“And will he inherit the Ashkendoric throne as well?” Magdala asked.
“Yes, if Marwenna, the Ashkendoric queen, ever dies. But she has some secret way of elongating her life. She is not much younger than I.”
“And how did he come to live with you?”
Zephyr removed his glasses and polished them on his sweater. “Oh, I was minding my own business, living in peace and reading books, propagating my frog ponds, having a lovely dotage, when the queen-regent decided she didn’t want an allegedly cursed illegitimate child in her house, heir or not, and so she meant to send the boy to Ashkendor to live with his birth father, but his wife Marwenna didn’t want her husband’s illegitimate son either, and so, as a compromise, Asherton ended up here with me. This ought to be called ‘compromise island’. Rather cruel of his parents to send a five-year-old boy to live with an eight-century-old bachelor, but everyone is unkind to Asherton. I’ve done my best, but I fear I’m just a gruff old man. Don’t bother being kind to him yourself; he won’t know what to do with it.”
He showed her into the sitting room, searching in every corner with growing agitation. “Where is the blasted child?” he mumbled.
Magdala froze in the sitting room doorway. The mantel was carved oak—engraved with Magdala flowers. Her namesake. She glanced guiltily at Zephyr, anxious he might notice the flowers, too, and make the connection. But he was too busy stomping from window to window, swatting curtains aside as if he might find the prince hiding behind one. She wondered if, like some parents, Zephyr pictured Asherton as younger than he was. Like he was still an eight-year-old boy mischievously playing hide-and-seek instead of a grown man preparing to take a throne.
An array of animal skulls, turtle shells, and brass figurines of dragons, whales, snails, and insects adorned the mantel top. Once ornate pots, now chipped and dusty, hosted figs and ornamental pine trees. A strange leggy fern rustled at Magdala and then unfurled a green frond and grabbed her ankle. With a shriek, Magdala leaped away, dragging the fern from its pot. It sprawled across the floor in a scatter of soil and began to cry like a child.
Shaking his head and mumbling about ‘youths’ and their ‘flighty ways’, Zephyr picked up the weeping plant, as if weeping plants were as ordinary as daisies, righted its pot with his toe, and plopped it inside. It curled into a tight coil, whimpering.
“Keep clear of anything green,” Zephyr said. “Asherton has an odd affection for things with sharp teeth. If he’s not here reading, he’ll be out in the greenhouse.”
Of course, Magdala knew where the greenhouse was, but she clasped her hands behind her and followed Zephyr.
“Asherton is an enigmatic boy … man,” Zephyr said sternly, with an undercurrent of warning. “As much as his mother may wish to cast him off and pretend he doesn’t exist, he is the key to everything—to the war and the ending of it, to the survival of dragons, to the future of all three nations.”
“All three?” Magdala asked.
“His father is Ashkendoric, his mother Allageshan. So, Asherton is heir to both thrones. Protect him at all costs.”
Magdala nodded and tried to relax her scowl, but how does one hide a decade of spoon-fed hatred and curated rage?
“Have there been assassination attempts?” Magdala asked.
“Not here,” Zephyr replied. “But the fight with Julian at the ball—that was a mess—and the riot in the streets of Largotia … I do not anticipate an attempt on the island itself, but I am certain there will be one at the coronation.”
Magdala swallowed and wondered which of her father’s radicals was already chosen to pull the trigger on the day of the coronation. She wondered if she would meet them and have to choose between stepping aside or doing her duty. Both gave her chills.
Zephyr led the way along the corridor to a wrought iron spiral staircase, which wound down to the kitchen. The house was built into the side of a shallow bank, so the kitchen was partly underground.
In Seamus’s day, it had been run like an army battalion, so Magdala gasped as she emerged into a chaos of cluttered countertops, cabinets hanging open, and an almost empty larder. The sky-blue door stood open, leading to the overgrown back lawn and the gardens and greenhouses beyond.
“Who cooks for you?” Magdala asked, running her hand along the wooden counter.
Zephyr’s cheeks pinked—he seemed abashed. “We don’t keep a staff at Elegy, so we cook for ourselves.”
A pile of dirty laundry lay in the corner, beside the washbasin. A fly circled it, buzzing languidly.
“What do you eat?”
In answer to her question, the kitchen door creaked, and Asherton strode in with a line of fish tossed over hisshoulder. He was reading a book, his hair tangled over his eyes. He didn’t bother to look up, but slapped the fish on the table in the center of the room and hurried to the counter, bumping into Magdala.
“Sorry,” he mumbled as he climbed onto the counter, opened an upper cabinet, and rooted around, knocking a jar of honey onto the floor where it shattered, the contents oozing onto Zephyr’s feet.
“Ash!” Zephyr cried. “You’re making a mess!”
Asherton turned toward him, one eyebrow raised. When his eyes settled on Magdala, he lost his balance and nearly fell from his perch.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m your new bodyguard,” Magdala replied.
He looked at Zephyr. “What do I need a bodyguard for?”
