Zephyr turned to her, his face set like stone. “There is only one thing I like about you, Miss Devney. You know your own mind and you don’t do what you’re told.”
Magdala let out a soft laugh. “That’s the only thing you like about me?”
“Make him a difficult target.”
A crush of guards bore them forward to three eager stallions. They mounted. The queen rode behind in a closed coach, with the baby prince in her arms. She held him awkwardly, and Magdala suspected this was a rare occurrence of maternal attention.
Spurring her horse forward, Magdala rode on Asherton’s right. On Asherton’s left, Zephyr’s shoulders were so tight Magdala feared he might snap like dried clay. Asherton stared ahead, his eyes fixed on the shining street, and he refused to look at Magdala.
The rain soaked their clothes, dripped from their hoods, sheened the horse’s coats. Magdala shivered, but Asherton could have been etched from marble, he sat so straight and still.
As they passed through the city, Magdala watched every twitching villager, every batted eyelash in the crowd. She was so on edge, she feared if someone sneezed, she might lose her nerve and shoot them. Something struck Magdala’s shoulder. She gasped, and Asherton whirled on her.
“It’s a tomato,” Zephyr said quickly. “Only a tomato.”
“Savages,” Asherton murmured.
A set of wrought iron gates arched over the path, and they rode beneath them into the royal gardens. Hemmed in by flowering shrubs and a low, stone wall, the way was too narrow for three of them to ride abreast, so they fell into a line with Madgala in the front, Asherton behind her, and Zephyr in the rear. The crowd followed in grim procession, like a funeral march.
The rain puddled around sunken fountains; stone angels wept raindrops down round glistening cheeks, their sightless eyes turned away.
Asherton’s horse pranced impatiently, gnawing at the bit.
“Blast you, Magdala,” Asherton hissed. “You’re going too slowly. Just get it over with.”
Magdala’s spine prickled. Ahead, the raised dais presided in state over the garden—a square of deep green marble engraved with a broad, shining staircase. At the top stood an oxidized copper bowl, swirling with oil.
And Magdala’s heart turned to ice because she knew these stairs. On the night she met Asherton, she’d imagined his blood running down the marble. Night after night for weeks, she’d seen him dead here.
Perhaps curses were real.
A metallic click caught Magdala’s attention and she jerked her head up, but it was just Asherton’s horse gnawing the bit.
Magdala’s panic rose like a smothering fog. The gun could be anywhere—concealed in a window, behind an onlooker, under a bush.
They reached the base of the dais. It was twelve steps up, just high enough that Magdala would not be able to reach him when he stood at the top.
Asherton dismounted as a woman in white approached with a guttering torch. Magdala recognized her as Justice from the courtroom. She held out the torch and Asherton gazed at it, his throat bobbing, and then he snatched it and started to ascend the stairs. Magdala climbed out of the saddle and followed him. He turned, his gaze wandering toward the castle and its many dark windows.
“Stay,” he said.
Magdala’s jaw set. “No.”
“Yes,” Asherton replied sternly. “You will stay here and I will go up alone. That is how it’s done.”
“Where you go, I go,” she whispered.
“Not today. Not here. This is the tradition.”
Magdala gripped his wrist. “To hell with your tradition. I am going with you.”
Huxley moved from the crowd, his eyes fixed darkly on Asherton.
“You are making a scene,” Asherton said, wrenching his hand from her. “Stay at the bottom of the steps or I will have Huxley arrest you.”
“If you’d let me come with you, we’d be done already to could get out of this blasted rain!”
“I will not be defied, Magdala.”
