Chapter 45
Zephyr carried Asherton back into the bedroom and settled him in the bed while Magdala ran to the kitchen to mix a plaster.
Searching for mustard powder, she snatched bottle after bottle, uncapping them, sniffing and clinking them on the counter.
Sage, rosemary, pepper, thyme. Growing more frantic with each failure, she emptied the whole cabinet before she turned away, empty-handed.
Zephyr and Seamus passed her, glaring at one another. The second the door shut behind them, Magdala swept the spices off the counter. They shattered in a fragrant scatter on the floor. Pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, Magdala stood frozen in the gray morning light.
Coughing rattled in the bedroom again and Magdala wiped her brow with her arm and hurried back, her dress smelling of nutmeg and basil.
Asherton was sitting on the edge of the bed, his arms braced on the mattress, preparing, it seemed, to stand.
“There you are,” he rasped. “I was about to come after you.”
“Lie down,” she ordered, sitting beside him and drawing him with her onto the bed. “Zeph and my father have gone for medicine.”
“We can’t trust the physician,” he said. “We need to get back to Elegy quickly. Before Huxley …”
Magdala pulled the covers over him. “I’ve got everything in order. You just get better, and then we can go.”
Asherton hacked, leaving specks of blood on the pillowcase.
“What will you do,” he asked, “if I don’t make it through this?”
Magdala scowled at him. “I refuse to entertain that.”
“I mean it. I don’t want you to go on the rest of your life being miserable. And yesterday, you called Elegy home. I want you to go home to Elegy.”
“It’s not Elegy, Ash,” she said with an incredulous laugh. “It’s you. I don’t care about Elegy unless you’re there, and you will be there, because you’re going to be fine.”
“If we were married, you could get the house when I die.”
“I don’t want the house and you’re not going to die.”
“But would you marry me, Magdala? If I asked you to?”
She laughed again, assuming he was joking. “Right now? In this silly bed, dressed like this?”
But Asherton’s eyes were earnest, his mouth set in a grave line. “It’s a magical bond. We could do it right now. We could say the words, forge the bond, and then you could have the house.”
“I don’t want your blasted house, Ash.” She wiped spots of blood from his cheek with her sleeve.
“Then marry me because I love you, and you’ll get the house either way, which will make me happy.
And you can look after Zephyr for me. It would put my mind at rest, knowing someone will be there for him so he doesn’t turn into a pond monster again, running about eating people.
I promise to be a good husband and always put my laundry in the wicker basket. ”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to decide if he meant it. He smirked faintly. “Are you serious?”
“The most serious I’ve been in my life.”
The idea didn’t frighten Magdala—she knew it should, but it didn’t.
She had already decided to remain with him forever, so why not enjoy the benefits of a loving marriage as well?
Because she did love him, and she knew she always would, even when he drove her to distraction with his scattered habits, forgetfulness, and constant quips.
Magdala forced herself to consider her life if Asherton died.
The royal guard would cast her out. Huxley would hunt her down.
No, if Asherton did not survive, she would go to the Wildlands and run mad through the heath until her knees gave out and she became a wild woman, absorbed by moss.
Zephyr could come with her, and perhaps they would make a hobby of stalking Ashkendoric soldiers and haunting them to insanity.
But if Asherton lived, they could run through the heather together.
They could live at Elegy in the warm months, wading waist-deep in the ponds while Anton grew the size of a house, and then in the winter, they would go to her mother’s village and spend the short, dark days before the fire, watching the snow fall.
So yes, she wanted to marry him. They were already so entwined with one another—why not make it real in the eyes of the Only?
She tried to envision a wedding, some gold-gilt affair with a flowered trellis and crystal goblets and prawns on ice.
If she were to marry Asherton anywhere else, on any other day, her father and the queen-regent and everyone everywhere would turn them into a spectacle, a fairytale—the bastard prince and his bodyguard, such a scandal.
Her love for Asherton had been forged in secret, played out in dark ballrooms and quiet caves and hidden gardens. Why not bind herself to him in silence and in solitude? What a lovely culmination for their strange love story.
And if he did not last the night, she would carry his scar with her until she joined him in the next life.
She slid down next to him. He looped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his body. He was bathed in sweat. The room smelled of fever. Magdala did not care.
She lay her ear against his chest, and he rested his chin on the top of her head.
She could hear the congestion in his lungs, grating with each shallow inflation.
And she needed him to keep breathing, and keep breathing, and keep breathing.
And what if he couldn’t do it anymore, and he drifted away to some faraway place where no bond could follow him?
Perhaps she would go join the war, or help get Asherton’s brother back from the dead, just so she could tell him that it was all his fault.
That she lost the man she loved because that man loved too wildly and too deeply and too much.
Because he made every sacrifice and every decision for others and never thought about himself.
“How is it done?” she whispered.
“Just say the words,” he said.
“Does someone need to be here to witness it?”
“Typically that’s how it’s done, but I don’t think it’s required. It’s just us, and the magic.”
“Alright.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “It’s not very romantic, here, like this.”
“I want you. I don’t care about the rest.”
He coughed; it rattled her like a scattershot blast. When he’d recovered, he said, “Then let’s do it.”
“I don’t know the words,” she said sadly.
He smiled. “Forgive me, but I memorized them after our first kiss in the cave. Say them after me, alright?” He took a moment to steady himself, and then said, “Before the Eyes that see all things, and the stars that are his emissaries …”
“Before the Eyes that see all things and the stars that are his emissaries …” she repeated.
“I vow now that I am bound eternally to you, Magdala Devney, until my death or yours.”
“I vow that I am bound eternally to you, Asherton Ageric, until my death or yours …”
“I cannot entangle myself with any other love, or risk death. I cannot stray to my own loneness, or risk death. I cannot willfully do you physical harm, or I will experience the same hurt in my own body.”
She repeated this back to him.
“This, my vow, is holy and eternal and unbreakable.”
“This, my vow,” she said, “is holy and eternal and unbreakable.”
A sparkling wreath of blue light formed in the air, trembling as if it were made of thousands of glowing pinprick butterflies.
It wound around Magdala’s wrist and settled on her skin.
There was no pain, no burn, and when it was gone, it had left a raised pink scar encircling her arm.
It intertwined beautifully, reminding her of a braided vine.
Asherton couldn’t lift his arm, but when Magdala glanced at it where it lay across his stomach, it bore a twin mark.
Magdala beamed like a fool, her cheeks hurting.
Asherton hooked his finger under her chin, tipped up her face, and kissed her softly.
She slipped her tongue between his teeth and arched against him, but he could only maintain the kiss a moment before his chest shuddered and he coughed.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him cough into her chest.
“Do you feel any different?” he asked when he’d recovered.
“I couldn’t love you more, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said, laying her hand on the side of his face and kissing his damp, salty neck.
He inhaled slowly as she kissed his jaw and his cheek, and then his mouth. He kissed her back, and this was different. She could not explain it, but Magdala could feel him within her heart, like a branch grafted into a tree. Part of her and yet separate.
“Now get better quickly,” she whispered, “and we can sneak off somewhere and misplace all our clothes.”
He let out a low growl. “That’s something worth living for.”
She lay her head on his shoulder and he shut his eyes, coughing lightly.
The moment had tiptoed past so softly, Magdala could only stare at the scar on her wrist in disbelief.
When she slept, she dreamed of a rushing river, and, as before, her parents stood on either bank, shouting for her to join them.
Asherton stood in the current, beckoning.
And Magdala found that she was no longer afraid, and so she lowered her body into the cold water, took his hand, and let the river carry them away together.