Huxley rolled his eyes. “You’re such an imbecile, Slorus.” He turned to the horde of zealots whose bodies corked the open door. “Take the girl. She knows where he is.”
Seamus started out of his seat. “That was not the arrangement!”
“And you said they would be here!” Huxley roared.
Magdala stomped on her captor's foot. His hand slackened, and she cracked her elbow into the other man’s stomach. Doubling forward, he let go of her arm, and Magdala dashed into the kitchen. Her bread lame lay on the windowsill, and she snatched it up as Huxley pounded after her. She whirled, slashing it at his throat, but jumped back, ashen-faced.
“Be still, Magdala!” he cried. “You’re so violent.”
“I wish I’d snapped your neck when I had the chance,” she said, edging out of the kitchen, but before she could flee, something hard and sharp cracked against her head, and the world plunged into darkness.
Chapter 47
The floor was cold against Magdala’s cheek. Her hair stuck to her brow—glued there by blood or sweat, she wasn’t sure. The faint pink light of morning streamed in a blurred window at the far end of the room, casting a circle of black-booted men and women into silhouette. They stood sentry around her, eerily silent.
Magdala knew the pattern of tile on the floor, the mirrored wall, the mosaics. She was in the ballroom at Elegy.
Someone breathed in her ear, and Magdala shifted her aching eyes. Huxley was bending over her, backed by a dozen or so of her father’s zealots—the most radical and angry. The ones who sharpened knives while her father spat gall and wormwood.
She looked around for Asherton, but Huxley gripped her chin and pulled her face up to meet his.
“Where is the bastard?” Huxley asked without preamble.
Asherton wasn’t here? A burst of relief and pride rushed through her. Her new husband had more cunning than she gave him credit for.
“Asherton drowned,” she said. “You saw to it yourself.”
“That wretched water monster saved him somehow,” he said. “Your father said he was at the house, but no one can find him. Where are he and his vile nix now?”
“How long have I been here?”
“All night.”
All night. She could imagine Asherton’s panic. He would be searching the city for her, risking his neck, with no idea that she was miles away, in his own house. Her hopes of rescue diminished.
Huxley squeezed her jaw, leaving angry red finger marks on her skin. “Where is he, Magdala?”
“He died,” she gritted, jerking her face from his hands. “He survived a few hours, but his lungs were heavy with water and he died.”
“Then explain the fresh new marriage scar on your dirty little wrist.”
Instinctively, Magdala closed her hand over the mark. Appalled whispers sizzled across the room.
“I applaud you for your ambition,” Huxley said. “But you won’t get your chance to be queen. Because you are going to tell us where the bastard is and, more importantly, where the nix is, or I will kill you.”
Magdala’s lips tipped into a cold smile.
“I will kill you, Magdala,” Huxley repeated. “Do not doubt me.”
“I don’t,” she replied. “But what good would that do you?”
“Where is he?”
“Kill me and get it over with,” she said. “But if you do, and Ash ascends the throne, know that every last one of you willrue the day you touched me. And Asherton will not have the mercy to hang you. No, he will kill you slowly. He’ll feed you to the horrors in the greenhouse.”
Huxley’s cheek ticked. He gripped her elbow, and before she understood what he meant to do, he wrenched her arm up and back. There was a gut-wrenching pop, and pain sheared through her shoulder, down her arm, and up her neck to her jaw. A scream ripped out of her. She choked on bile.
Black splotches blotted Magdala’s vision like spilled ink. Before she could catch her breath, Huxley’s boot sank into her stomach, and the air burst from her lungs. She folded forward, gasping. She tried to get to her knees again, but something struck her between her shoulder blades, and she sprawled on the floor. A flurry of kicks followed, at her spine, her ribs, her legs, and her neck. She curled inward, covering her head with her good arm. The other refused to obey her, throbbing relentlessly.
