Chapter 50
Magdala awoke to breeze and birdsong. A gentle wind carried the sweet tang of dry leaves through an open window, wafting homespun curtains over her bed.
She couldn’t be at Elegy—the house had burned to the ground.
This room lacked the musty stifle of her father’s cottage.
So where was she and, more importantly, where was Asherton?
Slowly, Magdala turned her head and took in her surroundings.
She lay on a soft mattress in a room of whitewashed stone. Late evening light played across the floor, dappled through the leaves of an ash tree outside.
Her body ached, but more from inactivity than injury.
Pushing the quilt aside, Magdala slipped up the cotton nightdress she was wearing and inspected her legs.
They were dotted with purple burn scars, mostly healed.
When she tried to ball her hand into a fist, two of her fingers refused to curl.
She wondered if she’d ever hold a knife again.
But where was Asherton?
Bleary, her head pounding, Magdala eased her legs over the edge of the bed, but when she stood, the floor pitched, and she had to steady herself on the bedpost. Gradually, the room solidified around her, and she limped to the window and parted the curtains.
A purple carpeted moor, blue with a late summer haze, rolled in smooth fells down to an emerald lake.
The sun had just dipped below the mountains, and a herd of wild hinds skipped across the heath.
A fiddle played at a distant cottage, a dog bayed, and a dragon flapped its wings at a neighboring farm.
The chuck, chuck, chuck of an ax echoed from behind the house.
A smile teased Magdala’s bruised face. Somehow, by miracle or the grace of the Only, she was in the Wildlands.
But she didn’t recognize the cottage. It wasn’t her mother’s, nor any of her neighbors. And where on earth was her husband?
As if in answer, a door slammed somewhere in the house and Asherton slipped into the room, carrying an armful of firewood.
He wore typical Russuli garb—snug brown canvas pants tucked into heavy-soled leather boots, a plaid wool shirt, and a suede leather coat.
His hair was wind-ruffled, his eyes bright.
Magdala forgot her soreness as she admired him.
When he saw her, his face lit up and then fell. “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked, sounding cross. “Go and lie down!”
His broken arm had been mended, straight as new. She frowned, wondering if her mother had altered it.
“Get back in bed,” Asherton ordered.
Magdala leaned against the deep windowsill and let the wind play with her hair. “Whose house are we in?”
He smiled. “Our house.”
She scowled. “Our house burned down.”
“My darling wife,” he said, crossing the room and wrapping his arm around her waist, “do you think I’m the kind of man to marry a girl and not provide her with a roof over her head? I’ll have you know, I bought this house for five whole kibs.”
She raised her eyebrows as he guided her back to the bed and said flatly, “Exorbitant. How ever did you manage it?”
“Your ma said it was empty and needed a good scrub, but legally I had to pay her something for it. As it turns out, all that cleaning you made me do at Elegy had its benefits. If being an exiled king faking his own death doesn’t work out, I could have a promising career as a scullery maid.”
Magdala sat on the edge of the bed. “How long have I been sleeping?”
“About three weeks,” he said. “And honestly, your legs have gotten hairy. You scratch me in the night. Somewhat like sleeping with a bear.”
She slapped his arm and he chuckled, pressing his lips to her neck, just below her ear.
“I could not possibly have needed three weeks of sleep!” she protested.
“You awoke once or twice, but your ma and the physician said in order for you to recover well, you needed more rest, and so they dosed you with drowserjaw until your bruises faded.”
This wasn’t unusual among the Russuli, and so Magdala didn’t mind. Asherton seemed discomfited. He took her hand and slid his fingers through hers. “But I missed you.”
Brushing the loose curls from his eyes, she said, “I dreamt of you.”
Asherton touched his forehead to hers. “What sorts of things did you dream?”
“Oh, I’d rather show you than tell you.”
He laughed and pulled her against his side, kissing the top of her head. “How do you feel, really?” he whispered into her hair.
“Achy, but alright.”
“You frightened me half to death,” he said. “Zephyr found us a few minutes after you collapsed, and by then, I was practically hysterical. I didn’t know if you’d killed Angelonia, or if she’d killed you, or if you’d killed one another. I’m deeply traumatized. You have traumatized me.”
“Well, now you know how I feel dealing with you every hour of the day. How did we get here?”
“Zephyr and his faerie stones again,” Asherton said.
“I had no idea about the one in the palace garden. Neither did he, actually, but he worked it out at your father’s house.
He knew the one in the hedge maze connected to the house, and he said he used to sneak into the kitchen and steal food sometimes when your father was there, but he didn’t know about the armoire.
That one was walled up. Angelonia broke through.
“At your father’s cottage, when we saw Huxley coming, Zephyr dragged me out the back, and we ran to warn you, but we missed you, and then, when Huxley took you away, your father said you would be here, and Zephyr remembered the statue in the palace garden.
He had an epiphany about some book he’d read ages ago, and we hurried back there and used it to return to the island.
I nearly lost my mind—it took us so long to get onto the palace grounds—and then through the stone to the maze.
The city was still in an uproar. We stumbled out in the Wildlands before we found the right one at Elegy.
All while I knew Huxley was …” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, again, traumatized.”
“So, a human can pass through the stone if they’re with a faerie?” Magdala asked, wanting to take his mind off Huxley and the burns on her thighs.
“So it seems. Now Zephyr’s obsessed with finding all the others.”
“Is Zeph very angry at me?’ Magdala asked. “For burning down his house?”
“You didn’t burn down his house. Huxley did. Anyway, I think Elegy was cursed. Zephyr is back there now, bringing all the plants from the greenhouse here so they won’t starve.”
“Ash!” She started away from him suddenly. “Aren’t you king now? Don’t you need to go back and take the crown?”
“Someday, maybe.” He yawned and ruffled his hair. “But I don’t see any way to do it without being murdered on my first day on the throne. As it is, I think I’ll find my brother first, and then we can work out what to do together. Besides, my mother isn’t all that terrible.”
Magdala relaxed. “So everyone thinks you’re dead?”
“I think so.”
The door creaked open and a red-haired woman in a blue-and-yellow plaid dress bustled in. Magdala started to her feet. “Ma?”
Cressida Devney ran to her, her ankle-length braid swinging like a bell pull. “Don’t be getting up, child,” she scolded. “You’re not well enough yet.”
Her thick Russuli brogue warmed Magdala like hot chocolate.
Cressida embraced her daughter. “My darling girl. How do you feel?”
“Fine. Really.”
Asherton nodded politely and left the room.
Cressida watched him go. “He’s been very busy and anxious,” she said. “But I like him very much.”
“Do you?” Magdala asked, nervous.
“Oh, yes, he’s lovely. A little odd and forgetful, but I like people who are a little odd.”
“You haven’t tried to replace his arm with a deer’s leg or something, have you?”
“I just put a new radius in. From a dragon. It was a simple operation, and he’s nearly healed already.”
“Ma, it’ll give him weird magic.”
“It doesn’t bother people who don’t already have magic, and he doesn’t. I expect you shall begin having very interesting dreams if I fix your hand.” She lifted Magdala’s hand and studied the ugly scar.
Magdala yanked it back. “No. I don’t like my dreams as they are.”
Cressida shrugged. She was an ossimist—a mender and fuser of bones. She could take a cat with a broken tail and weld a dog’s tail onto it so the cat never knew the difference. Magdala had seen her fuse a hind’s femur into a man’s leg—he was the fastest runner in the village ever after.
Magdala’s lip trembled. “Ma, I’ve messed up everything, and I’m afraid I’m a terrible failure.”
Cressida started back. “What? Because you burned down your da’s fusty old house? None of that, none of that. That place was cursed as an Ashkendoric graveyard, and there was blood on the land. Best for everyone that it’s a heap of ash.”
“I killed someone.”
“Who tried to kill you.”
“And I think Da is very disappointed in me.”
“Bloody old hypocrite. No one so disappointing as your father has any right to judge. You did very well from what I hear, and you’ve found your soul match in a kind young man who knows how to look after you.”
A growl sounded from outside and Anton thrust his huge, slobbering head through the window.
“Now, that thing I’m not so sure about,” Cressida said, wrinkling her nose. “But he’s a good enough scarecrow in my garden, so we shall tolerate him a little while yet.”
“What did you tell Da?” Magdala asked with some trepidation.
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’ve sent him a vague letter informing him that you are not dead, no thanks to him.
To which he replied that he should like to come visit sometime, and I said that he was not allowed until spring, when we would address it again, and if he told anyone where you are, I would replace his ribs with elkin bear antlers, so they prick him all day and night. ”
“Gracious, Ma.” Magdala shuddered. “I think he loved Elegy more than me,” she said.
“I know he loved Elegy more than me.” Her mother laughed. “I’m very glad it’s burned to the ground.”
“Have you met Zephyr?”