safety.
“ASHERTON!” she screamed.
What if he had been pulled under by the furious current and lost to the river forever?
She turned round and round, spitting filthy water as she bobbed, her skin tearing on submerged branches until the river carried her around a bend and tossed her against the bank.
Shivering, her chest heavy, she crawled ashore.
With chattering teeth and aching muscles, Magdala stumbled to her feet. The crowd had dispersed. Zephyr was gone. She was alone.
Magdala hunched for an agonizing moment in the suddenly silent night, building the courage to start downstream and look for Asherton.
She would look until daybreak, until night fell again, until the next sunrise.
She would look and look and look until her legs gave out, even if all she found was a body to mourn over.
As she turned away from the river, the water broke and Zephyr splashed onto the muddy grass. He was half man, half nix, his hands webbed and mottled with blue scales. And in his arms, he held a limp form.
Magdala’s throat closed.
Like a father taking a sleeping child to bed, Zephyr laid Asherton tenderly on the grass and bent over him. “His heart is beating, but he is not breathing,” he croaked.
“No.” It came out half sob, half shriek. Magdala forgot about Zephyr’s horrible powers and lurched forward, throwing herself on Asherton’s chest.
“Ash!” She clutched his face between her hands. “Look at me. Ash, look at me!”
Zephyr was tearing open Asherton’s shirt, his webbed fingers clumsy.
“Why isn’t he breathing?” she demanded, insanely angry at Zephyr. “Make him breathe!”
Tight-lipped and silent, Zephyr laid his open hand on Asherton’s chest and murmured, “Breathe for me, child. Come now. Don’t break an old man’s heart.” Slowly, he moved his hand in a circular motion over Asherton’s chest.
“W…what are you doing?” Magdala stammered.
“Breathe for me, child,” Zephyr said through gritted teeth. He lifted Asherton’s shoulders and cradled him, still moving his hand in that strange circle. “Please, Ash. Please, please …” He bit back a sob. “I could have saved you first. Why would you not allow me to save you?”
Hot tears stung Magdala’s eyes. Why hadn’t Asherton let Zephyr save him first? Kings don’t sacrifice themselves for their bodyguards. What was her purpose if he would not let her protect him?
“Curse both of you,” Zephyr muttered. “And your stupid, headstrong … come, Ash, breathe!” He shook him. “brEATHE!”
Water bubbled on Asherton’s chest, only droplets at first, but they seemed to be surfacing from beneath his skin, drawn upward by Zephyr’s hand. Magdala leaned forward, tracking the slide and skim of webbed fingers. “Nearly there,” Zephyr said. “A little more.”
Was he drawing the water out of Asherton’s lungs?
Magdala wasn’t sure, but it lit a spark of hope in her heart.
Her vision narrowed—in all the world, there was just Asherton’s still body and the water pooling beneath Zephyr’s palm, so she didn’t notice the boots squelching on wet sand until the shotfire barrel touched the base of Zephyr’s neck.
Huxley stood over them, pale and wheezing.
“Put him down,” Huxley ordered.
Zephyr twitched his shoulder, like the shotfire was an irritating gnat, and held tighter to Asherton.
Huxley’s finger flexed on the trigger and Magdala’s vision washed red.
Before she understood what she was doing, Magdala was on her feet, her arms outstretched. She dove on Huxley, her hands closing around his throat.
Huxley’s eyes widened with terror. “Magdala, no!” he shrilled.
There was a spark and a flash, then a crack that made her ears ring. Something burned her cheek, but she barely noticed. She pushed him to the ground, then flipped him onto his stomach and straddled him.
Magdala’s hands moved without permission, like they were independent instruments of death.
With her left hand, she gripped Huxley’s jaw, and with her right, she held his forehead.
He screamed through gritted teeth. Later, she realized that she’d meant to snap his neck, but in that moment, she had no sense of self, only rage and grief and the frantic, mindless energy they leeched into her.
Behind her, Zephyr wailed, “brEATHE, ASH!”
Magdala paused, and Huxley wriggled out from under her, blubbering, “Don’t kill me, Magdala! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“You killed him!” She caught the front of his shirt and pulled him close—moonlight shone in his dilated pupils, mucus dripped off his quivering lip.
Pathetic. Like a deer caught by a wolf. Magdala relished her power, that stone mason’s strength that drew him to her all those years ago.
She could end his life so quickly and quietly, he wouldn’t have time to shriek—but she wanted him to suffer.
She wanted him to feel Asherton’s pain and his despair.
She wanted him to know the horror of water filling his lungs, of his throat closing, and the current dragging him into hell.
Magdala planted her hand on the back of Huxley’s neck and slammed him to the ground, then pushed his head into the river. .
“Now you know how he felt!” Magdala roared. “I want you to die the way he did!” Huxley’s scream came out as a burst of bubbles. “I told you never to touch him, and you should have heeded me. Your blood is on your own hands!”
Huxley fought her, but her rage lent her an inhuman strength. Asherton’s voice rang in her head, over and over and over …
Her first.
Her. First.
His life was worth a thousand bodyguards. She had done nothing to deserve his sacrifice, and it angered her more than Huxley’s crime.
She risked a glance downstream at Zephyr. He was holding Asherton in his arms, rocking softly, his now-human fingers buried in Asherton’s hair.
The weight of her grief shocked her. It tumbled down like a rockslide, violent and crushing, grinding her to dust. Her grip on Huxley slackened, and he kicked and clawed out from under her. With a gurgling cry, he scrambled, crab-like, away from Magdala and snatched the shotfire from the grass.
“You mad little whore,” he rattled. “You were meant to aid us, not get into his bed! Your father will disown you—the people will have you hanged from a tree!”
But Magdala couldn’t hear him. She doubled forward over her knees and screamed out her pain until it shook the pines and trembled in the earth. Huxley started away from her, renewed terror on his face, and ran haltingly into the trees.
“NO!” Magdala screamed. She beat the ground with her fists, mud spattering her face.
“No, no, no, no!” She threw her head back and wailed at the moon.
The manic surge that had turned her murderous dissipated like water in sand.
Her very bones ached, and she touched her forehead to her knees and wept.
“Stop it, Miss Devney, you’re being dramatic.”
Magdala lurched up. Zephyr stood behind her, his face pale and placid. Asherton leaned on his shoulder, his chest heaving. With a shriek, Magdala launched onto Asherton, knocking him off his feet. They both tumbled to the ground.
He couldn’t be real. She must be hallucinating, but his body felt solid under hers, and his chest rose and fell.
She didn’t wait for him to speak before she pressed her mouth against his, kissed him with unchecked, unabashed passion.
She slid one hand into his hair, the other down his chest until her fingers found the light thrum of his heartbeat.
He laid his palm on her cheek, smearing blood along her cheekbone.
He shuddered, and a fit of coughing overtook him. Magdala stretched out beside him, half her body propped on his. When his coughing settled, he lay on the grass, wheezing.
“I thought I lost you,” she said, tears stinging the cut on her cheek. “You bloody idiot! How could you do that to me?”
His eyes still closed, Asherton smiled, and it warmed and irritated her at once.
She leaned over him and kissed him again, on his lips, then his brow, then his neck.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she said between kisses.
He laid his hand on her back and squeezed her against his chest. “I’ll never forgive you for putting me through that. ”
He let out a waterlogged laugh and was seized by another coughing fit.
Zephyr touched Magdala’s shoulder. “We need to find somewhere to shelter and get medicine. He is likely to be ill.”
Of course, of course. She was being stupid.
Alarmed, Magdala sat back and studied Asherton for the first time.
His right arm was still in the rusty cuff, blood dripping to his elbow.
The other was more swollen than before. Zephyr rooted around in the grass until he found the key Huxley had dropped and removed the iron from Asherton's arm.
“Yes.” She nodded. “We need to find someone … we need a physician and …” Her mind reeled. Where could they go now, with the city and the village and the royal guard all set against them? “I need to think. I need to …”
Magdala bit her lip. There was only one place that could not turn her away. “I know where to go.”
Zephyr creased his brow. “Where? We can’t go back to Elegy like this. We can’t go to the city …”
“Trust me,” she said with counterfeit confidence. “They’ll take us in.”
Magdala paused outside her father’s door, staring at the wood grains and the rust on the knocker. She nearly turned and retreated back the way she came, but Asherton’s coughing grated her nerves. With a deep, steadying breath … she knocked.
Silence followed, then footsteps. Finally, the door swung open, and her father stood before her, backlit by firelight.
“Magdala?” he said, his eyebrows raised. He took in her wet clothes, the blood dripping off her chin, the gash high on her cheek, now so swollen, her eye was half closed. “What has happened?”
“I need help,” she said. “But it’s … you’re not going to be happy when I tell you why.”
Seamus’s brows pinched. “Why? What have you done? Did you …” A hint of hope lit his face. “Did you kill the king? I heard someone did, but I didn’t know who …”
“No, Da, I’ve done something much worse than that.”
“What, little hen?”
Magdala nodded at Zephyr, and he rounded the corner, supporting Asherton. “I’ve saved him.”