Seamus haunted the doorway like a nervous ghost. “We … we ate it all before …”
Magdala’s exhaustion fled like shadow before flame. A manic energy overtook her, and she whirled on her father. “OUT!” she shouted, pointing to the door. “Don’t come back until sunrise.”
Seamus’s lips flattened into a tight line. “My dear, I hope you know that I never imagined that you would …”
“GO!”
He nodded and stomped out, slamming the door.
Too shaken and angry to sleep, Magdala changed into dry clothes, took a rag from the kitchen drawer, and began to scrub. She scrubbed the counters, the cabinets, thefloors and baseboards and doors. She cleaned until her side cramped, until her hand locked on the horse-hair brush.
She used to love serving on the guard, but today it felt hollow. She had no idea who she was anymore. A stone mason? A duke’s daughter? A royal guard? A wild Russuli? None of these lives overlapped or intersected. She was a different Magdala in each variation, longing after something none of them could give her.
As Magdala rubbed the skin off her hands, scrubbing the rough wooden floors, she imagined herself standing on the bank of a raging river, reaching out for someone to help her across, but instead her father stood behind her and her mother behind him and Huxley at the rear, and they were all clamoring, “Lay down! Bridge the gap for us! We can cross over on your back!”
If someone came along and took her hand, she could jump over. But the other bank was just empty, windswept moors. And she was alone.
Her father returned early with fresh bread from the bakery and found her lying on the sofa, her blouse grimy with dust and her hands blistered. The house was sparkling clean.
She glanced at him and then back at the black void of the fireplace.
Seamus sat at the end of the sofa and took Magdala’s head onto his knee. He stroked her hair. “Do you remember Elegy, my little hen?” he asked.
“I do,” she murmured. And she did, but as she grew older, the crisp picture in her mind of the stone manse, pristinegardens, and sparkling greenhouses was being replaced by the painting over the mantle. The two blurred together, the real and the art, into a watercolor of memory.
Seamus smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes deep as plough furrows. “I was always fighting with her.” Magdala assumed he meant the house, the grounds, and the soil of Elegy Island. “I would tame her for a time, and then she would go wild again—all weed and thistle, algae and moss. It is hard to fight with a wild thing, but when you subdue it, wrestle it back into order again, it is a satisfaction like none other.”
Magdala let his words run through her like cold water.
“You are twenty summers old,” he said. “You should have chosen a husband already. A good man with a straight back and a clean jaw who knows how to run a house with dignity and order. You should be dressed in velvet and lace, preparing to inherit your rightful home. Your birthplace. Your legacy.”
But Madgala could not imagine her strong, overly tall body crammed into a powder-pink gown and delicate lace slippers.
Seamus laid his hand on her shoulder. “I know that I am passionate. I know that my loyalty to this kingdom can push people too far. But sometimes drastic change requires drastic action. Tiernan had no right to take Elegy from you just so that his bastard son could live in it, away from the public eye.”
Magdala bit her lip.
Her father tucked a curl of her scarlet hair behind her ear. “We need to take risks to regain what is rightfully ours.”
Magdala sat up and gazed at her father. What did he mean by that? Was inciting the people to a riot and nearly losing his only child an acceptable risk? Had his yearning for his old life and position overcome his love for her?
Her father continued, unheeding. “You have so much talent, my meadow hen,” he said. “You are swift and skilled, taller than some men, stronger than any woman I’ve known. You can throw a knife to pin a fly’s wings to a tree. You can cut a man down before he can blink. You are too clever and powerful for this place.”
A lump rose in Magdala’s throat. She was not talented. She was not naturally strong or athletic. No, she had fought and trained, sweat and bled, for every skill and every reflex. How could he not see that she had done everything for them, to put food on their table? To run his business while he lay in his bed with a bad back?
Betrayal mingled with grief. All these years, had he thought this life came naturally to her? Had he imagined it waseasy?
She sometimes wondered if, had this epiphany not cut her so sharply, she would have answered his next question differently.
“The bastard will be at the ball, after the little prince’s christening next week. Will you be there as well?”
She knew what her father was implying and replied without hesitation, “I will not assassinate the crown prince of Allagesh for you, Da.”
Seamus exhaled slowly and she braced herself, waiting for his anger to scatter down on her like a rockslide. But it did not come. “I would never ask you to.”
“Then what were you going to ask me to do?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “You never were like me. You never had that fire in you.”
