“Her. First.”
“No! Please, don’t do this!” Magdala pleaded. He refused to look at her, his eyes on the water as it crashed around the bend, bearing down on them like a team of horses plunging at their bit and harness. “You are more important!”
Asherton refused to answer her.
“PLEASE!” she screamed. It was her duty to protect him. Her responsibility. Her life stretched out before her, a desert of regret and loneliness. To live without him, knowing she had failed, wasn’t worth a few extra years’ air in her lungs.
Finally, Asherton turned toward her. She noted the shape of his brows, the line of his nose, the way his lips tilted onone side, higher than the other—every detail dearer than her own soul.
“I love you,” he said.
She wanted to shake him. To slap him. To make him understand that this was a selfish sacrifice that she did not want.
“DON’T DO THIS TO ME …” she sobbed.
The wave struck her like a fist, pummeling her into the piling. She lost sight of Asherton, of everything, in the scratching cloud of muddy water and cutting debris. She clawed for the surface, but the current whipped her to the end of her shackle, and she lurched painfully.
The river sucked at her legs, at her waist. Her chest was caving in. She bit down on her tongue and fought the urge to inhale. And then the shackle fell away from her arm and someone tugged on her shirt. Her head burst above the surface, and she dragged in a desperate breath of muggy air.
“Did you save him?” She coughed, clinging to Zephyr’s arm as he pulled her toward the bank.
He shook his head.
“Go back now! Go!” She shook him off and scrambled onto the rocky shore. Huxley’s boots loomed over her, spattered in mud. He bent down, spinning Asherton’s key around his finger. His upper lip twitched into a crooked smile. “Now, tell me how you killed my brother,” Huxley said.
Zephyr’s body shook. “I found Julian standing over Asherton. He was going to shoot him, and so I pressed his headinto the water until he drowned. I plunged the knife into him just to be sure.”
“Stop lying to me!” Huxley gripped the front of Zephyr’s shirt. “His clothes weren’t wet!”
Opaque water flowed over the piling.
“Give him the key!” Magdala shouted.
Huxley closed his hand over the key. “No,” he said. “I think I won’t. You still haven’t explained how his clothes were dry.”
Magdala stared at Zephyr in horror. “Tell him!”
“I …” Zephyr clamped his eyes shut. Tears shone on his cheeks. “I can’t. He forbade me, and I can’t go against him.”
Magdala didn’t understand. A roaring filled her ears. At this moment, Asherton was dying. His lungs filling with water. If Zephyr wanted to save his own neck, then that was his shame, but she was done playing Huxley’s games.
Magala meant to get her hands around Huxley’s throat—to strangle him until he opened his hand and gave her the key—but as she lunged, Zephyr let out a horrible, ear-rending shriek. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, and a shudder racked him from his crown to his heels. Glowing, close-fitted blue scales slicked his arms, his neck, his cheeks. A sharp dorsal fin cracked out of his back. In the space of a heartbeat, Magdala was face-to-face with Algie, the beautiful horror who chased her and Asherton into the sea.
“Zeph?” Magdala breathed.
He turned his luminous eyes on Huxley and raised his webbed hand. Huxley coughed, then gurgled, then clutched at his throat, vomiting water.
The crowd collapsed into chaos. Some surged forward, only to fall to their knees, water pouring from their mouths and noses. Others fled into the trees.
Magdala dove on Huxley and pried the key from his hand, then she plunged into the swirling river.
Chapter 41
Sand and mud scratched Magdala’s eyes, blinding her. Angling herself with awkward, imprecise strokes, Magdala slammed into the piling and wrapped her arms and legs around it. Too slowly, every passing like a nail in a coffin, she slid down it, feeling for the chain attached to Asherton’s arm. Wood splinters stung her fingers as she groped down and down, but she could not find the chain.
Her own lungs pleaded for air, and Asherton had been down for minutes. She promised herself that he was strong, that he could hold on. But she knew the grim truth—it had been too long.
But if the chain was gone, maybe he had broken free somehow. Magdala struck out for the surface, breaking it as the angry water pulled her downstream. Asherton’s swimming lessons were not enough, and she struggled to keep her chin from dipping under. Flailing, spluttering, she scanned the banks and the tangle of trees lining the shore, desperately hoping he’d escaped and swum to safety.
