“But I’m not bloody like you are. You were obviously fighting someone,” Magdala objected, breathless and shrill. “Look at you!”
“Exactly. That's why both of us need to get out of this room.”
He was right, but something in Magdala believed that staying with the body, reporting the crime, would make her appear innocent.
Asherton must have read this on her face because he said, “Don’t imagine you will get some special mercy if you run out and report the murder. Huxley will want someone to blame, and I’m about to run as far from here as I can, so it’ll be you and not me.”
With that, he shoved her aside and staggered through the door, vanishing into the shadows. Magdala turned to follow him, but a scream shook the window glass, and Magdala turned to find Angelonia in the doorway. She was so pale, she looked almost as dead as Julian.
Huxley appeared behind her. “What’s wrong? What …” His gaze fell to the body. “NO!” he cried and ran forward, skidding to his knees on the floor. He shook his brother, and when Julian only flopped limply, he felt for a pulse under his jaw.
“Julian!” he croaked. “No! No, Julian!” His eyes locked on the knife, and he let out a sob of rage that startled Magdala. “What happened?” he demanded.
“I … I went searching for him,” Magdala said. “And I found him here, like this.”
She thanked the Only for the darkness hiding her bruises and her disheveled clothes. A lump of panic rose in her throat, and her eyes stung. Instinctively, she choked the tears back before realizing that crying was her best show of innocence.
“I don’t know what happened,” she sobbed, leaning into hysteria. “He was just lying there with a knife in his chest and I ran…I ran after the killer, but he pushed me down and got away.”
There, and now she could explain away the bruises. She congratulated herself on her cleverness.
“He’s dead,” Huxley breathed. “He’s … he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Angelonia repeated, her voice rough and low. She stumbled toward the body, but Huxley jumped up and caught her in his arms, restraining her.
With an elegant little sob, Angelonia turned her face into Huxley’s chest, her delicate shoulders rising and falling in a graceful rhythm. She didn’t make a scene, but grieved with perfect, pathetic dignity. Magdala furrowed her brow. If someone murdered a man Magdala loved, she’d be screaming his name, begging him to stay, cursing him, plotting vengeance. She would certainly not be elegantly weeping on another man’s shoulder.
“Did you see the killer’s face?” Huxley asked.
She did see his face. And it was the face of the man who lived inherhouse, slept inherbedroom. Suddenly, Magdala felt like a thief who had the crown jewels laid on a table before her. She could get revenge on the man who ruined her life without raising a finger. The Only was rewarding her act of mercy.
“Yes,” she said. “It was the prince. The killer is Prince Asherton Ageric.”
Chapter 7
As she stepped into the mahogany-paneled justice room, Magdala donned a furious scowl to match the rest of the royal guard. Her heart beat a circus march in her chest, and her palms left a sweaty smear on her skirt as she waited for the inquest to begin.
She’d debated all morning what to wear; there wasn’t a dress code for accusing the crown prince of murder in a court of law. She’d wanted to opt for her simple black guard uniform, but her father wouldn’t allow it. She was born a duchess, he said, and so she should dress like one. They’d fought about it all morning, Magdala’s nerves and anxiety coming out in waves of furious words. In the end, she settled on a heather and brown plaid skirt and a brown blouse that buttoned to her neck. She wore it with a belt and a pair of low-heeled boots. Then she wrestled her hair into a braided crown. Her father wanted her to wear lip stain and eye powder, but she refused.
“My face will be covered, and it will smudge,” she had protested, and her father reluctantly surrendered. “Will you come?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Seamus had grumbled. “Lowly stone masons are not permitted inside the courthouse.”
Now, sitting in the straight-backed wooden pew, staring at the judge’s raised desk, Magdala regretted every decision she’d made in the past five years—from joining the royal guard to accusing the prince of murder to the blasted skirt and blouse. She thought she resembled a secretary or a schoolteacher. No one would take her seriously.
Beside her, Huxley sat rigid, his jaw clenched. He was breathtaking in his black suit, with his golden hair combed, and his face dark with tragedy. His family ranged around them, all the gorgeous Davenports with their sharp jaws and steely eyes. Among them, Magdala was like a wild bird in a peacock’s coop.
The doors swung open, and a stream of summer sunshine poured into the musty room as Angelonia entered, her high-heeled, pointed-toed dragon leather boots echoing off the vaulted mahogany ceiling.
She wore her hair swept up in an elegant coil, her sapphire eyes sparking with tears. Her black column dress was so tight that Magdala could make out the jut of her hips and the indentation of her navel. Her lovely iridescent wings hung down her back like a bridal veil.
She looked both provocative and frail, like a woman in need of a protector. She was weeping, but in a tragically beautiful way.
Magdala had been excused from work in the week since Julian’s death and had not seen her charge. She was glad. Angelonia’s grief grated on her like sandpaper. Standing all day watching this woman weep over the man who had thrown Magdala down the stairs—it would havebeen torture. Every second, she would have wanted to shake her and bark, “Julian was vile, and he would have been just as vile to you!’
To Magdala’s dismay, Angelonia stopped at their bench. “May I sit with you?” she asked.
“Of course, of course,” Huxley said.
