“If you won’t help him, you won’t help me either,” she snapped.
“Go,” Zephyr said. “Asherton will be angry if you don’t.”
“I don’t wish to wake him,” Magdala said, as an excuse. She didn’t want to leave.
“I should try to get some more of the water from his lungs,” Zephyr said. “There’s no purpose in you being here as well.”
“Will it hurt him?”
“Not much.”
Reluctantly, Magdala assented, but Asherton woke when she shifted. He tried to sit up, jostling his swollen, twisted arm. Magdala drew a sharp breath, feeling his pain in her own bones, and pressed him onto the mattress.
“I need stitches in my cheek,” she said. “But I won’t go unless you promise to lie still and be good.”
“I’ve never been a good … a day in my life,” he panted.
Magdala rolled her eyes. “Ash, please. For me.”
Asherton nodded. Still, she hesitated, squeezing his hand.
“I’ll stay with him,” Zephyr assured her. “Go quickly now. It will only get harder.”
She left the door open, determined that she would get up at the slightest clearing of his throat and return to him.
Chapter 44
Afog bank of silence lay over the cottage. Without a word, Seamus cleaned and stitched the cut under Magdala’s eye. Wringing her hands, Magdala thought of everything she wanted to say to him, but all she could manage was a grunt when the needle pricked her and a hiss when he smoothed the bandage over the puckered skin.
She longed to tell him about Asherton—the person he was outside of his birth and his political ideas. She wanted to tell him about how brilliant Asherton was, how kind, and frustrating and brave and recklessly loving. But the words lodged in her throat.
“How did you come by this?” Seamus asked. Nearly half an hour had passed and Magdala was anxious to return to the bedroom. Voices wafted through the open door—Zephyr and Asherton talking quietly, and a barking cough that jarred her like a chisel. She tried to get up, but her father gripped her arm and pulled her down.
“Huxley shot me,” she replied brusquely. Seamus’ mouth tightened. “You radicalized him, and now he’s lost his mind.”
“Can you blame him? The prince murdered his brother.”
“Thekingdidn’t kill him.”
“Then who did?”
“I did,”Zephyr’s voice broke in.
Seamus frowned. “So why did you not admit to it at the inquest?”
“Because I forbade it.”
Everyone looked up. Asherton was standing in the bedroom doorway, leaning on the frame. He was flushed and shivering. He pulsed with a nervous energy Magdala did not like.
“Go back to bed,” Zephyr ordered, but Asherton ignored him and crossed the room to the fireplace. He held his blue, bent, swollen arm against his body and perched on the edge of the sofa.
“My father doesn’t need an explanation, Ash,” Magdala said. “Go and rest.”
Asherton pressed on anyway. “Julian attacked me the night of his death. It seems he’d been attending meetings with a group of radicals, and he decided I needed to be disposed of for the good of the kingdom or some such rot.”
Seamus stilled. “He meant to assassinate you?”
“He did.”
