Chapter 47
The floor was cold against Magdala’s cheek.
Her hair stuck to her brow—glued there by blood or sweat, she wasn’t sure.
The faint pink light of morning streamed in a blurred window at the far end of the room, casting a circle of black-booted men and women into silhouette.
They stood sentry around her, eerily silent.
Magdala knew the pattern of tile on the floor, the mirrored wall, the mosaics. She was in the ballroom at Elegy.
Someone breathed in her ear, and Magdala shifted her aching eyes. Huxley was bending over her, backed by a dozen or so of her father’s zealots—the most radical and angry. The ones who sharpened knives while her father spat gall and wormwood.
She looked around for Asherton, but Huxley gripped her chin and pulled her face up to meet his.
“Where is the bastard?” Huxley asked without preamble.
Asherton wasn’t here? A burst of relief and pride rushed through her. Her new husband had more cunning than she gave him credit for.
“Asherton drowned,” she said. “You saw to it yourself.”
“That wretched water monster saved him somehow,” he said. “Your father said he was at the house, but no one can find him. Where are he and his vile nix now?”
“How long have I been here?”
“All night.”
All night. She could imagine Asherton’s panic. He would be searching the city for her, risking his neck, with no idea that she was miles away, in his own house. Her hopes of rescue diminished.
Huxley squeezed her jaw, leaving angry red finger marks on her skin. “Where is he, Magdala?”
“He died,” she gritted, jerking her face from his hands. “He survived a few hours, but his lungs were heavy with water and he died.”
“Then explain the fresh new marriage scar on your dirty little wrist.”
Instinctively, Magdala closed her hand over the mark. Appalled whispers sizzled across the room.
“I applaud you for your ambition,” Huxley said. “But you won’t get your chance to be queen. Because you are going to tell us where the bastard is and, more importantly, where the nix is, or I will kill you.”
Magdala’s lips tipped into a cold smile.
“I will kill you, Magdala,” Huxley repeated. “Do not doubt me.”
“I don’t,” she replied. “But what good would that do you?”
“Where is he?”
“Kill me and get it over with,” she said. “But if you do, and Ash ascends the throne, know that every last one of you will rue the day you touched me. And Asherton will not have the mercy to hang you. No, he will kill you slowly. He’ll feed you to the horrors in the greenhouse.”
Huxley’s cheek ticked. He gripped her elbow, and before she understood what he meant to do, he wrenched her arm up and back. There was a gut-wrenching pop, and pain sheared through her shoulder, down her arm, and up her neck to her jaw. A scream ripped out of her. She choked on bile.
Black splotches blotted Magdala’s vision like spilled ink.
Before she could catch her breath, Huxley’s boot sank into her stomach, and the air burst from her lungs.
She folded forward, gasping. She tried to get to her knees again, but something struck her between her shoulder blades, and she sprawled on the floor.
A flurry of kicks followed, at her spine, her ribs, her legs, and her neck.
She curled inward, covering her head with her good arm.
The other refused to obey her, throbbing relentlessly.
“Enough, enough.” Huxley’s voice rose above the collision of flesh and leather and bone. The beating stopped abruptly, but Magdala didn’t uncurl. She clung to consciousness like a climber gripping a cliff’s edge with only his fingertips.
“Now, you’ve had a taste,” Huxley’s voice hissed just above her. “Where is he?”
Magdala ground her teeth. She was the best of the royal guard, and she would not go down as a traitor, cowering and blubbering like Huxley had at the river.
“Where?” Huxley shouted.
Magdala shook her head.
“Do not think I will be merciful and let you die, Magdala. I will slice open your flesh. I will make you suffer.”
He flipped her onto her back and pushed her skirt above her knee.
Magdala’s shoulder blades dug into the tile.
When she smelled smoke, she couldn’t understand why—until a sharp burn shot across her thigh.
Magdala shrieked, craning her neck to see her leg.
Huxley crouched over her, holding a red-hot fire iron against her skin.
The smell of her own charred flesh filled her nostrils.
Smiling, Huxley blew on the iron, and it pulsed vivid orange.
He turned it in his hand, the light reflecting in his cold, blue eyes.
“No,” Magdala gasped. “Please …”
The iron touched her thigh again. Her wail of agony and rage echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Before she could inhale, pain seared her again. With no air in her lungs, her third scream was silent.
Huxley tossed the iron aside and leaned over her, his arms braced on either side of her head. Magdala dragged in a breath and then sobbed.
“Tell us where he is,” Huxley said, “and you can go upstairs, to your own room, and lie down. By morning, this house will be yours by inheritance.”
She could not speak, so she shook her head.
“I will make you beg for death.”
But Huxley himself had taught Magdala how to endure pain.
And so had the stone yards and the training mat.
Magdala closed her eyes and imagined Asherton’s face in the moonlight, and the mark on his wrist, matching hers.
She murmured the vows as Huxley pierced the tip of his knife through the center of her hand.
She pictured the cave with the glowing water, traveled back to the room where she lay on Asherton’s chest and listened to his heartbeat.
When the burning began again—now it was on her stomach—she was running through the Wildlands, the heather scratching her ankles, and her feet cold on peat.
And Asherton ran beside her, his dark curls in his eyes and his face alight with joy.
Perhaps, in this world, there was a baby in her belly and a pot of stew on the stove.
Perhaps her mother was humming while the bread rose to a chorus of crow song.
When she lost this fight, how long would it take Asherton to come? When he found her body here, broken and bloodless, what would he do to Huxley?
She noticed when the torture stopped because it jolted her from her reverie. Someone gripped a handful of her hair and dragged her to her knees. Her shoulder wrenched and she let out a hoarse wail.
“WHERE IS HE?” Huxley screamed.
Magdala’s jaw was clenched so hard, she couldn’t open her mouth.
“TELL ME!”
Her stomach rolled; she thought she might vomit. “I don’t know, but if I did, I would not tell you,” she murmured.
Huxley yanked her head back and jammed something against her lips. Lukewarm, bitter liquid filled her mouth, and she retched, convulsed, but Huxley clutched her jaw so she couldn’t spit it out. She choked on it and was forced to swallow or be drowned.
“There now, we only need to wait a moment,” he panted.
He shoved her and she dropped on the blood-slicked floor. The burns, the bruises, crowded out conscious thought. She was a patchwork of pain, uncertain where one wound ended and the next began.
“I wanted to spare you,” Huxley said, “for your father’s sake. But you wouldn’t tell me the truth, so the amenite will do it for you.”
Words bubbled on her lips, like a levee swelling against a rising tide. Her teeth cut into her tongue.
Huxley crouched in front of her. “Where is Asherton Ageric?”
But Magdala wasn’t listening to him. She was looking with swollen eyes at the door.
“Where is he?” Huxley asked.
“Behind you,” Magdala croaked.
Huxley paled as Asherton’s voice filled the room. “Get your hands off my wife.”