“Well, now you know how I feel dealing with you every hour of the day. How did we get here?”
“Zephyr and his faerie stones again,” Asherton said. “I had no idea about the one in the palace garden. Neither did he, actually, but he worked it out at your father’s house. He knew the one in the hedge maze connected to the house, and he said he used to sneak into the kitchen and steal food sometimes when your father was there, but he didn’t know about the armoire. That one was walled up. Angelonia broke through.
“At your father’s cottage, when we saw Huxley coming, Zephyr dragged me out the back, and we ran to warnyou, but we missed you, and then, when Huxley took you away, your father said you would be here, and Zephyr remembered the statue in the palace garden. He had an epiphany about some book he’d read ages ago, and we hurried back there and used it to return to the island. I nearly lost my mind—it took us so long to get onto the palace grounds—and then through the stone to the maze. The city was still in an uproar. We stumbled out in the Wildlands before we found the right one at Elegy. All while I knew Huxley was …” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, again, traumatized.”
“So, a human can pass through the stone if they’re with a faerie?” Magdala asked, wanting to take his mind off Huxley and the burns on her thighs.
“So it seems. Now Zephyr’s obsessed with finding all the others.”
“Is Zeph very angry at me?’ Magdala asked. “For burning down his house?”
“You didn’t burn down his house. Huxley did. Anyway, I think Elegy was cursed. Zephyr is back there now, bringing all the plants from the greenhouse here so they won’t starve.”
“Ash!” She started away from him suddenly. “Aren’t you king now? Don’t you need to go back and take the crown?”
“Someday, maybe.” He yawned and ruffled his hair. “But I don’t see any way to do it without being murdered on my first day on the throne. As it is, I think I’ll find my brother first, and then we can work out what to do together. Besides, my mother isn’t all that terrible.”
Magdala relaxed. “So everyone thinks you’re dead?”
“I think so.”
The door creaked open and a red-haired woman in a blue-and-yellow plaid dress bustled in. Magdala started to her feet. “Ma?”
Cressida Devney ran to her, her ankle-length braid swinging like a bell pull. “Don’t be getting up, child,” she scolded. “You’re not well enough yet.”
Her thick Russuli brogue warmed Magdala like hot chocolate.
Cressida embraced her daughter. “My darling girl. How do you feel?”
“Fine. Really.”
Asherton nodded politely and left the room.
Cressida watched him go. “He’s been very busy and anxious,” she said. “But I like him very much.”
“Do you?” Magdala asked, nervous.
“Oh, yes, he’s lovely. A little odd and forgetful, but I like people who are a little odd.”
“You haven’t tried to replace his arm with a deer’s leg or something, have you?”
“I just put a new radius in. From a dragon. It was a simple operation, and he’s nearly healed already.”
“Ma, it’ll give him weird magic.”
“It doesn’t bother people who don’t alreadyhavemagic, and he doesn’t. I expect you shall begin having very interesting dreams if I fix your hand.” She lifted Magdala’s hand and studied the ugly scar.
Magdala yanked it back. “No. I don’t like my dreams as they are.”
Cressida shrugged. She was an ossimist—a mender and fuser of bones. She could take a cat with a broken tail and weld a dog’s tail onto it so the cat never knew the difference. Magdala had seen her fuse a hind’s femur into a man’s leg—he was the fastest runner in the village ever after.
Magdala’s lip trembled. “Ma, I’ve messed up everything, and I’m afraid I’m a terrible failure.”
Cressida started back. “What? Because you burned down your da’s fusty old house? None of that, none of that. That place was cursed as an Ashkendoric graveyard, and there was blood on the land. Best for everyone that it’s a heap of ash.”
“I killed someone.”
“Who tried to kill you.”
